May is actually for a lot of things, woah nelly, this month is a busy one! There’s the ongoing Peppermint Purple modern blackwork stitch along that comes out every Wednesday. I decided to sign up for a band weaving workshop (mercifully only three weeks, rather than four) that started May 1 (thank goodness inkle weaving is quick!). There’s the Athena’s thimble technique a month plan that I’m still keeping up with AND May has Fool in it, now virtually! Wowsa, that’s more than enough.

(Not to mention that silly full time job thing, and the fact that the garland on my door is still Easter and apparently we need to cook and eat food, like every day. More on that later this week.)

However! We’re here to talk about counted work, the next alphabetically in the Athena’s Thimble category list. (Also.. can we talk about how it’s May and we’re still in the C’s? Embroidery categories are not well spaced in the alphabet, just pointing that out.)

I love counted work. It’s a happy relaxing place for me, and has been since the counted cross stitch hey day in the 80s. (Which is, to be fair, where I started embroidering, so it holds a happy space in my heart. Get the snooty outta your soul now at the 80s collection of cross-stitch. Much like the knitting phase that came after it, it got a bajillion people with needle and thread to hand, and while some moved to the next trendy thing when it came up, some became devoted and brilliant embroiderers. Just because it’s popular doesn’t make it suck. Alright, rant over.)

I went poking in some favourite and beloved model books from period. Because the late 1500s totally had printed pattern books, and they literally had charts of flowers and critters and edgings and whatever else your little heart desired to stitch (or knit, or weave, or .. that’s a different blog post!). The one I decided on was Federic Vinciolo – “Singvliers Et Novveaux Povrtraicts” . It was first printed in 1587, although this is a copy of the 1606 printing. I’ve already embroidered five of the critters in my sampler in 2016, and I solidly considered doing one of those again (I really did enjoy them!), but in scrolling through I found seasonal deities. And well, that decided it. So my counted work for the month is going to be all four, because I hate having free time.

Nitty gritty details for those curious about such things, I’m working in a single strand of 60/2 weaving silk on 30 count evenweave linen. It’ll be a snuggly fit into my 6″ square, but I’ve measured and counted and recounted and remeasured and it should fit. Two of the silks are dyed with cochineal (different mordants? I think? I wish I’d kept notes, but any tags on these skeins got lost), one with madder and one with weld. Everything has been dyed by me at one point or another. I have learned that 4 more years into middle age now requires a magnifier, where it didn’t in 2016. Woe. If you need me, I’ll be counting somewhere.