Hydrangea Leaf Bicolor

The leaf with SSH before the veins - I got lazy and didn't do the SSH for the lighter portion - but most of the lighter green is less than 1 cm:

After the veins:

Hydrangea Leaves

Couched the veins on the leaf. I was waiting for my order of YLI #100 silk thread to arrive to avoid making couching thread; even though the color of the YLI thread does not match exactly the silk - it is not obvious.
On the other hand, still not good with line of staggered diagonals, but it will have to do and hopefully it will get better.

Hydrangea leaf

One flower head done. Stitched one leaf, with short stitch holding, and veins.

Reed leaves and veins

The leaves improved by themselves just by sitting overnight. ;-) So I left them alone.

 The veins of the orange and purple leaves are single strands of #4 gold, couched with orange and purple. The veins of the blue leaves are green, and the veins of the green leaves are blue.

For the piece after Camellia, I picked the Hydrangea Summer Scroll, as hydrangea is one of my favorite flowers. I did not notice this piece until several days ago, and ordered it right away. Too bad the Tsuyushiba Sha fabric is no longer available.  I have to order a different pattern (water pattern) - and I don't know what the water pattern looks like. From the JEC Facebook page:

Or if you are on Facebook, this link -Summer Hydrangea.

Another piece I just ordered is Faded Treasures - Antique mirrors. This one is going to be nerve wrecking as it's a Phase XIX, but I have wanted it from the beginning.

Round knots revisited

I realized why the round knots on the lattice holdings are misshapened. The best instructions are in the Shuji Tamura book.  In this case the thread comes out from the right of the lattice intersection, the knot is formed, and the thread goes down into the left of the intersection. Two important points:
1. Spread the loop open with the fingers of your RIGHT hand,
2.  Pull the needle IN THE DIRECTION where the thread will go in when making the knot
After the knot has been formed, the "tail" with the needle is on the left side of the intersection and can then go down into the fabric without causing the knot to flop over. Another trick is to use the needle or the tekobari to keep the knot in shape while pulling through; but I haven't gotten the knack - I use my thumb to keep the knot in place while pulling through.

I took out half of the previous knots on the butterscotch undergarment and redid the knots in front - they are not perfect but turned out much neater.

Next is the outlining instructions for "TT". I used to think that TT meant "Tight twist" and I would make them by twisting the threads as usual, only much tighter. Then Mary Alice set me straight. TT is the "vein effect", used as outlining on the kimono. This consists of a soft undertwist, and hard overtwist, and sew while the thread is wet. After complaining "but that's nowhere in the book(s)" I found it in Susan Steven's book, page 252 which then refers to page 37, for Karayori - but no reference to "TT".
For my vein effect, I let the thread dry and put it on a koma so I can periodically twist it to keep it tight. I was worried that as it gradually dries while I'm working on it that it will look different as I go along, so I might as well make sure it is dried first. It makes a really good outline as the thread becomes almost completely smooth with no twist visible.

In places where there is too wide a gap between the undergarments, I did a double outline with both undergarment colors.