Stitchtober2022

I had so much fun participating in the Instagram Stitchtober challenge in 2021 that I knew I wanted to do it again in 2022. I also knew I wanted to stitch one piece again but in cross stitch this year. Unlike the year before, when I thought of fairy tales as soon as I read the list, nothing came to mind this year. I didn’t even know what one of the words meant, but when I looked it up, everything fell into place. Ichor, it turns out, refers to the blood of the Greek gods. I realized that several other prompts also made me think of Greek myths – Unending made me think of Sisyphus, Reflect of Narcissus, and Beneath of Persephone. Obviously, the final prompt All Hallows had nothing to do with Greek myths, and as I researched Greek myths, I realized it would be difficult to stretch any myth to fit Black as Night. Luckily, though, I had come across images of Greek vases, and I decided to base my design on those and to have the first and last prompts refer to the thread colors.

I have always been fascinated by the Greek key pattern, so I decided to use it for the border and make it obvious from the first post that it was going to be all one piece this year. Day 1 Black as Night DMC 310 thread.

The final list: Unending – Sisyphus, Bloodthirsty- Ares, Monstrous – Medusa, Ichor -Talos a giant “automatum” who was powered by Ichor until his ankle was pierced and it ran out of his body, Entrancing – Orpheus, Shadow – Nyx goddess of the night, Slither – Hydra Lernaia a nine headed water serpent, Banish – Athena whose father Zeus tried to banish her before she was born by swallowing her mother, Reflect – Narcissus, Beneath – Persephone, and Imprison – Cerebus.

When I searched online, I found great silhouettes of some characters like this one of Sisyphus. I adapted others, including Talos and Nyx, from images on actual Greek vases. Orpheus and Persephone were a bit more challenging since the images I found of them were not as simple. Orpheus was particularly challenging because I had actually left out Entrancing when I designed the piece. Nyx originally had some horses beneath her that were probably my favorite part of the design, but they were not essential, so they were replaced by Orpheus and his lute (I really like the lute so that makes up for losing the horses). The hardest image to design was Narcissus because all the pictures I found of him were more three dimensional and showed him leaning down looking at his reflection which I thought would look like a disembodied floating head if I attempted an adaptation. Then, one day, I was looking out the window at the sailboats reflecting in the water and decided that was how to portray Narcissus.

Of course, I hadn’t finished stitching the background when it came to the final day and I posted this picture for All Hallows – one strand each of DMC 783 and 976.

I used three strands for the black, but when I began stitching the background, three strands of either color or the combination didn’t look right. I used one of each color because I couldn’t decide between them and because together they looked just like the background of a Greek vase that was being auctioned off here in Chicago at the same time I was stitching.

I continued to stitch through November but had to put it down so I could do my Christmas crafting. After I finished my niece’s house portrait in January (I had given her the promise of it for Christmas), I picked up the Stitchtober piece again and stitched it through February. It was pretty challenging to stitch the background after stitching the characters, and if I didn’t believe in making my x’s individually and crossing them every which way, it would have been impossible. When it was done I turned it into a pillow!

I love it! And I already have some thoughts for Stitchtober 2023!