Title, compass rose, and attribution. Since I did the vast majority of the work last year I used that date. And since I am me, I designed the alphabet myself, all the letters in upper- and lowercase, and digits although I ultimately liked the look of the Roman numerals better.

Since blackwork was popular over a long stretch of time I had a lot of options for an era-appropriate script. I found a website called Medieval Writing with lots of examples of scripts and was able to observe my lowercase options pretty thoroughly. I decided to create a blend of 15th-16th century English chancery hand and 15th-16th century French and Italian humanistic minuscule, with an eye to legibility for modern readers. Well, it turned out more to be based on those scripts in the way that TV movies are based on true stories, but I think it has the right flavor. I made the uppercase and numbers by looking at assorted typefaces and online calligraphy lessons, and the ampersand right out of my head. My favorites are the old-looking a, dramatic d, and potbellied U.

I have for you a blackwork alphabet PDF that includes the laid-out text for the map (aside from my name, which I didn’t think would be of much use). I thought it would be useful as an example of kerning the letters even if you wanted to use this for a different project.

After stitching, I washed the map and hung it from a deck chair out back, before I remembered I needed to block it on the ironing board with six or seven hundred pins. Next stop: the frame shop. I’ve never had any of my embroidery framed, so this will be an adventure.

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After many moons, the blackwork map is stitched. I have improved and repaired the pattern, as well, which you’ll find linked from my Upper Valley Fiber Crafts post on the topic.

This time around I couldn’t hang it outside after washing like I’d been doing, so I pressed the water out in a bath towel and pinned it to my ironing board to dry. That allowed me to put more tension on it than the hanging did, which made a really visible difference in the wrinkles. I also pulled on it a bit, like pizza dough, while it was soaking in warm water, and folded it differently than before in the big tupperware-type-thing it was in – this time I made sure the map itself was as flat as possible, with the excess fabric folded in around the edges.

Here’s a shot where you can see the last portion stitched a little closer.

Now I have to decide what kind of title or legend or signature I want to apply to it, how, and where. But that’s for another day!

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This segment had the fun Piermont-Haverhill puzzle piece border.

Just the bottom 10 (and a half) towns left!

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This time I sewed a little casing into the bottom of the fabric before washing it. I used warm water and dish soap instead of laundry soap to be sure to cut through any oils from my fingers. When I hung it to dry (via large binder clips around the top of a metal deck chair) I slid a dowel into the casing for weight and even stretch. I think that helped get more of the embroidery hoop marks out, compared to the previous update. The dowel came in handy later as well – rain was threatening, so after the fabric was mostly dry I brought it in and hung it between two chairs inside via the protruding ends of the dowel.

Onward and upward! Well, some upward, but more rightward and then downward. You’ll see this again at the 3/4 mark, in a month or so.

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I have clues 1-4 of 8 in my possession and they will continue to come out every Friday through the middle of August. I’ve stitched the first two clues over the past ten days, eating up far more yarn than I normally would in that time. The first lesson I’ve had to learn is how to deal with 16 skeins of yarn, 9 of which are double-size and at least 4 of which are “active” at any given time (I’ve gotten up to 6: one dark purple tied up in a motif whose instructions are spread over multiple clues and two more so I could do a spiral that had two dark purple strands). I also have to do something with the motifs finished so far. I’ve decided that, after photographing, I’m going to close the motifs for each clue in a plastic bag and label it with the clue number. Everything “inactive” is getting stored in the box the yarn was shipped in, which currently is just sitting on the floor in my sewing room (note: that doesn’t make it in any way unique among my craft supplies).

There’s a complication to this afghan that isn’t present in my other long-term project, the blackwork embroidery map: the materials in use at any given time are bulky and in many pieces. Usually I have one project bag with materials for several projects in it simultaneously – the life of an amigurumi designer! For this project I got out a smallish bag for the multi-clue motif and its active yarn, another for small amounts of yarn left at the end of skeins (just in case), and a larger bag that holds those two as well as the full or mostly full skeins of yarn. I’m considering buying a large basket to put them in so all three bags are still together but I have space in the large one for finished motifs of a clue still in progress. If I do, I’ll also keep the embroidery project in the basket.

Such a system not only looks neater, it makes it easier to move the project around if it’s in the way, which is bound to happen multiple times over such a long stretch. The soonest I could finish the afghan is late August, simply because I won’t have all the clues until the 15th. However, this brings us to the other lesson of this project: pacing myself. Each clue so far has taken at least 8 hours of stitching, and I’m two clues behind. My other considerations are that I’d like to finish the blackwork by some time this fall, write every other week for the local fibercraft blog, and keep up with my monthly goals here. I also need a substantial amount of time (30+ hours per week) to dedicate to my web development job. That’s not to mention that I want to continue to have a social life, spend time online, and read books. Something’s got to give in that scenario, and it’s the afghan. I’ve decided to spread out the stitching to a third of a clue per week, plus two towns on the blackwork map. That gets the map finished in mid-October (just in time for making Halloween costumes) and the afghan done by Thanksgiving, unless joining and edging take a very long time (just in time for making Christmas presents). Afghan and map work should run 4-5 hours per week, dropping down to 3ish hours when the map is done — though by then I may have a new long term project.

Delayed gratification and responsible time management are the watchwords. It’s the right thing to do for my goals and priorities. It just feels so slow!

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I had to rip and re-stitch part of Pomfret, where I accidentally stitched over 3 strands at some point and couldn’t disguise the problem. I actually hemmed and hawed so much about whether to redo it that I finished stitching the whole town, but concluded that it would be silly to spend so much time on this project (it’s at least an hour per town for me) only to leave in an error that really was plenty obvious. Fortunately I was able to take out the bad part without disturbing too much of the rest, and still have enough loose thread to re-secure the ends.

Before taking the photo above I washed the fabric. I’ve had problems in the past with long-term projects becoming irrecoverably grungy, so I plan to wash this every time I’ve finished enough to give another update.

Remember that you can make your own map or hijack the filling patterns for other purposes by visiting Upper Valley Fiber Crafts.

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Originally I wanted to partition the map into what we really think of as towns, which are smaller, more numerous, and more irregular than what the state governments regard as towns. The large boxy shapes date back to at least 1860, though, and I determined it would take me months to draw other boundaries. Drawing my own borders would also result in many arbitrary decisions about what was in or out of town.

I also didn’t intend to include 46 towns in the final map, but again, restricting would have required arbitrary decisions. The towns I included comprise the beat of the local newspaper, so any arbitrariness to the boundary is well in the past now.

To make the town outlines I imported an area map into MacStitch (of which I still owe you a full review) and traced the edges with backstitch. Deleting the cross-stitches was easy since none of them were black, so I was able to simply remove each color and its stitches from the palette. I then adjusted a number of the edge lines so all town corners would be at grid corners, in case anyone wants to make their own arbitrary exclusions.

I asked for and was granted permission to use fillings from Kim Brody Salazar’s wonderful blackwork fillings collection, but between asking and receiving I had the idea to make fill patterns out of the initial(s) of each town, and couldn’t let go of it. That meant 46 different fill patterns, 7 of which had to be built from the letter C. That is not a letter that has much difference between upper- and lowercase, or print and cursive. Also difficult were 3 Ws plus WF and WW. Oddly enough, the solitary F and E gave me more trouble than, say, the 4 Ss. Many evenings of sketching while watching the hubs play Skyrim passed as I designed letter fills and then slotted them into their locations.

A few more evenings passed while I stitched the beginning of my sample, shown above. I don’t have time to continue to be so dogged about this, so it will be some months before I’m done, but you’ll see it again then. I’m working on 32-count linen (over 2, for an effective count of 16) with a single strand of black embroidery floss (DMC 310). The stitching I’ve done is all six strands of a 2–2.5 foot length of floss.

There are a few useful links in the pattern post that are also now on the ideas and inspiration embroidery page, halfway down, where I’ve added a blackwork entry to the slowly growing directory of embroidery techniques.

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