In-jokes and children's books...

Sometimes I procrastinate for ages on a project, finally start them, and find they go so quickly it's ridiculous. I don't expect anyone but me to enjoy this piece, but I will show you to it anyway. It's a quote from Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. I do quite like my canoe design.

My childhood was chock full of Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck comics. Lots of Carl Barks and lots of Don Rosa. My dad and I bought each issue of the Life and Times series and read them aloud together. It's such a special memory for me and it's all thanks to Don Rosa.

My dad and I crack up every time we say/read this line. I think he'll enjoy it. Also, here's the actual finished picture of my Five Little Peppers piece. The border really completes the piece and makes it perfect. I've already finished the pattern for the original cover of Understood Betsy as well.

Christmas is looming but I'm generally prepared. There's lots of baking to do though, and maybe one more embroidery project. Tomorrow I have things to mail and then I may begin getting to grips with transcribing the pattern from the Royal Winton Queen Anne chintz tea cup pattern.

There's always something...

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.

moths and daleks

Well there's news all around. I finished my moth piece. Again, it comes from Leslie Wilkins' Traditional Blackwork Samplers, though I've removed a lot of the little elements which I felt took away from the lovely moth. I'm fairly pleased with it. Not thoroughly pleased but I'll give it to someone so I don't have to look at it any more.

Also, someone will be stitching my Dalek pattern on stage in a play they're in! It's the play The Great Fire, being performed in Chicago at the Lookingglass Theater (which just won an award for Best Regional Theater). So hundreds of people will be witnessing my pattern being stitched whether they know it or not. Too bad you can't send business cards with a .jpg file! It's a nice warm feeling though.

I have been so lazy with the crafts though. I resolve to start work on a new funny pattern tomorrow though. Perhaps a Tom Lehrer quote.

lazy days

After a week of hard cleaning I decided to take it relatively easy today. My apartment has passed inspection, as I knew it would, but it could have been Friday before she got round to me and I'm glad to have it over with. The clean apartment has made me a bit cheerful.

I finished my awesome piece using the quote from Ed's Redeeming Qualities. I designed the flower border myself, though you can't see all the detail and I'm too tired to go for another picture. It looks SO much better in person and is my favorite thing I've made recently. I like the balance of it (the lack of symmetry annoys me but in the top border there was no choice on that), the birds weighing down the sides and the bottom left open so the quote isn't over-powered.

I've starting stitching a Walt Kelly illustration from the Pogo comics. This is one of my favorite images and if I got a tattoo this is the one I'd want (though I just realized I don't have a picture of it on my computer so I'll show it another day).

My body is so worn out. I didn't get much sleep last night but managed to avoid napping this afternoon. It's one of those times where I'm so sore and the pain level is so high that I'm completely restless (last of sleep doesn't help that of course). At least I have Wednesday's soccer game (Women's World Cup - US vs France, semifinals) to look forward to. I'm sure it won't be as exciting and nerve wracking a game as the one with Brazil but that's okay given that I was half-hyperventilating by the end...

Also check out my blooming succulent! The plant is called 'baby toes' and is so weird looking that it's amusing to me that the bloom looks like a plain daisy.

song lyrics

For a long time I barely listened to music. I love music, always have. My parents gave us all extremely eclectic music educations for which I'm grateful. Only then I got sick and it became important to distract myself as much as possible with audio books while knitting or stitching. Plus music made me think of dancing.

Since I've had the kindle (can't hold paper books for very long) I've listened to more music again, and it's a happy change. Plus I cut my reading down this year so sometimes I just listen to music while I stitch. 

Hence this new piece (still a work-in-progress) using the lyrics of one of my favorite bands, Ed's Redeeming Qualities. They play calypso-ish music with the most hilarious lyrics in the world. They're funny songs but also intensely real, things real people feel, rather than the unrealistic people that inhabit most song lyrics.

Also, here is a funny picture I took of my niece, Evie. My new nickname for her is Clamps because she's got a very tight grip. She tends to give disapproving looks, and in combination with her fat face this makes her look like an old, male politician.

Things I love Thursday

Technically it's Friday now but I fell asleep for most of the day.

Tea cups. I adore tea cups and collect them. Not full sets, just individual lovely tea cups. My mom just got me a new one today, in order of us putting up a third shelf for my tea things. The picture is my new tea cup!

Carl Barks. Fantagraphics is publishing the Carl Barks library in installments (or at least what he wrote for Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge). The first one comes out in October and I'm actually thinking of pre-ordering it, something I never do. I can't wait though. I grew up with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics, mostly the ones by Barks and Don Rosa. When Rosa's "Life and Times of Uncle Scrooge" came out my dad and I would go to the grocery store every month and buy the new issue in the series and then read it aloud together. It's one of my favorite memories.

a problem

The trouble with me and blogging is that I don't have much of a life. I'm mostly homebound and spend my time stitching, designing, reading, and occasionally playing Civilization games. The last year has been worse physically for me so I've been doing less baking and crafting.

So while I many opinions and recommendations and angry mentally written letters to advertising firms, I don't have many adventures. I go to the store, I visit my sister and her kids, I go out for lunch with my mom. It's not very interesting or exciting and it's very repetitive.

My new idea is to have a sort of theme for each day (or every other day). Book, movie, and music recommendations, maybe a day for other craft ideas, recipes, links to other amazing needlework projects, patterns and articles from vintage (pre-1960s) needlework magazines, etc... 

So here's my semi-plan:
Cooking Sunday
Movie Monday
Book Club Tuesday
Vintage Wednesday
Things I Love Thursday (featuring other needleworkers)
Music Fest Friday
Silly Saturday


I probably won't do this every day of every week, but mostly just on days when I don't have embroidery to post. When I was at boarding school I made announcements at breakfast every Wednesday morning to tell people a theme for Thursday. I made up things like "Don't Walk Dance" day and "International Cross-dressing Day" (though there probably is one of those). So this is right up my alley.


I gave you a book on Monday so I'll give you a movie today: Little Ashes - a movie about the friendship between Salvador Dali and Garcia Lorca when they were  at school together. It's a lovely movie and well-acted. Garcia Lorca is one of my favorite poets. He was truly amazing.

Hanging around again...

Between Easter and my birthday and my sister giving birth on a clinic floor things have been pretty crazy. I usually don't enjoy just sitting and watching TV shows but between the fatigue and stress I've been happy to sit back and watch a season of Jonathan Creek. 

You know what's sad about the modern age? You can't really have shows like MacGuyver or Jonathan Creek or those kinds of detective shows. It's all forensics and "Oh you can't tell it wasn't suicide because the angle of the shot to the head was wrong." The science ruins the story. It's all down to adapting Agatha Christie stories or other period things.

Anyway. This piece includes one of the ancestral mottoes. Dum spiro spero, which basically means "While I breathe I hope." It is generally attributed to Cicero, and who knows, he might have said it. He said a lot of good things, but he was also a sell-out coward. 

I include also the cutest brother + sister picture ever. My new niece was born April 20th and her name is Geneva (mostly called Evie) Lindsay. This makes ten nieces and nephews for me. My dad is hoping for one more so that he'll have had more grandchildren than his mother. He's silly like that.

Roses are pink...

I've finished making the pattern for the second tea cup napkin. It will match the teacup shown, which is an easier design to match than the first effort was. I've basically finished picking out which tea cups to stitch and I'd like to get all the patterns made up before I start stitching more. 

There are more commercial pieces that I should really work on. I've been restless in general. My kitchen is in an awful state and I've been watching too much TV. Too many things I don't want to think about. On the plus side my lemons are slowly getting bigger and the new blossoms will start popping in five days or so (and there are a MILLION of them!).

I have a number of quotes I'm choosing from for my next piece, but I think I'll skip back to non-counted embroidery for long enough to do my St. Trinian's tribute piece. It will have one of the images of a field hockey player along with the words "With hockey sticks and balls of steel, we are St. Trinian's!" Love it! Otherwise I'm leaning toward some sort of snarky quote. Or something. And here's a picture of one of my first cross-stitch/blackwork projects! It's a phrase my sister and I came up with (and still use often).

The Tea Cup Project has begun!

Well I've begun a project I've been thinking about for about a month. While at the beach my mom found me some lovely fancy tea napkins that are an even-weave fabric. I myself collect tea cups so I thought a fun project would be to do up cross-stitch designs of the motifs on my tea cups so that I have a matching napkin to go with the.

This would obviously be a closer likeness if I were doing non-counted embroidery but I said "Oh but the fabric is so tight and the stitches will be soo tiny..." This was a mistake. I am now going blind. Those stitches are teensy! They're like a millimeter and a half across! On the other hand, I really like the overall effect. It looks nothing like the design on the tea pot but the colors are all there, it shows there's greenery as well as flowers and includes the little bit of pink on the cups. I also love how the pattern generally looks (which is good given that I created it myself).

So now I'm torn. I don't like mismatching things so having one cross-stitched napkin and the rest in free embroidery doesn't appeal. However, doing seven more napkins of these damn tiny stitches doesn't appeal either. I will be getting a better spot lamp soon and possibly a magnifying glass of some sort as well so hopefully that helps with the aching eyes. I'll also be getting an eye exam to check to see if my eyes have gotten worse. After that, new birthday glasses from Zenni! Yea!

snow day

It's snowing a bit today! I love it. Most people want it to be spring and I might if we still had spring. We don't though, it goes straight from winter to summer and I like winter a hell of a lot more than summer. Since I live on the fifth floor, I didn't have to turn my heat on even once, however I did have to turn my AC on a few weeks back when it was sixty-five degrees.

Here is the finished quote from Priscilla Queen of the Desert. I like the effect of the blue getting lighter as it goes out, though it makes me wish I'd done the text in a really dark blue rather than a dark tealish color. I didn't know starting out that I'd do the border in blues though, I just figured I'd grab whatever color I had the best progression of which happened to be blue. 

The pattern for this piece is now for sale in my Etsy shop.

work work work

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.

Rice Pudding and the Art of Comfort

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.

For the kidlets...

Well I finished the sun lion pattern by Cate Anevski onesie for my upcoming niece and a second one for her with 'girl' in various foreign languages. The girl one is an idea I initially did for my nephew Benjamin and one I particularly like and would like to sell in my Etsy embroidery shop (hoping to open it in about a month). Some parents really dislike people getting their kid's sex wrong (more so I think when the kid is a year old for the ones whose hair grows suuuper slowly) and somehow I like that it facilitates communication with people who you might not otherwise talk with. Plus you could take your families nationalities and just use those languages. I include Dutch on the ones for Benjamin and the new girl because our friend and 'sister' Tessa is Belgian (from the best part of Belgium, the Flemish part!).

I spent a bit of today embroidering a design I drew a few days back. It's part of a trio of animal head designs, very stylized. My wireless was out so I couldn't easily scan in the design and make it larger and then printout, transfer, etc... So in typical fashion I just drew it freehand with the washable marker. Therefore it's not quite right (right side white tuft is a bit too low, eyes aren't quite identical) but it's still pretty cute. I can't wait to try the other animals (along with the fox I did a raccoon and an owl). They'll be good for a possible baby quilt, onesies, and patches (or patch pockets) for kids clothes.

We had two days of warm (mid to upper 40s) weather and now it's cold and rainy again. I was so hoping that it would stay sunny for my lemon tree but oh well. At this point I would just be happy if we didn't get another rash of snow. I am so sick of it. Not that we've had any huge blizzards but snow every week almost since the beginning of December is just not fun. Especially since the house my mum bought is at the top of a really really steep hill (one which scares me a bit even when bone dry). She has a four wheel drive Subaru, but I do not. Fingers crossed, in any case.

Frida as Herself

Well the figure of Frida in my piece is pretty much done (just a couple tiny details to do which will only take a couple minutes). I'm really pleased with how she's turned out. At first I thought I'd overdone it, made her clothes too crazy and clashing but it is not supposed to be a rendition of a photograph, after all. It is supposed to be more like a painting. Her paintings are colorful and bright and full full full.

So in those terms I think she's turned out beautifully. I struggled for a few days with how to do her skirt and was very pleased with myself for the idea that finally came. Doing the outline in heavy chain stitch (well, medium heavy really) relates the heft of the fabric and stands out well from the other clothes. The double herring bone works well for filling the space but still showing that the background is white. Finding good stitches for the colored parts proved harder than I'd expected.

It is nice to take my time with a piece instead of feverishly rushing through it as I do with cross-stitch and blackwork. Free embroidery (is this a clear term? since cross-stitch and blackwork are types of embroidery the classification seems necessary) is languid, soft, free wheeling across the fabric like kids doing cartwheels on summer evenings. It is the hippie sibling of the penned-in housewife that is cross-stitch and the upright, English Lady that is blackwork. I love them all, but there's more excitement working on blank fabric without a chart, without clear lines to follow. It is a balm to the soul.

I am happy today. It is very warm, mid to high 40s. I went out in a tank top and skirt and was still too hot in the sun. There are six blossoms sprouting out on my dwarf lemon tree and I can't wait to see them bloom. I made shepherd's pie with leftover chili last night and it turned out really well. I don't know of any American recipes for using leftovers, all the ones I know are English or Mexican or other foreign things (shepherd's pie, chilaquiles, bubble and squeak...). Americans just serve the same food again making a lot of people have an irrational dislike of leftovers (I've known people who refuse to eat leftovers). My brother is coming on Sunday and staying for about a week to help work on the house my mother just bought. I haven't seen him since early October and I've missed him a lot lately.

Here's to spring weather (love spring, hate summer), lemon tree blossoms, good food, and the expectation of good drink (once February starts I'm buying a bottle of single malt Scotch).

Some color for Friday

Progress on Frida trudges along. I took a break to knit a super adorable baby hat since I'm debating how much painting of Frida's background I'll need to do. I decided to definitely paint some background color on the background (which will be all birds and flowers and vines) so now what I need to decide is whether or not to paint on the skirt. The skirt will be black with a few stripes of color.

I think maybe I'll skip painting that though. I like the idea of leaving the background of her face and shawl and skirt white in contrast to a richly and lushly colored background. I almost regret completely filling most of her shirt but I really wanted those thin horizontal stripes to mimic traditional central American weaving. I need to re-check out some embroidery books so I can get instructions for all the pretty stitches and such for the skirt.

While I was deciding my next steps I took a break to do some knitting. I used this pattern from Knitty to make an absolutely adorable baby hat. I have nine going on ten nieces and nephews. My oldest brother has six children, my next brother has two (the second just born about a week ago), and my sister has one son and is due with a daughter at the end of April. My sister's boy is the only one I really know and who knows me. He is the sweetest toddler I've ever met and they're all moving down here to my city in a month or so (very exciting!). Only two out of the current nine kids are girls (both belonging to my oldest brother who lives in Missouri and who I may never see again, sadly) so it will be nice to have a niece that I get to see more.

I also have knitting orders from a friend which include a number of hats for her grandchildren so I've got bright kids colors and fun patterns on the brain.

Girly Progress

You know, if I had a store of miscellaneous awesome crap I would called it Girly Progress. I've never been seen as a very girly girl, and many strangers thought I was a boy for a big portion of my childhood. However, I've always been simultaneously a complete girly girl and a super tomboy. I think that's good, personally. I like both worlds.

Since I got sick though I have gradually lost almost all those boyish pleasures. It's all knitting, embroidery, baking, and Japanese dolls. No more climbing and hiking, no more cartwheels and tipsy swagger home. My first car was a 1988 Ford Ranger, completely beat-up and run down, but oh so perfect. Now I drive a 1992 (or closeby) Pontiac GrandAm. That is pretty much the ultimate metaphor for the changes that have overtaken me.

The best defense is to think wholeheartedly about everyone else in the world. I try to feed my mom at least once a week, pack up soups and such for her to take for lunch (she works twelve and fourteen hour days regularly). I knit and sew and bake for my nephew. I scrape whatever good news and glad tidings I can find in my life and make that the focus on my conversation with my dad and siblings.

And then I decide to undertake a large-scale embroidery project for my high school best friend with whom I haven't been in regular communication for about six years. I still love her so much, and I miss all those friends. All these people who suck at keeping in touch and peeled off rapidly when I got sick. I was the glue, the one who called and wrote and made the effort. Then I couldn't make the effort anymore and no one else picked up the slack.

Sometimes I am so angry about it, so deeply hurt, so stubbornly clinging to the fact that it's their responsibility to remember me even while I dream and pine for them. I am trying to get over it. I am trying to force myself back upon them but it feels so much like begging. Begging to be remembered, to be treated like a normal friend again and not some scary "There but for the grace of God go I..." example for everyone my age.

So here I am. Toiling over projects that I may never work up the courage to give away. It is a way to cope. It is generally healthy for me. Plus, it certainly yields some beautiful work.

Flowers Fronds and Frida

I've finally started on my Frida Kahlo embroidery piece. Got the main bit transferred and I'll just be filling in the background with birds and flowers and vines and such (no monkeys, I hate monkeys).

It's a bit nerve-wracking since I don't have a clear idea of how I'll be filling in the skirt and shawl. It's embroidery though, it's allowed to be loose and free and lovely. It is fairly large as well, larger than I had at first envisioned, but it probably needs to be about this size in order for the face not to look muddled.

Had a nice interlude with my mom today. We ate the soup I made when I was sick (and didn't eat then because my sense of taste was still wonky) and watched an episode of Bones (her fave rave show). Now that my appetite is mostly back I want something completely unhealthy to eat but easy to make.

Pastel, floral bastards...

I have finished my Still Game quote cross-stitch and it may be my most favorite piece so far! I love the colors, I love the borders, I love the font, and obviously I love the quote.

The only thing I'm not pleased with is the purple border above the quote. Initially it was just the lighter purple with the design left open. However, all the other borders use two colors and it started looking weird to me to have an odd one out. So I filled it in and it looks fine and all, I just think it looked better plain.

The first border below the quote turned out much lovelier than I first anticipated. I think it looks very old fashioned, like something my great-aunts would have done in the early 1940s. It is, however, one of those pain in the ass patterns. You can stitch it across without having to break and restart the thread at all, but you have to stitch in a very particular order and not lose concentration. Looks lovely though, doesn't it?