Five Little Peppers - first look

Well here's the first look at Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. It's quite a large piece, being about 12 1/2 inches tall and even for the size still feels woefully simplified.

I'm enjoying the way it's coming together though and I'd like to do more similar pieces. What lovely decor it would be for a children's room or library to just have embroidered book covers on the walls. 

Though for myself I wouldn't want to have all my books in one separate room in my house. Part of my enjoyment is looking at them. Staring at the shelves and just... remembering. Remembering where I got the book, when I first read it, who read it to me, etc... Every book is a time capsule of some point in my life.

another type of needlework...

The colors are a fair bit darker in person.

I suppose you could call knitting needlework... I mean, you do it with needles after all. Anyway, I bought some gorgeous and super soft yarn to make a baby hat for my niece and I did.

Then I knit a hat for me with the same yarn! Okay, it might not actually be a hat for me (we'll see) but isn't this yarn absolutely stunning? It's good for kids things since it's only 30% wool (machine washable is the way to go with toddler/baby things). It really is super soft though. 

Doing a hat or scarf with alternating stripes of this yarn and a white or black yarn would also be pretty neat.

I did start work on my Five Little Peppers cross-stitch piece and I think it will look nice. It's quite tall though and stitching it will generally be a bitch (it's super easy to fuck up). I'll post progress on it in a couple of days.

OH! There are also some new patterns in my Hardcore Stitchcorps shop including my Tintin pattern and the Arsenal football crest. If you still need an awesome winter hat check out my knit goods Etsy shop.

Five Little Peppers...

Spent most of today asleep recovering from all the standing and cooking of Thanksgiving. Part of the way my body recovers when I'm ultra-sore is by passing out for most of a day even after a full night's sleep. I went to bed at midnight, woke up at 8:30, spent half an hour with my dad, and then fell back asleep until 3:30. I woke up every couple hours but fell asleep again almost immediately each time.

During the afternoon I worked on a pattern of the cover of the book Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney. It's an old children's book, originally published in 1881. The edition I have is an especially sweet one published in 1909. As soon as I saw the cover I knew I wanted to make a cross-stitch pattern of it.

I need to pick a new project to work on, but I'm too exhausted to think of it.

yet again...

This is a hard time of year for me. First it's my nephew's birthday, then my sister's, then my brother-in-law's, then Thanksgiving. After that it's clear sailing though, since I've had all my Christmas shopping done for ages.

I've been being really productive and doing actually useful things, so of course the embroidery suffers. Really it's a good thing though as I needed to clean out my fridge and get a new dresser and all that.

What I'm super excited about is having bought the best tea cup ever! It's the Royal Winton Queen Anne chintz design which is a cross-stitch pattern basically. How cool is that? I can't wait to the do the matching tea napkin.

There are new patterns in my Etsy store and I'm hoping to start an Uncle Scrooge quote for my dad for Christmas. My brain is so sick of working on patterns on the computer though. 

Instead I'm burying myself in True Stories of the Great War a collection of stories/articles edited by Francis Trevelyan Miller. When you read the titles you have to say them around in a very dramatic newsreel voice. Titles such as "Tales of the Daring Rides of a French Trooper" and "What the Kaiser's Son Saw on the Battlefield." I am utterly mad for that kind of thing. It's usually interesting but also makes me giggle.

recovery

I am slowly recovering from the North Carolina mini-vacation. I'm not hurting as much now but I'm just completely exhausted to the point where small tasks make me shake a bit.

We did squeeze a lot into a short vacation though. The Scrap Exchange was freaking AMAZING and I highly recommend a trip. I didn't buy much in the line of craft supplies because I have so many already, but I found two record sets (a Big Band compilation and an opera) and everything was fifty cents!

I bought too many books, got that one last Christmas present which was eluding me, and got a more serviceable sugar bowl and creamer for every days. We went to the Replacements showroom which was freaking INSANE. Huge and full of gorgeousness, such expensive gorgeousness. We also went to some nice gardens and did our Ikea-ing.

Here is the finished Ambrose Bierce quote. My embroidery energy got a little blah because of skipping some stitches in the Celtic G which mean I have to start over. Glugh.

happy Armistice Day!

Today is Armistice Day. My grandfather Guthrie was overseas during WWI because he was quite ancient, having been born in 1900 and being 48 when my own father was born. He joined the navy, loved the hammocks, got a lot of tattoos, and dated many girls in Scotland (slightly bribing their parents with goods from the ship's store). I couldn't find the paper poppy I made last year so this time I knit one! Turned out very nicely.

Also I thought I had a picture of my latest finished project but it turns out I don't! Gasp! It is a piece with the Ambrose Bierce quote "Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave- driver." It turned out beautifully and I can't wait to show it to you!

I'm taking a mini-vacation with la madre or I'd take a picture right now. With me on this trip I have the materials to start another Celtic letter project from Mike Vickery's book Celtic Cross-Stitch. This time I'll be doing a G for my niece Geneva.

Here is an excerpt from my favorite WWI poet, Wilfred Owen, and his poem Insensibility. You can read the full poem here.

     Happy are men who yet before they are killed
     Can let their veins run cold.
     Whom no compassion fleers
     Or makes their feet
     Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
     The front line withers,
     But they are troops who fade, not flowers
     For poets' tearful fooling:
     Men, gaps for filling
     Losses who might have fought
     Longer; but no one bothers.

Whoops!

I thought I had posted an entry about this project but apparently not! My brain is draining.

Today was my nephew's third birthday! I got him some books, because I just don't like buying toys for children (who all have too many toys already). My mom got him a cheap ukulele though, which he was adorably strumming.

Anyway. Not sure whether I'll add another lighter yellow past the orange-yellow (which is completed now). I do like the general look.