Dreams and Nightmares

I finished this piece last night. It got messier in the last couple of sentences because I was getting upset and had a hard time wording what I wanted to express.

This is a piece that will grow. I'll do other installments in different sizes of hoop, and different colors. I might add song lyrics sometimes. I don't know.

It was hard to get through at the end. I had to speed through my new favorite show, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. It's Australian, set in the 1920s, based on a recent book series. It is absolutely perfect. I love Miss Fisher in every way and the chief inspector is so handsome (though less so when not done up in 20s style).

Today it's back to the Women piece, and the floral details, which is pretty mindless. I definitely need a little of that.

Stitch away the pain

In my past there's a relationship that still haunts me. It's been years, but I dream about her so much still. Sometimes dream-her hates me, and sometimes they're happy dreams.

Having one upsets my life in so many ways (and makes me try to avoid sleep like the plague). Ignoring them hasn't helped, so this is what I'm trying now. This part isn't complete yet. I'll do each dream or thought in a different color, using different sizes of embroidery hoop. Fingers crossed. I can never remove her from my daytime thoughts, and I wouldn't want to, but the dreams are something else.

So yeah, that's what I'm working on now, as well as my shop pattern for "There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." I've completed the text on it, but things keep stealing my attention because I can start the little pieces of decor. Plus I've got some secret-knitting I need to finish up, and you know how that goes.

a quick update

Here's another update on the family rules. I know it looks odd to have three light colors at the bottom together, but they'll be surrounded by navy on left and right and a dark royal blue underneath that larger N, so I think it will look all right.

I would type loads more, but I'm doing it one-handed after badly burning my left hand. This also means there won't be any stitching progress for a while. C'est la vie.

Also, remember this pattern is already for sale in my Etsy shop. :)

Warm colors for a Cold Snap

masses of hail!

After last night's massive hail storm and then thunderstorm the weather got cool again and stayed quite cool today. This is good news for me as warm weather just kills me and I hate having the noise of the air conditioner. I live on the fifth floor which was perfect for winter - I never turned my heater on all winter. For summer though... bleagh. 

I'm working on a frustratingly annoying border pattern which will frame part of a quote from Robert Frost: "never be bullied into silence." Once the piece is finished I'll be selling the pattern wherein all the proceeds will go towards buying the It Gets Better book for school libraries.

It's a sentiment that is true for pretty much any group or issue or individual person and I may make a more neutrally colored one to sell after this but I do love how the colors and the different borders are turning out.

Poetry and Biscuits

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).