Do you know the song? I first heard it in French, but the version that will forever stick in my mind is the English one sung by Hannah Gordon on the Morecambe & Wise show. Today, however, I thought of it partly because of the word Windmills (I am still hoping to get it ready for the Counted Wishes Festival) and partly because that design is making me feel remarkably like the first few lines of the song: “Round / Like a circle in a spiral / Like a wheel within a wheel” (which actually makes me think of hamsters rather than windmills, but that just shows you the way my mind works).

I like the design. I think that it is essentially a good design. But it is taking its time getting just right. Remember I changed the centre to white-and-probably-dark-grey because doing the whole think in Bradley’s Balloons looked a bit, uhm, much? Well, I think I may need to change a bit more than just the centre. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bradley’s Balloons, I think the dyer who came up with it deserves a prize for the sheer cheerfulness it radiates, but there is no getting away from the fact that it is quite … exuberant.

Below is the redraft I did a while back to get the centre right. Having worked the curvy lines that lead to the small windmills I feel that they might look better either in white, or in the same colour as the centre; as they stand they blend too much with the satin stitch, and so the whole design rather runs together. I will unpick one of them and re-stitch to see the effect.

Then there is the beading. My husband, having been shown the project and asked for his opinion (I used to ask him for advice, but he pointed out to me that I quite often didn’t take it, so now I ask for his opinion ) said that he wasn’t sure it needed beads at all. I’d like to keep some beads, but as I said in my previous post what there is now is simply too much. Which is a shame, because I like the arrangement. (*Note to self* store it somewhere and use in a future design.)

So here is the simplified version – I feel it is definitely an improvement, so now all that’s left to decide is whether to keep the blue beads or to go for all white. The blue beads are quite striking, and they go well with the fabric, but I’m not sure they go equally well with the thread.

The good thing is that at least I can now get on with working on Windmills! I finished Windows on the World last night and have sent my booth set-up form with all the pictures needed to Deena at the Counted Wishes Festival, and the missing ball of dark grey perle arrived from Sew & So.

By the way, about Windows on the World – when I’d worked the variegated buttonhole border of the second bookmark, it turned out that the perle #8 which I’d bought for it but rejected as being too bright was actually just right after all! But you’ll have to wait until the Festival to see it…

That pesky Windmill keeps throwing up problems! Remember I decided to have a black centre with white surround to represent the bit that fastens the windmill to its stick? Well, I still think that on the whole that was a Good Idea. To do the whole thing in Bradley’s Balloon throughout is a bit of an assault on the eyeballs, and it gives a bit of focus to the design. However, when I’d stitched the white central bit and the four Kloster block “sails” of the large windmill it didn’t look right. It made the bottom end of the sails look chopped off – I needed more of a diagonal line through to the centre. So I’ve been doing a bit of re-charting (again!) to do the circle (well, square really) around the central black filling stitches partly in white and partly in colour; it’ll mean some unpicking, but I hope the effect will be better. It’s a bit difficult to show here without giving too much of the chart away, but I hope the two small pictures below will give you an idea of what I’ve been doing. (And if you feel that the left-hand one is actually better, do let me know – I might very well change my mind again …)