Shock & Distress! Part 1: the idea and plan!

Well it began last night with MY shock and distress! Having gone up to bed and settled down with HP and the goblet of fire and a cup of tea I heard one of the cats rush about dashing and thudding, squeaking and generally crashing about .. followed by guffaws and squeals of excitement from hubby!
Tried to ignore it as I imagined that dh was chasing the cat for whatever unknown reason and after several mins called down irritatedly to him to stop messing about with the cats and getting them over excited and didn't he REALISE there were people upstairs trying to read/sleep?
Minutes later he crashed into the bedroom (the cat, Bertie, I mean) followed closely by hubby who appeared to be hanging onto something which turned out to be one of my lovely balls of rowan alpaca!

You can see the state of the poor ball of yarn! Bertie had apparently got into my knitting bag, pulled out of the balls and entangled himself in it before panicking and racing about the house, dh was following him chasing after the rapidly unwinding ball as it went, apparently, round and through and over various obstacles before finally he tired and dropped on the landing upstairs STILL entangled in the yarn! hmmm the distress didn't end there! Moments later hubby appeared at the doorway with an armful of the yarn announcing that apparently LILLY was to blame as she'd apparently got INTO my knitting bag and was in the process of retrieving and dragging away ball by ball and WHERE did I want it putting? ..



On to more creative forms of shock and distress! After college yesterday I read in the above magazine "The World of Embroidery" July 1996, vol 47 an article on deconstructing the stitch! Not quite sure what it involved I was interested to read that quite effective results can be achieved from heavily stitching ones fabric before sealing the reverse with fusible interfacing and setting about the embroidery with scissors to slash and generally distort them to create "a worn appearance" whereby "The background fabric re-emerges in the cut areas and the result is similar to the piece of old Indian embroidery .."

The first step is to work several rows of stitches eg chain st closely together changing direction and using threads that blend or contrast before fusing and slashing, trimming and scraping!
They suggest leaving some stitches whole to give a threadbare look, however once started it is rather tempting to continue until all of the stitch is removed which is what happened in one or two areas which you'll see next post!!



Anyway, above is the article that I followed and a close up of the illustrated example - you'll have to try it to make your own mind up! I tried it and I've not fully made up my mind! but then I do have other things ON my mind such as the recycling felted knitted jumper project!!

A nice walk out to the local chemist found me bumping into a couple of neighbours, bit of a chat and gossip after discovering one of the assistants is also a near neighbour before finally the Pharmacist glared pointedly at us and we left before parting company Edna and I called into the next door "Sue Ryder" shop to select a suitable candidate for my proposed project!!

I predict an interesting day today!