Stitcher's Murphy's Law?

Cheryl Isaak said
Bugles work well. IF you a bead shop near by, I'd stop there first. More
reds and more shapes! LOL

The nearest bead shop has high end, pricey stuff. For this project, me being
the frugal person I am, I'm looking for inexpensive, yet interesting, red
flower-like shapes. I know HobbyLobby has exactly what I want in purples,
pastels and white. I've had good results spray painting other embellishments
but don't want to go that route for this effort.

Trust me, y'all are gonna plotz when you see pictures eg

--
another Anne, add ingers to frugalf to reply

"scottnh" ) writes:
All we really need is to have the chart designers list if we need more
skeins than one. If they did the original design, they should post whether
we need more than one.
Clarice in AZ
"Karen C - California" wrote in message

Horrah!!!!! I can post again. I did a test to check. This is simply
not true. The designer may know how much floss it took for a few model
stitchers to complete the work on one canvas size, with one number of
threads in the needle. The designer has no idea as to whether these
stitchers were parsimoneous or profligate with their use of floss,
somthing approaching a factor of two in floss usage. If the stitcher
decides to do the piece with a different canvas size, or different number
of threads in the needle, the designer's advice will be just plain wrong.
I discussed this many years ago with Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum, TIAG, and she
said she would *never* post this advice, since most of the time it would
be wrong. I had personal experience of this many years later.
Also, there are many people like myself, who have a stash with many
partial skeins. The first thing I do when I get a new project is to go
through my stash to see whether I have the requisite colors. I can
measure how much I have of each. Will I have enough of any one of them to
complete the project? Telling me I only need to buy one skein is of no
help whatsoever.

On 11/18/05 9:01 AM, in article
, "anne"
wrote:

Cheryl Isaak said
Bugles work well. IF you a bead shop near by, I'd stop there first. More
reds and more shapes! LOL

The nearest bead shop has high end, pricey stuff. For this project, me being
the frugal person I am, I'm looking for inexpensive, yet interesting, red
flower-like shapes. I know HobbyLobby has exactly what I want in purples,
pastels and white. I've had good results spray painting other embellishments
but don't want to go that route for this effort.

Trust me, y'all are gonna plotz when you see pictures eg

Mine has a decent line of low priced things, some neat high end beads and a
large in between range.

Cheryl

Caryn - you realise we may have to KILL you for starting him off again? ;-))

Pat P

"F.James Cripwell" wrote in message
...
"scottnh" ) writes:
All we really need is to have the chart designers list if we need more
skeins than one. If they did the original design, they should post
whether
we need more than one.
Clarice in AZ
"Karen C - California" wrote in message

Horrah!!!!! I can post again. I did a test to check. This is simply
not true. The designer may know how much floss it took for a few model
stitchers to complete the work on one canvas size, with one number of
threads in the needle. The designer has no idea as to whether these
stitchers were parsimoneous or profligate with their use of floss,
somthing approaching a factor of two in floss usage. If the stitcher
decides to do the piece with a different canvas size, or different number
of threads in the needle, the designer's advice will be just plain wrong.
I discussed this many years ago with Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum, TIAG, and she
said she would *never* post this advice, since most of the time it would
be wrong. I had personal experience of this many years later.
Also, there are many people like myself, who have a stash with many
partial skeins. The first thing I do when I get a new project is to go
through my stash to see whether I have the requisite colors. I can
measure how much I have of each. Will I have enough of any one of them to
complete the project? Telling me I only need to buy one skein is of no
help whatsoever.

"Pat P" ) writes:
Caryn - you realise we may have to KILL you for starting him off again? ;-))

Pat P

I know I will probably never convinced you, Pat, or any other old
timers on rctn that I know what I am talking about. However, one of these
fine days we may get someone new on rctn who recognizes that I *do* know
what I am talking about, and who is in a position to take up my ideas and
run with them. A vain hope, maybe, but who knows?

I beg to differ with you, Jim. If a designer says to use a 14 ct. material
and 3 threads, and to buy 2 skeins of certain colors, an experienced
stitcher knows(generally) how much thread she/he will use. As thread comes
in yds or meters, anyone can figure out the yardage needed. As to doing the
chart in other material, or other threads, then I guesss the yardage could
be a "guess"--lol. But most experienced stitchers have a lock on how they
stitch, if they are frugal or wastful of thread, etc. So buy an extra one
if not frugal. As to partial skeins, measure what you have left to compare
with what is required. Big trouble with DMC---old colors are not the same
dye lot as new ones. I have some old ones in my stash and they sure do not
match the new colors. Even recently purchased colors to not match every
time.

Clarice in AZ
..

scottnh wrote:
I beg to differ with you, Jim. If a designer says to use a 14 ct. material
and 3 threads, and to buy 2 skeins of certain colors, an experienced
stitcher knows(generally) how much thread she/he will use. As thread comes
in yds or meters, anyone can figure out the yardage needed. As to doing the
chart in other material, or other threads, then I guesss the yardage could
be a "guess"--lol. But most experienced stitchers have a lock on how they
stitch, if they are frugal or wastful of thread, etc. So buy an extra one
if not frugal. As to partial skeins, measure what you have left to compare
with what is required. Big trouble with DMC---old colors are not the same
dye lot as new ones. I have some old ones in my stash and they sure do not
match the new colors. Even recently purchased colors to not match every
time.

Clarice in AZ



Clarice,

This whole thing is Jim's big bugaboo, he frequently posts rants here
about how ALL designers should provide a stitch count for each color.

It would be a waste of a printed page for most stitchers (only a few
anal ones actually calcuate exactly how many sts they get per skein).
Why should designers pick up the tab for a small minority of stitchers?
Printing each page costs the designer money, maybe just pennies a
chart, but across 100's or 1000's of charts it adds up. And really,
what does the designer gain? She/he won't sell more charts because of
it, they are just out the money to print it.

Caryn

" ) writes:
scottnh wrote:
I beg to differ with you, Jim. If a designer says to use a 14 ct. material
and 3 threads, and to buy 2 skeins of certain colors, an experienced
stitcher knows(generally) how much thread she/he will use. As thread comes
in yds or meters, anyone can figure out the yardage needed. As to doing the
chart in other material, or other threads, then I guesss the yardage could
be a "guess"--lol. But most experienced stitchers have a lock on how they
stitch, if they are frugal or wastful of thread, etc. So buy an extra one
if not frugal. As to partial skeins, measure what you have left to compare
with what is required. Big trouble with DMC---old colors are not the same
dye lot as new ones. I have some old ones in my stash and they sure do not
match the new colors. Even recently purchased colors to not match every
time.

Clarice in AZ



Clarice,

This whole thing is Jim's big bugaboo, he frequently posts rants here
about how ALL designers should provide a stitch count for each color.

It would be a waste of a printed page for most stitchers (only a few
anal ones actually calcuate exactly how many sts they get per skein).
Why should designers pick up the tab for a small minority of stitchers?
Printing each page costs the designer money, maybe just pennies a
chart, but across 100's or 1000's of charts it adds up. And really,
what does the designer gain? She/he won't sell more charts because of
it, they are just out the money to print it.

Caryn

Let me reply to both messages at the same time. I have not seen any
designer give advice as to how many skeins to buy. If such designers
exist, I would love to know who they are. As I have noted, Marilyn
Leavitt-Imblum stated to me that she would *never* provide such
information. It is simply wrong too often, and then customers complain;
not good PR.
As to Caryn's message, I have *never* suggested symbol counts be put
on patterns. I know this would be stupid and expensive. However, it
would be easy, and cheap, to put symbol counts on web pages. These days
many stitchers have internet access, and so do most LNSs.

Pat P wrote:
Caryn - you realise we may have to KILL you for starting him off again? ;-))

Pat P



Not my fault the bugger can't use some self control and not get on his
old hobbyhorse at every opportunity!

Caryn

Ummm. Jim, I might be wrong, but I'm positive I've seen guides on a
couple of the older MLI's on how many skeins/spools I will likely need
for specific colours. I don't have easy access to my pattern
collection right now (still in boxes from our move), but I'd be willing
to bet on it. It might be just for the metallics, but I'm sure I've
seen it. And I know other designers (for example Mirabilia comes to
mind) sometimes list it if more than one will be needed. I *could well
be* wrong, but I know I've seen it. As for Noah's Sub, it was just
common "stitcher's sense" that made me get multiples of the colours for
the top of the sub as there appeared to be a large area of it. I
didn't expect any of the blues for the water to need more than one, and
I slightly underestimated for one colour. Of the second skein I
purchased, I don't think I used more than one or two lengths from it to
finish, and I was careful in where I ended up from the original so even
if there was a slight difference, it wouldn't be noticible.
Heather