Did a bit of stitching on a new project (a gift for someone who knows about this blog so I'm not going to post it) but mostly I've just rested today. Yesterday was extremely tiring but fun as well.
I finally got my sister to watch at least the first half of the St. Trinian's movie with me and had a wonderful time with my nephew when he woke up from his nap. My sister, Kyla, is due with her second baby in only a month and a half! I can't wait to see my niece in the onesies I've embroidered for her.
As for Hardcore StitchCorps, I posted listings for the patterns for my fox face and owl face (reproduced here) yesterday. Today I finally got the pattern for the raccoon worked out and printed. Once I get him stitched up I'll be posting the three patterns as one listing as well for a two for three deal. I'm thinking about doing another series of animal faces. My idea is to do a simple quilt with five inch square pieces in different colors with embroidered squares featuring the animals mixed in. Simple, cute, personal touch, etc...
I'm afraid I'm being utterly lazy. I got through six episodes of Upstairs Downstairs. Madre and I are prepping to watch the new Upstairs Downstairs that they've been making. I love the old show so much. Certain episodes stick in my mind SO well. The first episode I ever saw was the Titanic once and it just hit me so hard.
What didn't work out so well is the movie they made of the Terry Pratchett novel Going Postal. It is one of my very favorite Discworld books and the movie was okay and probably quite good if you'd never read the book. They somehow managed to remove all the singularly Pratchetty details. Quite depressing. David Suchet was in it which was crazy because I've only seem him as Poirot. The casting was lovely but the script writer was a fool, the operation was a success but the patient died. C'est la guerre.
Well I've posted a few more items in my Hardcore StitchCorps shop, finished the piece I was working on, and made carnitas.
I'm happy with how the border for this piece turned out. At some point I began to worry that I was getting a bit carried away with things but the end result is just perfect.
Since we found out they're doing new episodes of Upstairs Downstairs my mother and I are rewatching the original series to prepare. I doubt we'll watch even half of it before seeing the new series since my mom tends to watch things rather slowly but I'm at least going to watch all of the last season before seeing the new. When I couldn't sleep when I was younger (ten or so) I would go downstairs and my mom would let me have a spoonful of peanut butter. She'd usually have one with me and when it was finished I had to go back to bed without fuss. Most of the time when I'd come down I'd find her watching Upstairs Downstairs. It looked like such an interesting show and I connect it so much with my mother.
My needlwork shop on Etsy is now open! Huzzah! I'm posting a few items each day this week. Eventually it will have my animal face patterns, the Dalek and Poetry quote patterns, the framed Felix cross-stitch, my framed Obelix cross-stitch, and a few others. Hopefully it will go well.
I've mostly been knitting for the last couple of days but last night started work on this little beauty. In fact I wish I wasn't sober right now! I'm 
debating on whether to leave it as is, to fill in the border with a second color, or to add some more border things on the top and bottom so as to balance out the shape a little (I have issues with symmetry and balance). Any thoughts?
I am so tired it's not even funny, but every day pretty much feels like that anymore. I bought some chocolate syrup and have been treating myself to a glass of chocolate milk every day, which is lovely and no doubt I need the calcium. I also dreamed a Doctor Who episode last night, one with Peter Davison (who I love). It wasn't an actual episode just my brain making up an episode for me. My brain is really nice to me in terms of dreams, I remember one dream pretty much every night and they're usually pretty interesting and are often basically just movies with full plots that I'm only watching, not participating in. Thank you brain.
Well my Celtic motif letter B is finally finished! It turned out so beautifully that I'm half-tempted to keep it for myself. I'd say "Perhaps I'll make the M for myself..." but that would be suicide.
This project, while rewarding, was possibly not the best choice for my first piece on even weave. My hands feel like they'll detach from my body if I pick up another needle (and I really need to start the sample piece for one of my pattern designs today) and my eyes seem to ache more every day. Little did I imagine as a young girl that someday I'd suffer from the same aches and pains as the garment workers of old. Next perhaps I'll get the consumption (le sigh, le swooon).
In any case, first I present a picture of this piece prior to the black outlining being added. I kept telling people how different it would look once it was outlined but I don't think they entirely believed me. Hence the before and after pictures. If you're halfway through a similar project, starting to doubt whether it will look at all decent, just remember these pictures. Those black stitches change everything.
I already have an appropriate frame for the piece here with me so it will actually be totally finished by this evening! Thank the honk. I will eventually do a similarly styled letter G, which I admit I am not looking forward to even a tiny bit.
I am so close to being finished with the Celtic motif B! I've done all the colorwork except for the big purple spiral which shouldn't take any time at all. Then some white outline and then the larger task of outlining every bloody inch of it in black, which will take quite some time.
Still, I'll be very happy when it's done and I get to show it off. It may not be as impressive as my Roman mosaic but oh well.
I finished making two patterns of mine completely ready to post on Etsy. Also got the Dalek piece framed and photographed so it's ready to be listed. I need to do a few more photographs of four of my small 5"x7" pieces but then I'll have four framed things to sell, plus the two patterns. I finished touching up the outlines for my other animal face patterns so once I stitch them I can get those typed up and ready to list. In other words, getting close to opening shop!
I am too tired to think of anything much to say. My brain and my body are just frazzled.
In any case, here is the finished Felix the Cat. I should have included his bag of tricks, I guess, but thinking on it now the pattern wouldn't be fun to design and wouldn't be fun to stitch either. C'est la guerre.
Still no black thread but I've made some great progress on the Celtic B piece. It's such an annoying piece with all those little bits of color. Oh cross-stitch, you are a harsh mistress. Still, it's half-way done and once I pick up some black thread and get it all outlined I think it will be really terrific.
You decide "I'll make this for my niece/nephew" but of course you're not making it for them at all. Maybe when they're six or seven they'll think "Oh how pretty" and later on they'll hang it in their house but they probably won't understand how frustrating all of needlework is. Even the simplest piece is fraught with annoyance and anger and bad juju.
I look forward to the day I can sit down with my nieces and nephews and say "You there, try some embroidery and I want to see nice, even stitches or no dinner for you." No, I wouldn't do that. I'm an aunt, dinner is not my responsibility, which is why it's such a marvelous scheme, being an aunt. Come the end of April I'll have ten nieces and nephews. Granted I only ever get to see my sister's kids but at least I get to see some. Not to mention that I will never make ten giant, ornate, Celtic letter cross-stitches. Two is seeming a bit much at the moment, if I'm honest.
Still, with my sister and her family having moved down here I'm getting more exciting about the new baby coming. What I'm especially looking forward to is my nephew's reaction to it. Sure, right now he's all kissing the tummy and full of sweetness and light but eventually there will be another small, cute thing around that cries. I'm sure he'll be a good big brother, I have no doubt of it, but the reaction for the first few months will still be funny. An aunt's got to have some pleasures.
It is criminal how tired and worn out I am. Hoping to hit the YMCA tomorrow and do some hot tub soaking but I also want to hang out with my nephew and sister for a while. They literally just moved down here. Benjamin seems to be settling in well, but toddlers are pretty flexible about things that don't involve food or toys.
Meanwhile my apartment is a complete wreck but my legs just don't want to cooperate. So instead I've done a bit of lethargic picking up and a lot of stitching on the Celtic B project. I was thinking about making these letters to sell but they are too much of a pain. All those little tiny pockets of color just frustrate me to no end. There's a reason I do a lot of text pieces which primarily feature one color and have borders that can be thoroughly connected without the endless starting and ending of numerous new threads.
The pictures once I start the black backstitch outlining will 
change the look of the piece completely. It's amazing what a difference it makes. Working on the even weave is a joy. So much nicer on the hands than old Aida (though I know I'll continue to use that as well).
I did, however, finish the logo and banner and such for Hardcore StitchCorps which I share with you here. I think it turned out pretty well.
I generally spend a lot of time reading and listening to audio books while I stitch. I usually average between ten and fourteen books read per month and I enjoy that. However, there have been so many mediocre books in my life lately that I only read five books in February. There were a lot of factors but the biggest is a prevailing blahness.
We all have cycles and mine is one of bravely coping in a cheerful Pollyanna way which can suddenly turn to lethargy and the desire to watch whole seasons of TV shows in quick succession. I still keep stitching and knitting and whatnot but I don't have the patience to read mediocre books. I've run out of books by my longer series authors (Rex Stout primarily) and have a hot yen for history but all the books I think sound good I can't find on audio. Tres frustrating. Time for another Pratchett I guess, though I'm trying to pace myself and not run out of Discworlds any time soon.
So tonight I worked on my Celtic style B (an eventual gift for my nephew Benjamin, well, for his parents really) and watched the recent St. Trinian's remake. I knew the English did a series of St. Trinian's moves in the 1950s but decided it would be a bad idea to watch them. I grew up with St. Trinian's, first reading it when I was about eight years old. And then of course I went to a boarding school and played field hockey which increased my love for the comics.
When I saw they did a remake in 2007 I got it but put off watching it, fearing what they'd done to my beloved comic. Finally broke down and watched it tonight and it was PERFECT! I knew from the opening that they'd done well by old Ronald Searle and I'm so glad the English are still all over the good things in life. They did a second one in 2009 which I'll 
watch soon. It was the perfect mood lifter too! I've been wanting to do a St. Trinian's embroidery and I think I'll work on the pattern soon.
I found some black thread hiding under another work-in-progress (just a short length which I'd misplaced some days ago) so I did a little more on Felix the Cat, worked on Frida's vines and the Celtic B (picture tomorrow), and framed and shipped out my Roman mosaic piece. It's the first needlework piece that I've sold and you know I'm so proud of it. I'm glad it will get to be seen but also glad it went to a friend.
Why yes, I did begin work on my Felix the Cat pattern! I'm proud of this pattern. I loved Felix the Cat cartoons when I was a kid and I still quite enjoy it.
I charted this pattern ages ago but there have been so many things to work on. I am slightly OCD and needlework for me is a godsend. It is involved and perfectionistic and I can either be stitching or coming up with patterns or blathering about them on a blog. Three activities springing from one hobby, it's brilliant.
I thought I'd just take a break from Frida to work on Felix and then ran completely out of black thread. Having just come back from a long car trip (which really destroys me) with a sinus infection (or something quite like it) tagging along, I am knackered. Absolutely knackered. So driving way out to Michael's on a weekend when the area is packed with shoppers is not my idea of fun. I have to go out tomorrow though to pick up the mat for the Roman mosaic which I sold to a friend of mine. That's the last time I stitched something in an odd side, I'll tell you.
In any case, here is my progress on Felix. I suppose I could have gone in and done the white backstitching on the head and hands but my brain didn't realize that. Actually it took some hours to realize I could at least do the red tongue. Stephen Fry told me on his quizish panel game QI that if you block the left nostril your spatial and visual intelligence increases and if you block the right nostril your verbal abilities increase. So given that both nostrils and my entire sinus cavity feels as though someone filled it with caulk I will attribute my slow-mindedness to that.
Thank you Mr. Fry for the brilliant excuse, PS please ask David Mitchell to marry me as I'm quite lovely, enjoy history, and generally think everyone around me has been struck with madness.
Today was long. Well, okay, last week was long in general and today's eight hour drive was just the tipping point for my body to completely shut down. I have levels of shut down. Sometimes a good complete four or five hour rest followed by a long sleep is enough to get me back to subnormal, but that pre-supposes I'll get more rest the next day, which I don't get if I'm away from home.
The result is that by the end of the week I stop getting any relief from sleep. So the car ride home tends to be punctuated by me taking breaks to start getting drunk bright and early or just generally groaning and being crabby. Or in the case of this drive, insisting on reading aloud from one of my favorite books to my mother for hours on end. One does what one can.
I finally did buckle down and start the vine border on my Frida Kahlo piece. As with most everything about that piece, I am loving the result! There will be three or four different types of vine, different shades of green and brown, but also one that's smooth, one with thorns, etc... I'm doing the smooth one first in deep green with highlights in kelly green satin thread which is producing a wonderful effect.
It was a really nice beach week, in any case. We had a couple super beautiful days with perfect weather, I got a few good pictures, found a four record set of Baroque music and La Traviata record set for fifty cents each (both look like they were never played), and added a pretty tea cup to my collection.
My replacement Wacom tablet pen arrived so I've gotten straight to work on smoothing out some of my embroidery patterns and have begun making the PDF files for the patterns that I'll sell in Hardcore StitchCorps when it opens on Etsy.
I may spend the next two days lying still and sleeping, but one thing I learned very quickly into my disability was that it's always worth it to push yourself farther than you should. Not that you should do it for weeks and months on end, but you should as often as you can. Mental health is more important than physical health, after all.
A day of needlework is not necessary a day of rest. Your hands cramp up, your eyes hurt and vision blurs, and no matter how relaxed you start out somehow you slowly become completely hunched over.
You know what's so cool though? Our regular seafood restaurant in Morehead City has all these needlework pieces hanging up, including a blackwork piece of their entire menu and a huge cross-stitch of the recipe for their clam chowder. It makes my stomach happy (like when you're just warm and excited and your stomach feels a little flippy).
I didn't get all that much done today. There was a lot of distracting TV, such as those Animal Cops shows which suck me in every time. I think every pet owner (esp. if the pet is primarily indoors) sometimes feels insecure about whether or not they are really providing the best life possible. Sometimes I feel like my disability makes me a poorer pet owner, but just watch a few Animal Cops episodes and suddenly you'll know you're a super great caregiver. It's refreshing.
Among my few achievements is the fact that I did a test-stitch of a cross-stitch bird motif and developed a blackwork feather design. I did my flower garland test yesterday (with a few mistakes) but decided it wasn't appropriate for the text piece I originally designed it for. Mixing blackwork and cross-stitch is always tricky for me. Oh little bits of cross-stitch, individual stitches mixed, that looks great, but blackwork text with cross-stitch borders... there's my problem.
My feather's finished design is a little different than the one shown. I would have stitched it again fully perfect but I was getting tired and there were big kitties on TV. I bet if I'd been rich and healthy I would have become one of those crazy people who keep wild cats as pets. There was a moment with a lion when I was seven or eight where I put my hand up on the glass and a lion came and put his paw up just opposite my hand. To a little girl who loved cats it was the most amazing moment ever, and it still seems quite amazing. Those animal hoarders must have smoked their sense of smell away is all I can say.
You know how Guinness is good for you? Well you should. It is good for you. All stout is good for you.
Well what's good for me and especially for the brainstorming and idea part of me is a nice long car trip. I get great ideas, talk them over with my mom, we tweak them into exceptional ideas and I sometimes remember to write it all down.
On this trip I came up with the perfect name for my needlework shop will be open on Etsy very soon. This great shop shall be called... Hardcore StitchCorps! I am super happy with that name and have already registered it on Etsy.
Anyway, it's hard doing needlework at the beach. I'm so tired all the time and squinting at tiny holes makes me pass out (also there's cable TV which I haven't had for a few years). I'm mostly just dabbling with some new fabric (the craft store here has an AWESOME needlework section, way more stuff than my home store) and test driving new designs. I'll be here by myself all day tomorrow so hopefully I can get a little more work done.
Sometimes there are odd, often made-up, words that strike you as the best thing ever. Puke-a-tronic (as spoken by Amy in Futurama) is one of mine. There are real words that do that too of course, like pettifoggery. Pettifoggery is one of those words that you never need to know the definition of to understand what it means. I enjoy words like that.
I woke up after having a nightmare about being in an electric wheelchair that wouldn't stop and just kept going faster and faster. I was in a Sam's Club type of store and yelling at the clerks who all just stared at me and ignored me. Then 
when the batteries died I went and asked one clerk if he'd heard me and he just shrugged that he had but it hadn't seemed important. I was storming off to demand the firing of about seven clerks when I woke up.
So many projects so little time! This week I've apparently decided to overwork myself, despite the need to rest up since next week is beach week. My mom and I go to a time share in Atlantic Beach North Carolina. This will be our fourth year there. It's a lovely area and my favorite thing is going to Beaufort, NC, where the Beaufort Grocery Company restaurant is. They have divine food. There are also some islands with some fat "wild" ponies. Someone left their ponies there in the 30s or some relatively recent time like that and they became a sort of wandering herd. Quite, quite fat ponies.
In any case, it's one of my favorite times. The time share has a nice indoor pool and is right on the ocean. We take chairs out to the beach and have drinks in the evening, even if it's quite chilly. We bum around and look at the scenery and eat she-crab soup and have a generally relaxed, lovely time. The beach is best in late winter or early spring when there are no tourists.
I've started working on two fancy Celtic letter pieces. A 'B' for my nephew Benjamin and an E for my soon-to-be-born niece. Oh. Only her full name doesn't start with 'E'. My brain is so full of holes anymore. Sigh. Well, hopefully I can stick it into my Etsy store and sell it. Speaking of, I'm hoping to open the store within a few works. I'm working on making nice, detailed pattern files and getting frames and mats and all.
The other piece I'
m working on has an electric border which will be filled with a single word quote from Futurama. It's random and silly but it struck me as quite humorous.
My first blossom on the lemon tree has popped open, finally! It smells very similar to honeysuckle, which is my favorite flower scent. My lemon tree is just sprouting growth every which way. What's interesting is that the blossoms are strictly on one side of the place (and all over that side). I'm still shocked there are so many blossoms and that they're so large.
Because dark purple irises are my favorites I've done the ones in this border that same color. It might have looked nicer in the same blue as the flowers above (keep it less distracting or something) but oh well.
My stitched version is full of imperfection because I tend to be too impatient to make a complete perfect chart before I start working. This is why I'm incapable of starting a line of text in the right, centered, orientation. I am both a perfectionist and unbelievably shoddy at prep work, which is a wholly frustrating combination.
I would be finished with the completed (and perfect) pattern but Photoshop is doing this obnoxious thing that it sometimes does. I'll open a file and it will only do the grabby-hand-moving-around tool. I'll shut the whole program, open it again, same thing. I have to restart the whole freaking computer to get it to revert back. Only I believe I already tried that this time. I would do it in GIMP which I prefer for making needlework patterns but I just can't find a straight line tool on there. There MUST be one and I've been using Photoshop and equivalents for over ten years, so it's not like I don't know where to look. Frustrating!
Apparently it's just one of those days. I needed some cream and things to make some Valentines treats for my mom but my car battery is dead (didn't leave the lights on or anything, so I'm assuming a door didn't quite shut but now I'm worried it's something worse, like aliens stealing my engine. Sigh. Can't figure it out until my mom can come over and can't jump it until there's an empty space in the parking lot next to mine. This is why I've always wanted one of those self-contained jumper unit things. I predicted this day long ago.
I am a big poetry reader. I grew up on it, thrive on it, lived for it in high school, and even dabble with writing it. If I had to choose one favorite poet it would be Carl Sandburg. The man was a genius. He writes the most realistic and accessible poetry I've ever read. People who think they don't like poetry should read Sandburg. He writes of the every day in the way we like to think of it in our heads. Like when you imagine how you would draw something - your mind makes it so so beautiful but your hand just can't translate it to the page.
Sandburg also wrote some of the most wonderful children's stories ever recorded (The Rootabaga Stories) and wonderful biographies. The man was incredible and is such a hero of mine. One of his quotes that I especially love is "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." It is literally the first quotation I added to my file of "quotes I might embroider."
Should I babble on about embroidery and color choices and motifs and charts? Certainly not. I'll babble about that tomorrow (the piece is actually finished now but I want to take daylight photos). Instead I shall share with you some excerpts from what is perhaps my favorite Sandburg poem, Honey and Salt. It is found in the book of the same name, which is also my favorite Sandburg book ever.
When boy meets girl or girl meets boy--
what helps?
They all help: be cozy but not too cozy:
be shy, bashful, mysterious, yet only so-so:
then forget everything you ever heard about love
for it's a summer tan and a winter windburn
and it comes as weather comes and you can't change it:
it comes like your face came to you, like your legs came
and the way you walk, talk, hold your head and hands--
and nothing can be done about it--you wait and pray.
Is the key to love in passion, knowledge, affection?
All three--along with moonlight, roses, groceries,
givings and forgivings, gettings and forgettings,
keepsakes and room rent,
pearls of memory along with ham and eggs.
How long does love last?
As long as glass bubbles handled with care
or two hot-house orchids in a blizzard
or one solid immovable steel anvil
tempered in sure inexorable welding--
or again love might last as
six snowflakes, six hexagonal snowflakes,
six floating hexagonal flakes of snow
Bidden or unbidden? how comes love?
Both bidden and unbidden, a sneak and a shadow,
a dawn in a doorway throwing a dazzle
or a sash of light in a blue fog,
a slow blinking of two red lanterns in river mist
I'll post the full poem in the comments. I don't want to overwhelm you. It is worth reading. I meant to read it at my sister's wedding but I was crying too much (which surprised me greatly, I adore my sister and brother-in-law but I'm not the "crying at weddings" sort).
I finished this newest blackwork piece amid swirls of snow that accumulated far more than I'd been expecting. I think it must have suddenly gotten much colder outside, as it had been snowing on and off most of the day with no real accumulation even on cars. When I looked out in the evening all of a sudden there was two or three inches on the road.
I really like how this piece came out. I managed to remember to center the text before finishing to the whole piece and decided to just do the borders all the same length regardless of whether or not they would end on a partial repeat. This was the best idea, I think. It makes it much more pleasing to me, certainly. Granted, I wish that with the larger repeat of the last border that I'd counted and just indented by one, which wouldn't be enough to make it look odd. I think my graduating purples looks good as well (you can't tell, but the top border is lavender). All glory to the rice pudding! And all glory to Doctor Who for always providing good quotes.
On snowy, bad feeling days all I want is rice pudding. Or bread pudding. Or my mother's chicken curry. Let's stick to rice pudding though, since that's what led me to write down and then stitch this particular quote. The line is extremely close to my general personality. If I were ruling a country or the world the thing I would revel most in would not be the power (that comes second) but the ability to have all the good food I want. I could go on about the various types of difficult to make (pastries) and difficult to find (unpasteurized milk) food I would have, but I think this anecdote will make things clear. When I first began working full time after high school I spent almost all of my money (after rent, which was very minimal) on food. Being able to buy the pricey natural chips I love best or expensive ice cream or tubs of brie was just amazing.
Today though, as I am waiting for the snow to melt and my lemon tree to bloom, I think I will make rice pudding (Indian style, cold and milky with almonds and golden raisins), watch some funny British people, and just curl up for a bit.
