Humanitarian Finished

I have finished my Mother Jones quote pattern and it is up for sale in my Etsy shop now. I'm pretty happy with it, though I wish I'd reversed the colors in the border so that the lighter purple comprised most of it.

Oh well. It was fun to design and fun to stitch, and that's important.

I've started on a slightly less fun piece now. An addition to my Dreams and Nightmares work.

What I need are small clips that I could use to clip the excess fabric to the embroidery hoop. This is an old idea, right? Or should I be contacting a manufacturer and making millions? Not sure anyone can make millions with anything related to embroidery...

Hell-Raiser WIP02

Of course I finished the text soon after I posted the first picture, but it's worth it to have a pic that just says "I'm a hell-raiser."

The border is coming along nicely as well, and shouldn't take too long. I feel a little more "back to normal" in terms of crafting. Rather, I want to work on it again. Less so in the evenings when I'm crawling into the hole of my head, but still.

My joy in the beach week has changed to dread of the rising temperatures and the day I have to turn on the air conditioning again, which will probably happen in March. Last autumn I had to turn it on one day in November. Blech.

I finished the greatest new book! The Martian by Andy Weir. It's funny, believable, interesting, hard science-fiction. It feeds every childhood astronaut desire you can summon. I can't recommend it highly enough. The audio edition is good in part, but they really needed a second reader for the third-person written sections.

Hell-raiser WIP01

Started on my new pattern, using a Mother Jones quote (the woman, not the magazine), "I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser."

Nothing wrong with being a humanitarian, but to me it's about one role making people think you have to be nice and polite and sweetly explain oppression over and over again, to people who benefit from oppression but want to think their hands are clean just because they aren't holding a whip. Mother Jones says, screw that, she doesn't have time to make you comfortable when talking about things that SHOULD make you uncomfortable. (These are perceptions and roles and baggage on words, not actual meanings of course, or things true for everyone, but I hope you all know what I mean.)

It has a full border and I'm quite happy with the pattern, which isn't always the case. It came together quickly with less constant dithering on my part than usual. The border has two colors, and I'm not sure what they'll be yet. I chose reds that have some purple in them for hell-raiser, and humanitarian (which will be a lighter shade). 

Still thinking of the beach and missing it. More than the ocean I miss the old houses, if I'm honest. The little tiny places built in the 1700s in Beaufort are my favorite. Despite having a lot of books (not to mention the teacup collection and dolls) I adore tiny houses. Speaking of, I'm out of space on pretty much every bookshelf. Trouble is there's not much room for more shelves. There's really no room in my bedroom for any. I have a row of three-shelf cases making a hallway and I don't want to go to full-height due to blocking light from the kitchen. Sigh.


Just because, here's my prettiest bookshelf. The top shelf is my collection of old middle and high school text books (mainly). The left side of the bottom is my West Mine Wars book collection, minus on, and to the right are my etiquette books.

Selfie Napkin - WIP 2

The beach was good, guys. I got no embroidery done, and very little reading, but that's okay. 

My goal for this year was to actually fill the serious gaps in my wardrobe at the trove of great thrift stores there (thanks military families!). It's been four years since I've had more than one pair of pants that fit well (and usually a second pair that fit enough to wear but not well). I also have a need to look more like an adult, both for doctors and gaining their respect and so maybe people will stop thinking I'm 18 (I'm almost 29).

So. I bought 7 pairs of pants, 5 skirts, and 13 shirts all for $60 which comes out to $2.40 per piece, which I think I can live with. I'm glad I saved up some money and really made myself do it. All of them are office-dressy things, so that's good. The only shirts I owned were Threadless t-shirts, barring three things two of which were too worn to look very nice.

I also brought books from home to a couple used bookstores and got more than I expected in credit (though gave them some very nice things, including a brand new audiobook from a very popular series). The best part - I got almost all the books for free initially, through the early reviewer program and stuff that was withdrawn from the last library my dad was at! So in the end I only spent $2 of actual money on books.

At least I got the third sketch on the napkin done at the beach, and stitched when we got home. I was always hurting so much at the beach that doing anything other than watching TV was hard. However, we discovered the show Rehab Addict, which is awesome. No massive pieces of linen in the thrift stores this time, but we can't have everything.