Daily Practice

Liz from Philadelphia -- violinist, lawyer and person extraordinaire -- is ahead of the curve on good stuff. Years ago she introduced me to the Ashokan Farewell. If you watched Ken Burns' The Civil War, you heard a beautiful violin solo -- a lonely waltz that weaves through each episode. That's the Ashokan Farewell composed by Jay Ungar.

As research for the sampler, I've revisited the Burns documentary. I'm still haunted by Ungar's waltz. Yesterday I tried it out on the viola . . . hey-hey, it sounds good a fifth lower (in G major now), with the open strings and double stops. I love the dark viola sound, so intriguing, mysterious -- the Edgar Allan Poe of stringed instruments. I've arranged Beethoven's Spring Sonata for the viola, only now it sounds like a Late Autumn Sonata. That's okay by me.

This week's task is -- experimenting with fonts and thread colors for the Gettysburg Sampler. Every mega-sampler starts with a single stitch.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

Last night PBS aired some great programs about Abraham Lincoln, a tie-in to this day's bicentennial -- it is Lincoln's 200th birthday. It's a big day for me -- I start stitching "272 Words," the Gettysburg Address sampler which is the subject of this blog. I finally located a cut of linen large enough for the job -- leaving room for design elements that will accompany the text of the speech.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is hailed for its simplicity. He used plain and direct language -- a practice honed when, as a young lawyer, he reduced legal boilerplate documents to everyday language. There's no clutter in Lincoln's speeches -- but I'm surprised to learn that his office was a disaster zone. Much to his law partner's dismay, Lincoln's workstation was a cluttered mess; he kept a folder on his desk labeled -- "When You Can't Find It Anywhere Else, Look Into This."

Wouldn't "Miscellaneous" suffice?

"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee" ~Abraham Lincoln

Henry from Pennsylvania sent along this Lincoln quote. Henry (and partner Emily) write the world's best acrostic puzzles, and are experts in finding fantastic quotations.

Liz from Philadelphia writes that, yes -- Lincoln Logs are still made . . . in China. (Cue Alanis Morrisette's Isn't It Ironic?) Lincoln Logs were invented by John Lloyd Wright, son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Interestingly, Frank was born "Frank Lincoln Wright" and changed his middle name to "Lloyd" after his parents divorced. I keep thinking of a Guggenheim Museum made of Lincoln Logs . . . oh, to be rustic again!

The sampler chart is underway, but the fabric search is a challenge. My chosen fabric is a beautiful linen (32-count Lambswool). But I need a made-to-order mega-cut. This is a sampler on steroids, much bigger than anticipated. Midnight oil and coffee -- that's the deal for the next few months.

Getting One's Ducks In A Row . . .

Yesterday I made a supplies run to a great cross stitch shop in Clifton NJ. I'm a hardcore New Yorker (no car), so I jumped onto the No. 1 train and headed to Times Square; then to Port Authority to catch a bus to The Garden State.

I'm starting to notice all things Lincoln -- the No. 1 train stops at 66th Street, Lincoln Center. Times Square is the eastern terminus of the 13-state Lincoln Highway, the first major memorial to the 16th President. Travellers on the original highway (completed in 1913) would travel west from Times Square, take a ferry across the Hudson to Weehawken NJ -- then across the U.S., to the western terminus, Lincoln Park in San Francisco. The Lincoln Highway is the nation's first transcontinental road, nicknamed Main Street Across America.

That Weehawken ferry service -- now a busy commuter line with a fleet of ships -- made headlines last month, when ferry captains chugged to the rescue of a downed U.S. Airways airbus floating in the icy Hudson River. Captain Sullenberger's virtuosic landing made us cheer. Sully wanted to land close to a vessel, to maximize the chance of a quick rescue. Don't you want to shake his hand and buy him a beer? And those fantastic ferry crew and first responders -- they make me prouder than ever to be a New Yorker .

At 42nd Street, it's on to Port Authority where I caught the NJ bus which barrels through the Lincoln Tunnel. Later last night, a supermarket radio (permanently tuned to the oldies station) crackles with the "Name Game" song: "Lincoln, Lincoln, bo binken . . . banana fanna . . "

Do they still make Lincoln Logs?

A Proclamation

Three weeks and two days ago, I decided to embark on a project that, for years, has bounced from one to-do list to another, and mentally filed away under "Some Day." Well, "some day" is here. Next week our country celebrates the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. There is no better time to start on said project -- a cross stitch sampler featuring the 272-word text of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address of November 19, 1863.

Here's the plan: I commence stitching next week, on Lincoln's 200th birthday -- Thursday, February 12. The goal is to complete the sampler on July 4. These historic dates seem like practical punctuation marks, though I suspect that Life will intervene and send my neat little plan into a tailspin. That's okay . . . I work best with a deadline.

Pre-stitching prep work is a needleworker's mise en place -- fabric is purchased, floss is selected, a stitching chart is designed. I've named this cross stitch chart "272 Words." It's time to go to work.

Stitching Tips and Sampler Stats

We've assembled some stitching tips and "272 Words" sampler stats; this page will be updated as questions arise. This page was updated on December 10, 2009.

~ TECHNIQUE: Technically, this is a very simple stitching project. The pattern calls for full cross stitches only. No backstitching, French Knots or Algerian Eyelets. Nothing fancy. Just plain old vanilla -- full cross stitches. The real challenge, I think, is endurance -- the time involved in stitching a piece that's 349w x 375h . . . roughly 22" wide and 24" high. As Steven Wright says: "Everywhere is within walking distance . . . if you have the time." I am reminded of how Yo Yo Ma first learned the Bach Cello Suites; his father instructed him to learn one measure per day. One measure! A measure here, a measure there -- after a few months, you've got a Gigue and a Courante under your fingers. So to with stitching . . . a word or two per day . . . in a few months you'll have the Gettysburg Address on linen. (Of course, we stitchers know that we can't restrict ourselves to merely one word a day . . . stitching is too darn fun!)


~ FABRIC:  32-count Lambswool linen from Wichelt

~ MODEL: The model is stitched entirely in colors from The Gentle Art, using two strands over two threads. DMC equivalents are provided in the chart, but (using Mad Men marketing parlance) "results may vary" if the piece is stitched with DMC only, or a GAST/DMC combo.

~ THREADS: The colors are largely localized, with GAST Nutmeg the color of Lincoln's words. The "Gettysburg" caption part is stitched in green (Chives). The chart calls for 10 skeins of Nutmeg (I used 5-yd. skeins). This is a generous skein count -- allowing for frogging and adjustments for variance in overdyed thread color values. I used the darker parts of the Nutmeg skeins for the capital letters, as a way to accentuate the beginnings of the sentences . . . especially the opening words, and important capitalized words like "Liberty" and "God."

~ STARS: The 50 red and blue stars (stitched in Mulberry and Freedom) contain no political message in terms of red and blue states. The aim was to have "ABRAHAM LINCOLN" stitched in an "Chief Executive" blue (GA Freedom) -- suggestive of The Presidential Seal. The two stars on either side of his name are in Mulberry, to offset the blue. There's no doubt that our 50-state complement was made possible by Lincoln's preservation of the Union. Each of the 50 stars in the sampler is identical in size; the entire complement is included to show strength in numbers. Again, inspired by the Presidential Seal with its 50 white stars in a circular pattern.

Info updated on 12/10/09