moment after moment

Our way is to see what we are doing, moment after moment.
—Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971)

This temari was an experiment. In an earlier post I showed a photo of a prepped mari for which I had used two colors of thread wrap. I had wrapped one normally in gray, and then on top of that added a small amount of ecru. When the time came to stitch, I found the ecru thread was not stable at all, and quickly started to slide off, so I removed it.

For this one, I wrapped the two colors (gray and celadon) simultaneously. I use the "power wrap" method and started with three strands of each to cover the yarn. I went down to one strand of each color to finish, and right at the end, did a little extra wrapping of just the celadon strand, having well-secured the end of the gray thread first. It worked really well, and I love the effect. However, given that this was a kiku design, I noticed that the stitches at the poles pulled the threads (as is normal) but in this case pulled more of the "top coat" of celadon than the gray, with the effect of leaving more gray showing around the poles. I like how it looks but a multi-color thread wrap might work better for a wrapped band style design.

Medium silvery gray thread & celadon green wrap; metallic silver for S16 division lines; embroidery in matching gray, matching green, dark dusky steel blue, dusky rose, and periwinkle blue. One large kiku chrysanthemum pattern at the north pole and one small one at the south. The quote by Shunryu Suzuki is in the bell box along with 9 brass rings. Circumference: 11 inches / 27.8 cm; diameter: 3.5 inches / 8.8 cm. Completed 25 October 2011 (no. 047).

Sold to benefit Kiva.org.