Playing With Rocks...

 

The Folly Garden Landscape....

It Was already well over a year ago, Dear Readers, that I began the "improvements" to The Folly Garden Landscape in the corner where the Rhododendron bush sits, and I am not referring to the Shrubs themselves! Above you can see a picture of how this corner of the Garden looked for many years as I worked on other projects. A piece of green cloth had been draped over the bare ground on the embankment to resemble grass or moss, I suppose, but nothing else had been done to this corner at all. You might recall that this Garden was the wilder garden on the side of The Folly where the little brook runs past near to the house, and The Tree House grows up very close beside the house itself. The embankment around the house foundation is pretty steep and I had always intended that it be a bit of a "Rock Garden"... primarily because the foundation of the house had originally been protected from the brook by large boulders along the house side of the property. The idea was that it was wild and unmanicured and  just a bit neglected. There is a narrow path along the embankment that leads to a small sitting spot that overlooks the picturesque brook... (which will get constructed eventually!)... and a Garden that in it's youth (a hundred years ago!) was vaguely Japanese in inspiration. The ancient hollow Willow Tree which houses The Tree House (still not finished!) and the Rhododendron Shrub in the corner by the porch are almost all that remain of the original plantings (some peonies will appear someday...) according to my imaginings of this space.

 

Here you can see the same corner with the green cloth removed and the bare embankments and nary a Rock in sight! "Rock Garden! Hmmph!" Mr. Gnome has been known to mutter reproachfully as I pass by! Yes, there is one "sample" boulder being tested there by the steps... but really, it lacked all appearance of Rockiness!

 

So I began to try my hand at making a few more "boulders" to hold the little Brook away from the foundations. You have no idea how much "foam board" can be wasted in this process as you try to make a Rock-like surface of the correct size and shape! The material is 2 inches thick, so you only have a medium sized rock as far as depth goes... And if you have ever tried to build a stone wall you will know how much even a small rock weighs and how difficult it can be to make the surfaces agree with each other! 

 

And each time you add one... it seems to become like a "cornerstone"

 and can't be moved again but everything else must work around it...

 

 

One massive "boulder" at a time... 

building the streambank at the edge of the garden.

 

 

And adding a couple more "boulders" to the foundation embankment too... 

and here they have been painted with a coat of primer. 

 

 

And then the first coats of paint,

 trying out different shades of gray for the base coats. 

In this part of the world we have some very gray rocks...

 slates and granite mostly, so that is what I am trying to imitate.

 

 

I am not at all sure of the ultimate color balance of these rocks... 

so I am just being random for now. 

And I want them to make logical sense physically... 

to look appropriate in the end.

 

 

It is really difficult to tell in this picture

 that I have added some color texturing to some of the rocks.

 

The path to the garden bench needed to be solid enough

 for the little people to walk along it...

 so I brought Joanna over to test the footing. 

She said it needed a little more width!

 

And of course, it was a start....

 but it was nowhere near enough rocks! 

So I started to add more.....

 

I don't know about you, Dear Readers, 

but I always find myself picking up stray "pretty" rocks

 and bringing them home with me!

 I don't go looking for them, but they jump out at me...!

 So I wanted to include a few "Real" rocks in this project.

 They needed to be small so as to not add a lot of weight...

 

Can you see one of my REAL Rocks there......

 between the two pink foam ones on the path? 

 

Can you see it better now? 

I know, the lighting is not great.....

 but it is a Real rock inset into the foam base!

 

Here I am painting the foam rocks,

 so I have removed the Real Rock from it's spot

 so it won't get painted by accident!

 

Here I have begun the painting of the rocks... just the first coats... 

and you can see the gap for the Real Rock.

 

And here you can see the Real one temporarily in place.

 It will help me with the realism when I eventually

 get to the finish coats of paint on these rocks.

And once again.... there needed to be more rocks.... 

 

In particular, the front corner of the "garden wall"

 needed to be huge boulders, not just little bricks!

 The stream would carry away bricks in no time... 

it needed to be "steered aside" by huge immovable boulders!

 

 Here is a closer view.

 I carved them to fit over the existing wooden base wall.

 

And here they are getting the primer and first coats of paint.

And we have to test how the bench will sit among all these new old rocks!

 

And Joanna wanted to test the new path.... 

"much better" she says!

 

And because they are nowhere near done, Dear Readers,

 and this was all last year's work

 and I have probably "rocked" you to sleep by now... 

I will leave it here.

 But you can rest assured, 

I am still Playing with Rocks! 

 

Green.....

 

Grow the Leaves... Oh!

Can You remember, Dear Readers, about a year ago when I first posted the "Summer Green" Rhododendron shrub at the Folly Garden and wondered if it really had enough leaves to qualify as "finished"? Well, as some of you might realize, I decided it needed quite a few more leaves to really look right as THE evergreen shrub beside the Folly Porch. It is Evergreen, after all, so only steps aside briefly for the Blossoming version which takes a week or so, and for the Snowy winter version which comes and goes quickly only in Winter, so it had better be really worthy of all the rest of those months of viewing! Above you can see the "revised" version, newly "completed".... even though there are probably a few more leafy stems I will add, in particular in the corner by the Tree House. If you can't remember exactly how it looked before.... I have added a photo from Last Year....

 

And I know the lighting is different, 

which makes it really hard to judge.... 

but I also know that the newer version has nearly 400 leaves

 more than last year's version!

 

Here you can see it again... this years (version #3-2) 

from the side of the Garden near the Tree House. 

It definitely looks "denser" to me.... which was the whole point!

 

 The "trick" was to add the "understory leaves" which are

 the previous year's growth still attached to the shrub. 

And believe me, this was tricky to do! 

And very time consuming. 

And as some of you know, last years "green" shrub

 got a coating of "snow" during the Winter 

and is now the "Snowy Winter" version (#2-2)!

 So nothing was wasted after all!

 

And yes, Mr. Gnome is hoping that some of the disruptions

 to his usually quiet neighborhood will be finished for a while.

 

And maybe I can get working on some of my many other

 unfinished projects.... the list is Looooooong!

 

And Speaking of Green, Dear Readers,

 some of the threads I had ordered arrived

 and among them was a blue-green shade

 that I could use in my Astrological Cushions! 

 

The Leo Astrological cushion design

 was asking for four shades of green and one of gold

 for the ground below the Lion.

 The darkest green had arrived a while ago,

 and finally the blue-green arrived.

 Until it did, I did not want to start stitching

 until I could be sure it would work with the rest of the greens.

 As you can see, it does! So I got stitching right away!

 

Here you can see the Leo Cushion before starting the greens...

 but with the night sky completed. 

These kits are designed for larger scale, 

so the details are quite intricate for this tiny scale.

 I was not sure the two blue colors would be needed... 

but I have decided they work out okay....

 Just the darkest blue would have been

 too much like the black border squares.

 And once the ground is stitched... it makes beautiful contrast...

 

This is just the first two greens...

 

Here you can see the stitching beside the chart... 

it is sometimes difficult to tell which color the printed square is...

 they are very similar shades.

I start with the colors that are clearest to follow....

 the darkest and the lightest,

 and gradually fill in the more confusing ones.

 

Here I have added the golden wheat color....

 

And here the Leo Cushion stitching is finished!

 

 

And because I had also been waiting for

 that blue-green for the Wyvern Cushion... 

I got busy right away with the Green ground. 

This chart only needed the four green shades... 

no golden color is needed.

 

More of the Greens have been added...

 only the last one is still not stitched.

 

And of course, I have started the border for

 the last little Cushion for this piece of mesh....!

 

But I will Leave you here, Dear Readers... 

Wondering what the final cushion will be.... 

because I do have just a few more Leaves to grow

 on the Evergreen Rhododendron Shrub! 

Stitching Update...

 

Golden Threads... 

Some of the Threads I had ordered, Dear Readers, arrived promptly and I was lucky in that I could use two of the colors for my Astrological Lion cushion! You might recall that the design as it is charted in the Book calls for five thread colors for the Lion's body, a dark brown, a medium brown, a dark gold a medium gold and a pale gold, and I had only a pale gold and a bright gold and a dark-ish brown. I was hoping to find a lighter brown that was in the ocher range, and/or a darker gold in the butterscotch/ocher range. What I got was a darker brown.... which makes my first brown the medium one... and a wheat-gold that has to fall between the two golds I already had. 

 Here you can see the threads. I already had the palest gold on the left, the bright gold in the middle and the lighter brown beside that. As you can see, the colors are not as "different" from each other as I would have liked. Both the browns are fairly dark, and the golds are only subtly different from each other. But sometimes you just have to use what you have! So I got to work...

 

Here you can see the two different brown colors have been stitched... 

I know, they don't read as "different" here... it is really subtle!

 And I have started with the darker yellow, or gold, thread...

 

Here you can see the chart... 

the yellow thread I am stitching is the dark butterscotch color in the chart.

 It is quite challenging to discern exactly which color some of the squares are!

 

I have to pay very close attention to where I am in the chart....

 

Here I have completed the "butterscotch" stitches...

 

Next I am stitching the lightest gold color... 

because on the chart it stands out and is easy to place!

 

Here the lightest gold is almost all stitched.

 And at this point you can really see the "texture" 

of the coloring for the lion's mane,

 because the threads had good contrast.

 

Here the lightest gold has all been stitched. 

This is photographed in good morning light

 so you can pick up on the color differences.

But alas, Dear Readers, it is time to stitch

 the confusing mid-range gold... 

and suddenly all is not quite so clear...

 

Because it is so close in hue to the other golds... 

they begin to just blend together.

 

And here the mid-range gold is all stitched.

Some of that strong texture is gone...

 but I comfort myself with thinking that

 it actually looks pretty good for a Lion!

 

 The landscape stitching and the sky

 are still to come Dear Readers,

 but that will be a whole other adventure

 in new and Different Thread colors!

A Question of Color....

 

 Blue... Gold.... Green...

As You might be aware, Dear Readers, I have been wrestling a lot recently with Color choices for my many various stitching projects. This is in great part due to my tendency to change the designs that were the original kit specifications, but also due to the change of thread type being used due to the changed scale of the project. The threads specified for the Wyvern (and the future Lion) cushion, are all intended for DMC cotton pearl thread and the projects were scaled for RL products. When I noticed that the number of stitches for the Wyvern design was exactly the same as that for the Milles Fleures Kits I had been stitching, I assumed I could just use the same Milles Fleures kit silk threads for the Wyvern. And I could for the most part, but there were not enough colors in the Milles Fleures selection to match all the colors in the Wyvern design. So I set about ordering the missing thread colors... but this is very challenging when you don't have a chart to compare the colors across different manufacturers. And the availability of the silk threads here in the USA is hindered by the fact that they are imported so not all stores carry all or any of them. And trusting to the pictures of on-line ordering is also risky... they even don't recommend using the colors shown as a guide! You need to know the number of the color you want... which I have no clue about! So I have been ordering anyway... a kind of thread roulette... I assume I will eventually use the silk even if not right away on this project. For the Wyvern, I got lucky and could use two of the darker blues I ordered for the sky. You can see I have finished stitching that part in the above photo. I am still waiting for a blue-green thread, a purple thread, and could not use the only orange-ish color I ordered as it was too dark for the highlights on the Wyvern's scales. So meanwhile, I have started stitching the frame for the Lion cushion...

 

This is another of Candace Bahouth's designs.... 

one of a series of astrological-inspired motifs. 

And one of the things I love about these designs is that

 she actually designed them with glittery

 metallic gold thread for the stars and the Wyvern's fire! 

I didn't have to change that at all!

 

And yet again, I don't have enough colors of gold

 to complete the design as is....

 so I have ordered some more.

 We will see if they will work!

But the real color challenge I wanted to talk about was

 the still undecided background color for the

 Chinese Dragon Carpet golden border motif!

And I am not entirely to blame for this challenge, even though I did drastically change the kit design by adding the dragons as a central motif. The design had specified two colors of gold for the border that were so close to each other in hue that you could not tell there was a pattern at all! When I added the central motif I used the picture on the kit, showing a lovely gold band, as inspiration for the gold octagon surrounding the dragons. Only to discover once I started stitching that gold band that it was supposed to be a beautiful golden Greek key pattern,not a solid gold band. And in order to decide what color would work best for the background of that key pattern, I started stitching small "samples" along the side of the silk mesh.

I had shown sample of the options I tried so far... a paler gold background.... (bottom) the kit threads as specified (next above) the cream background (third from bottom) the dark blue (fourth up) and the navy blue (top option). And by then I had realized I really needed to include the dark blue outlines for this band in order to get the real effect. I had not intended to try the pale sky blue that is the background of sky with the dragons in the center.....(a piece of the design added by me) because I was pretty sure it would not work at all. But when a Dear Reader suggested I could try it, I thought that this would be a great example to use to show how some colors just do not play nicely with each other! Rather than just try to describe why... they are too similar to each other in intensity (or tone, both being mid-range) and too dissimilar in hue (they just cancel each other out!)..... I should show why by stitching a sample.... 

 

Can you even see the stitched sample above the navy blue one.....?

 It was extremely difficult to get it to show up in photos!

 

 

Here you can see I am adding the blue edges to all the samples...

 

Here is a closer view of the samples.... 

trying to get them in enough light... 

but I swear, the gold and the sky blue just swallow each other up! 

 

Here it is even closer... 

and you can see that the design and the background are too similar in intensity,

 neither one dominates, so they just cancel each other.

 And viewed from a distance, they combine to make a slightly green hue....!

So you can see my dilemma, Dear Readers,

 in needing to choose an alternate color than the kit specifies, 

without changing the original design color balance.... 

I am still undecided. So I am stitching the parts I do know first! 

 

Maybe by the time I am done with the outer borders, Dear Readers,

 I will have answered the question of which Color to use...