Hi Everyone —

A few months ago, I signed up for “Ahwahnee” by Lorene Salt which was being offered as a workshop by EGA. I thought the design looked balanced and interesting; I ordered the PDF and skipped the kit because I wasn’t fond of the color. The design was supposedly based upon a stained glass window at Yosemite Lodge. So, I was thinking of using shades of green, redwood bark, and blue sky to evoke the feeling of the Yosemite National Park. So when I got the material list, I started combing my stash.

The class instructions came in six lessons spaced about a month apart. With the first lesson, Lorene sent a picture of the window that had inspired the design and I immediately knew that I would try to emulate that window instead of following my original plan.

Now came the hard part! I was determined to use my stash so that I didn’t have to shop during Covid. Needless to say, that didn’t work out so well. The only red in my stash was bright Christmas red. I had a nice green, but adjusted when I didn’t have a Kreinik that would work with it. I had lots of bright yellow, but only a few strands of gold that might work. So I stitched and ripped and stitched and ripped until I finally went to Needleworkers Delight and just bit the bullet!

You will note that I took a few liberties with the design. I didn’t like the Chilly Hollows around the center motif — they felt too large, so I changed them to emulate the little triangles in the stained glass. I think it is too busy now, but I’ve stitched this area too many times to count. I’m also not completely happy with the middle side panels — they need more red, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it. Those areas have been stitched at least three times!

My base colors were DMC 815 for the red, 704 for the green, 783 for the gold, and 310 for the black. When I was almost finished, someone told me about this nifty program on Stitch Palette where you could upload a picture and it would convert it to DMC colors. So I uploaded the picture of the Ahwahnee window. Stitch Palette converter recommended DMC 355 for the red, 904/906 for the green, 832 for the gold, and 3371 for the frame and dividers. So epic fail on my part!

No, I don’t plan to stitch it again — but it was interesting to stitch and a real challenge for colors!

Cheers, Rosie