I’m not as far along as I’d like to be on the Mission Rose, but there’s some progress, and some progress is always better than no progress, right?

Today I’ll show you a wee amount of progress on the Inner Frame, and tell you why I’m doing what I’m doing the way I’m doing it, and then discuss my misgivings about the thread choice.

First off, here, stepping back slightly from the project in the frame, is the Mission Rose, with the corners finished in vermicelli goldwork over blue silk.

When taking direct photos inside, it’s difficult to get a sense of how the gold gleams and the silk shimmers on this piece.

This photo, which I took from across the room and cropped, might give you a better idea of the gold and silk catching the light.

Once the project is finished – or if I have the opportunity before then – I’ll take some photos outside in natural light on a slightly overcast day. I tend to get better photos of goldwork under those conditions.

In any case, beginning on the inner frame, I’m using a #5 smooth passing thread in “dark” gold. It’s a very shiny thread and very…. hmmmmm…. what’s the word? Liquidy-looking?

You’ll notice that I started couching the pair of threads in the middle of the inner frame. It might seem a lot easier to start from one side and couch to the other, but there’s a reason for starting in the middle.

The inner frame is narrower at the tips and it bows a bit towards the middle sides – just slightly, but enough that the whole frame will certainly not be covered with an equal amount of gold thread pairs. There will be more pairs towards the middle sections of the sides.

Couching the pairs of threads from the middle out, you can accomplish a more even coverage of a space like this.

It’s not as easy to couch threads from the center out – you have to stay pretty close to the center for it to work out, and the center of the frame is not marked with a line or anything.

But if you sally forth slowly and carefully, eyeballing the center along the way, it should work.

At first, I had some misgivings about the thread choice, and they slowed me down a bit. I kept hesitating with every stitch: Do I quit now and take it out? Do I finish a whole round? But what a waste that would be! Maybe I should think about this!

My plan was that the inner frame would be somewhat glossy and smooth, and the outer frame would be somewhat mat (choosing less shiny golds for the outside), with a little more texture in it. Some contrast between the two frames is necessary, I think, just for the sake of interest.

But finally, long after the sun sank in the west and the world grew quiet and sleepy, as my head started nodding over my work… I made a decision. I would go forward with the shiny #5 passing, as planned.

And this weekend, that is precisely what I’m going to do.

And since Autumn has truly come to Kansas – since it’s rainy and shivery cold – what else could I possibly be doing this weekend, anyway?

Please don’t say laundry…

You can follow the Mission Rose project from start to finish and everywhere in between – in chronological order as the project developed – by visiting the Mission Rose project index.