Not much progress has been made on the runner as I keep on finding things I’d like to add to it so it never seems to want to be done!

Last time I blogged, we left off with the dahlias; both were done in satin stitch, one with the two colors separate and the second one with the colors blending with short and long stitch…well, let’s move onto bouillons and dessert, shall we? But before, some biology:

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If you are lucky to live in southern climates, you might have noticed that bougainvilleas are a lot like Poinsettias; the red/colorful “petals” are actually leaves, the flowers are the tiny yellow/white centers!

So how would you portray that in embroidery? Well i chose to use bouillons in a light yellow color…what do you think?

And after adding the yellow bouillons, AKA the flowers, the flower ovaries were done. These were done with double thread, in brown, because that is what I have noticed in these flowers.

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And now we have this:

I still needed to add some stuff to the blank space, so I decided to add another Mexican native: Vainilla! I knew this one was going to be hard, I personally didn’t grow up seeing these orchids…but I love vanilla, so I had to try.

And….this is when, while browsing pictures by my Flickr contacts, I saw this pretty monarch butterfly. Forget about the “flower only” theme…it had to be added!

Let’s focus on the vanilla blossom for now: Sadly the color of the flower is close to the fabric so, in order for the flower to be noticed, I had to add some foliage.

So far I’ve only done one leaf but i intend to add some more at the end, when I will probably fix the first leaf anyway. I’m afraid that instead of appearing like an elongated leaf, it looks more like a blade of grass.

For the center of the flower I went with a hint of darker yellow to show some “shading”. I am afraid the orchid did not come out as well as I wanted, but hey, maybe in the future I’ll try and do another project and do a better drawing of one…didn’t I mention this was going to be hard?

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And this is what we have so far:

Next up: the butterfly! (that will be in a couple of days!)

*No, I did not misspell vanilla. I just chose to spell it in Spanish!

It’s a carefully selected compendium of excellent photography of recent news events. Some of the photos in the Tour de France posting are absolutely amazing. I have really zero interest in photographing sports, but this is just amazing material.

I’m not sure who runs it (other than a Globe staffer, obviously) but it’s really good stuff. Check it out!

Well anyway, we’re going to try to put some new content up here, soon. All that activity means there’s been plenty of things going on to think about and share with you… Assuming anyone is still following this blog, of course!

A little bit of Googling later, I found two places that linked to my Flickr photo set of the Octobass, a very unusual/exotic stringed instrument made in France during the 19th Century. (In addition to the link above, check this one out. The link to my Flickr stream is at the bottom!) The Octobass is much larger than a double bass. Where a bass comes in around 6 feet tall, the Octobass is more like ten feet tall, maybe more. It requires TWO people to play it: one to use the bow, and another to use the levers and foot pedals to change the pitches. Despite it’s gigantic size, it’s lowest note is only an octave lower than a cello; a 16′ pitch C on a pipe organ. Very few were ever made.

I first read about this instrument when I was in middle school, when I first started playing the Bass. I dearly wanted to see one, but all of them are in Europe, and there was no Internet to find out more about it than my music encyclopedia mentioned in a single paragraph. Finally, in 2004 on my first trip to Paris, I got to see one at the amazing Musee de la Musique. It was awesome! I explained in French to the bemused curator/guard that I’d wanted to see this instrument for ages. “Crazy Americans,” she no doubt thought, but I was in heaven. I took many photos of it, wished I could play it, and finally moved on.

And so now, I am some sort of weird de-facto Internet resource for photos of the elusive Octobass. I love it!