Scarlet Quince Ramblings

I see I haven’t posted any of the redwork alphabet in over 8 months! Let’s get down to it.
J took 38 days (there was time out for the Hardanger cube in there. This was the first letter with red top-stitching, but it doesn’t amount to much. I don’t really care for J.

K took 20 days. All those little chicken scratches were very finicky to do, and it was hard finding good paths through. It’s also hard to anchor the floss under it. I had to try to start and finish at cross stitching. I like the effect though.

L took 16 days and I’m neutral about it. It’s OK.  

I’ve been taking notes on the pattern pages, and I’ve lost M so I don’t know how long it took.  I’m sure it was awhile, with such a big stitched area.  I am fairly fed up with the grapevine motif.  This is the last of it though. This is another letter that doesn’t match the picture on the chart cover.

N was a headache.  Unlike all the other letters, it is 100 stitches wide but only 98 high.  This REALLY doesn’t work for my grid of letters.  Fortunately I was able to extend the pattern and it is actually more symmetric than if I had stitched it as charted (that last double line at the bottom of the legs of the N was charted as a single line). 

O is just weird.  Those are EYES.  What’s up with that?  Is this some kind of French pun?  I think the word for “eyes” is “yeux” which I pronounce “yose” (rhymes with hose) but maybe the y is supposed to be silent, and it’s really “ohs” (but what are the chances they call the letter o “oh”?) On the other hand, what else would you call it? Did I mention I don’t know French? These each took about 20 days.

I was looking forward to P because I liked the design and because of the red top-stitching.  What was I thinking?  This was the hardest letter so far.  There are a lot of weird jumps like over 5 and up 2 and I had to keep drawing boxes on the chart to figure out what they were.  And I made so many mistakes!  One line I stitched over and over and it just wasn’t ending in the right place.  I counted and checked and couldn’t find any mistakes, ripped it out, and the same thing happened.  I think I stitched it 5 times before I got it right.  But it’s pretty, and so is Q.  P took 33 days, Q 25.  (I’m not getting as much time to stitch as I used to.  I’m only averaging about an hour a night at this point.)

R took almost a month, and no wonder.  I like it though — it reminds me of filet crochet (which I can’t do).  I’m currently about half-way through S which is another mostly solid letter.  There’s a little too much of that if you ask me, although in a way they’re easier than the ones with more blank spaces (less counting).

Sorry all these photos are so whopperjawed but as you know, photographing needlework is tricky!