They are the best way I know to illustrate what I am talking about when I talk needlepoint and color. Zac, my web site tech, helped me make this blog when I asked for a blank page or 2 (or 10) on my web site to post these pictures and talk about them. I can never describe in words what a picture will show (and I am pretty good with words).

Zac wants me to talk needlepoint here, to instruct, but that is not me. He has since made his peace with my blog, he says it is ME. I think he is right.

However (bad word to start a sentence or paragraph with), in all these postings there are a couple of not seen before pillows of mine.

This peony pillow is done in DMC #3 Pearle cotton instead of the #5 I mostly use. This canvas was a 12 mesh and even doubled the #5 size floss looked skimpy. I have a bit of #3 bit not nearly enough to sell it on NewNeedlepoint.com I don’t have the money or storage space to carry a whole line of DMC #3 Pearle Cotton the way I do the #5 and the Paternayan 100% Persian needlepoint Wool.

It is the skimpy coverage of DMC #5 on 12 mesh Zweigart mono canvas that has me suggesting that my 12 and 14 mesh canvases need to be stitched with Paternayan Wool.

The DMC #3 has the same subtle sheen as the #5. This was the first canvas I ever stitched with this floss, in size 3 or 5, I used to patronize a store called Needlepoint Heaven in Boca Raton, where we used to live.

It was run by a late (late) middle aged married couple. She was the one who got me to try the “sparkle” floss I used on the “sparkle” roses canvas (yes, I know, there are more then a few roses needlepoints here. I went through a *roses* period).

She also talked me into trying DMC Pearle 100% Cotton Floss. She promised me it was easy to stitch, maybe easier then wool, and I would love the results. She was absolutely right, I now do the bulk of the needlepoint I do for myself and many, many of the kits I assemble with DMC Pearle Cotton Floss.

It is every bit as wonderful as she promised me and then some.

The couple who owned Needlepoint Heaven decided to retire. They tried to sell the store, complete. They asked an enormous and ridiculous price (If I remember correctly it was several hundreds of thousands of dollars, the stock in no way justified that price).

I thought about buying it until I heard their price, I am glad now I did not. I would find sitting in a store all day, 5 or 6 days a week to be like being in jail. it would drive me crazy and anytime a customer came in the door, I am sure I would jump them, swarm them and drive them right back out the door.

I was talking about the peony pillow wasn’t I?

The other one I haven’t shown yet (except in my Color Combination Catalog, I will get to that in a minute) is this one.

I first saw this canvas on the Elaine Magnin Needlepoint Web Store site (Oh No, am I promoting another store on my store blog?) I used to buy quite a bit from them but I never let them pick threads for me. The one time I did, I disliked the colors they chose to duplicate the colors in the design with, which are never ever a perfect match, and they shorted me some needed yards. They did send me the extra wool but…..

This was a special order needlepoint canvas, all (most) of the best ones are, in that web store. I waited, I think it was, 3 months to get the canvas. I called them several times asking about it.

When it came I tore open the tube and began stitching it immediately. I had to decide whether to do the edges of the ribbon in gold color or gold metallic, I chose gold color, I now wish I had chosen the metallic, oh well…..

This is a 14 mesh, stitched with Silk and Ivory 50% silk and 50% wool needlepoint yarn. When I began doing needlepoint again, after the many years I was so sick, Silk and Ivory was all I used.

I was not all together pleased with the Silk and Ivory yarn. It was expensive and I found that pillows I stitched with it, if they were actually used as pillows and touched, did not “wear” well. They got fuzzy surfaces and pilled some.

So, that is why I was so thrilled to discover and fall in love with DMC Pearle 100% Cotton Floss.

The downside to my needlepoint passions is that I often tend to focus in on one thing, to be blind to other choices in threads, patterns etc (as shown in the series of rose pillows I did). So I stitched with just the Pearle Cotton for a long time. I used the DMC and the Anchor. The Anchor colors were wonderful, a little richer and more subtle than the DMC colors, sadly Anchor has stopped making #5 cotton floss.

When I began to plan NewNeedlepoint.com (I will skip the link this time) I knew I had to offer more then just cotton. I knew that everyone always sang the praises of Paternayan Wools. The few times I had stitched with it I found the yarn lovely, different from the Cotton or the Silk and Ivory but very nice.

I bought a basic spread of the Paternayan Wool colors, in fact the company who makes it, JCA Co., has a list of what they call “basic colors”. I bought those along with a few more shades and variations.

I began to stitch with the Paternayan 100% Persian Needlepoint Wool and fell in love. It comes in 3 strand hanks. It is remarkably easy to strand (I am still in shock after trying to separate strands in some of the silk threads). I really enjoy stitching with it, I love the range of great colors (of course, I have bought many more colors for my inventory since). It is different from cotton, not better, not worse, just different for a different look and effect.

Ok, I forget where I was going with all this.

I have made a new Blog Page that I plan to use as a Color Combination Catalog or Sampler.

It is the colors I have used, the combinations I have made and liked in the sample Bargellos and Florentines Embroideries for NewNeedlepoint.com (again, no link..Zac is going to lecture at me about this, I am sure) plus the pillows I have stitched in the last 8 years. The years since I took up needlepoint again.

Each sample or pillow has a number. Customers who wish to use one of my combinations to stitch a Bargello Needlepoint pattern, a Florentine Embroidery Pattern or own of my line drawing needlepoint designs on white canvases, can ask for the combination or specify a variation of that combo by number. That has to be better then someone asking for the colors I used in “that” one or “this” one.

Of course, they are shown one by one and numbered on that page.

This is in addition to the completely open and undirected (by me) option of picking their own colors for my canvases. I will assemble those colors in the correct amounts (on the generous side, always, I hate running short) or they can use their own stash.

As I blabbed about in the last blog posting, I am reconfiguring NewNeedlepoint.com (there you go, Zac).

This process is happening now. I hope to have it done by the end of this next week. Right now all you will see is that I have removed from sale all of the designs and canvases we did early on. The ones we now judge to be amateurish or not wonderful.

I plan/hope/want to link my new Color Combination Catalog to each page I list one of my canvases without the threads.

I sure hope this all works. NewNeedlepoint.com is, and probably will always be, a work in progress. I bet I change it a zillion times. I hope you like these next changes.

It is the next day, I have a good (I hope) blog topic for tonight but I could not wait to add this. Zac, my excellent tech, gave me a html code today to use to open my Color Combination Catalog Page. It looks like a line in the listing but in color, like a link.

When you hit the link, it opens my catalog page on a new web page. This way you can look at my listing at the same time you are looking at the samples of colors. This is the The Cat’s Meow! (i couldn’t help myself, forgive me)