Week Two: Shoes and Perle

I miss shoe shopping. Shoe shopping is really the only type of shopping I truly enjoy (record shopping is a close second), and I honestly can't remember the last time I went shoe shopping. And when I say shoe shopping, I mean going out to shop with big shoe dreams in your head, not stopping by DSW to pick up a new pair of whatever standard shoe you wear every day. Shoe shopping is an event. Maybe you bring a friend or two, and you go to multiple stores or one very specific store. Maybe you have a specific shoe need, say a pair of diva high heels or you don't know what you want so you have to try on all the shoes. That's shoe shopping to me. Sure, you can pick up a pair of your every days, but that's not your objective. On a good shoe shopping day, you might not even buy anything, but you've had the joy of trying on many pairs of lovely shoes. Maybe this is only a thing I do. I don't know.

Week two of the stitch journal started the day after such an adventure. When we were visiting Philadelphia last month, Anita and I discussed going to the John Fluevog store in Georgetown. Anita's boss, a shoe collector herself, sent Anita a picture of a pair of Fluevogs that screamed "Anita," and she wanted to try them on and maybe buy them. Neither of us own any Fluevogs, so just trying on a pair would be an exciting thing to do. Fluevogs are iconic and very unique shoes, from color to heel design. They're works of art. We went on a little adventure, including Anita's mom and went shoe shopping. I've never had a shopping experience quite like shopping at Fluevog. The staff was amazing and so delightful. The shoes are gorgeous; I legitimately want them all. All of us tried on shoes and Anita and I walked away with our first Fluevogs. It was magical. The first piece of this week was my ode to my new shoes:

January 9 - Fluevog in whipped back stitch

My beautiful shoes - I wore the on Wednesday while working from home just to wear them.

I was impressed I was able to find thread in the ort jar that almost matched the shoes. My goal for this week was to focus on scaling my stitches, either making smaller entries or using only a few pieces of thread. I did a pretty good job of this throughout the week. I also used way more Perle 5 than I thought I would. I used it quite a bit last year, and there are some really great pieces of thread in the jar. I tried making a woven wheel with Perle for the first time. I liked the finished flower a lot. I also used Perle today for some bullion knots. I think Perle is the best thread for bullion knots.

January 10 - woven wheel

January 11 - added French knots to week one's fly stitch

January 12 - RIP redbud tree

January 13 - I don't know what this is, but that's cool. I do see a dog face and a hammer so there's that.

January 14 - messy tete de boeuf stitches. It sort of looks like the hammer from the day before is going to smash the little tete de boeufs. Not intentional.

January 15 - bullion knots

I also started an ort bag to collect all the scraps from this project. Some of what's in the 2021 ort jar isn't usable (too short, a big mess of knots), so I'm adding those pieces and the ends of what I use to this bag. I'm planning to make Christmas ornaments out of them. Let me know if you'd like one. 

Here's the full piece as of week two:

I started playing Wordle this week (highly recommend). I got today's word in three tries. If I get the word in one or two tries, I'm stitching it.