Stitching in Ink (job thread)

by **Tsaba** on June 13th, 2013, 1:39 am

13th Summer, 513AV

Tsaba carefully copied the water-damaged illustration of a grid pattern onto a new sheet of parchment and was almost finished before she noticed that she'd skipped an entire row one square to the left.

"Oh, the rotting..."

A lot of people would have shrugged and moved on, but not her. She was going to make a perfect reproduction no matter how long it took. Or as close to as she could before Lisaelis started remarking on her slowness. She tossed the parchment onto the pile of mistakes and pulled out a fresh one.

Tsaba had learned that crewel embroidery was distinct from counted-thread embroidery, which required even-weave fabric. She'd learned that the ideal embroidery choice was heavily dependent on the material used. She'd learned that blanket stitching was popular not only in quilting, but in embroidery and even wound closure.

But the fact that had been pressed into her mind most strongly was that embroidery patterns were very, very difficult to copy.

Tsaba set her jaw. It did not matter that it was difficult. It did not matter that the topic was incredibly boring and, in Tsaba's opinion, largely pointless. the book was a book, a piece of somebody's life set lovingly on paper; somebody had found embroidery important enough to write a long, boring, very complicated text on it, and it was Tsaba's duty to honour that. To continue the unbroken line of copywork from the first book that the author had inked part of their mind onto, to the one sitting before her. Because Tsaba...

Tsaba was a scribe.

by **Tsaba** on June 13th, 2013, 2:55 am

Scribe or not, Tsaba couldn't help wondering why the library's needlework collection had more than a few books in it. Who read about needlework? Who learned needlework from books?

A lot of people, it seemed.

It wasn't all bad. Between the tricky diagrams were a few interesting tidbits of information; discussions of which knots were thought to have originated with the Drykas, which weaves were considered Inartan. The author never gave justification or references for those claims, though. Occasionally, she saw a stitch that looked useful for stitching flesh together, and kept a separate record, determined to try them. But for the most part, the copying remained tedious and boring.

She'd done worse. Once she'd copied numbers from a student's extremely precise measurements of different plant leaves. And then there was that ridiculous thing about fingernails. Maybe that's why she'd had to leave Sahova; the tedious, tedious copywork.

Well what a big freaking difference that choice had made.

by **Tsaba** on June 14th, 2013, 10:00 pm

About three hours in, Tsaba hit her stride. The patterns were just that... patterns. There was a rhythm to them. Many were trying to replicate a physical image, but others were merely repeating stitches, especially the knitting ones. There was a sort of flow to them, and once she realised that, she made much fewer mistakes.

Embroidery was the most complicated, with almost no pattern at all on any level smaller than the completed product, but there also weren't very many complicated diagrams of it. There were, however, several examples of embroidered tapestries and clothes from different cultures, and they demonstrated just how little Tsaba really knew of the world; they depicted violent clashes she'd never heard of, cultures she didn't know, gods she knew little about. If she wanted to learn about the world, she had a long way to go.

But etching out stitches in ink, hemming a Benshira's cloak with the tip of her quill or sketching out Ivak embracing Kova, felt a little bit like a start.

by **Tsaba** on June 16th, 2013, 9:46 am

As important as the stitches were the knots.

Tsaba thought she had vague memories of her foster father tying some of those knots, or at least something similar, when he had to put stitches in a deep wound. But most of them, she'd never seen. And she'd certainly never tried to tie anything more complicated than what would hold her stitching in place when she cut herself. Did that knot have a name? She didn't know.

The third time she made a mistake in a knot diagram, she took off her cloak, rolled it up, and attempted to copy the knot. It took a couple of tries to get it right, but once she had, the diagram was much easier to understand and therefore, easier to copy. She worked her way through the entire chapter on knot types, copying each diagram with her cloak to make sure that she understood what she was drawing. It might make each one take longer to draw, but at least she was saving time on errors. And several of them seemed similar to each other, with minor differences in which order you looped each side of the thread affecting how they looked and how easy they were to slip undone. Many of them, she supposed, would be simpler to replicate in fine thread than with a heavy cloak, but it was enough to give her an idea.

by **Tsaba** on June 24th, 2013, 3:26 pm

Under the steady candlelight of the room, Tsaba hardly noticed time passing. She lost count of how many times she replaced the candle she was working under; it didn't matter. She'd made sure that she had nothing important immediately after work simply because she was almost definitely going to lose track, and lose track she did; by the time it occurred to her to check the time, she'd copied out most of the book. Some of the pages were just too damaged to copy; she left placeholders noting them as such.

She really should stop. There were other things to do. People might be looking for her.

But she was almost finished...

Nobody could accuse Tsaba of leaving a job half done. With a frown, she took her quill and kept writing. More candles burned out. She replaced them. Eventually, she reached the final closing line;

From simple leather stitching to the weaving of intricate tapestries, the art of threadwork is as old as civilisation itself. When one works thread, one becomes a thread in the tapestry of time as recorded in one of the most ancient of technologies.

When she was sure the ink was dry, Tsaba took a long iron needle and thread to practice the sewing art she had experience with; stitching the pages into a book.

It had been awhile since she'd last participated in the time-consuming practice of book copying, but the little glow of accomplishment when faces with a finished product was as bright and warm as ever.

by **Cloud** on August 14th, 2013, 9:18 am

From the sky falls your reward!

Tsaba :

Misc:X :

Apologies for the wait and thank you very much for your patience!

Question marks to be made? Exclamations to declare? Feel free to send me a pm and we can tend to any concerns you have.

Completed Stitching in Ink (job thread)