Finished!

Well here is Tintin, all finished. I think it turned out absolutely beautifully.

It's a bit hard to decide what to do with it, since my siblings and I all grew up with Tintin comics and my nephew Benjamin loves Tintin as well. Benjamin isn't really in a position to appreciate art though. I will probably end up selling this, just because I've already embroidered Christmas presents for most of my family.

I'm really a bit proud of the pattern though. The only thing I don't like is the left side of the spotlight. It looks a little odd/flat because of Tintin being in the way. I'm sure it's fine and Madre would scoff at me for thinking about it but that's just the way I am.

Now it's time to come up with the next project. I think I need something snarky and adult to keep up my subversive credibility.

Massive Tintin progress

So here's quite a lot of progress on Tintin. The spotlight improved the piece amazingly and the black is looking great. The full cross stitches around the leg (and around Snowy) still show up very well even in the sea of black half-stitches, which had been my main worry.

The only thing I don't like is that now the shadow stitches look a lot lighter, but that's a pretty small complaint. There's a lot of black to fill in but it's going more quickly than I expected (though that's true of pretty much every project).

more Tintin

Here's a lot of progress on the Tintin. I've now started the yellow spotlight bit in full stitches and it looks SO great next to the half-stitches of the shadow.

My pondering now is whether I can do some darker half-stitches around the all the whole thing, as it looks odd to have a spotlight on light fabric. I would do them face the opposite direction from the shadow stitches and probably not in black (though maybe) but in something darker than the shadow at least.

Glugh! It's all getting a bit complicated! The endless yellow stitches did take me through the end of Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell, which was a 26 hour long audio book. Poor woman died with one chapter left to write. Instead of having something complete the book they had some friend of hers write an epilogue talking about what Mrs. Gaskell had told everyone the last chapter would contain, which I think was rather sweet. It was a wonderful book, though at times the pacing of mid-19th century books gets me down. It never really hots up or does anything quickly. You always know how things will turn out in these older books but how they get there and the writing is so lovely.

Finished coaster

Well my lovelies, here is the finished Steal Your Face coaster which I'm rather dissatisfied with. The reason being that I left out some back stitch lines on either side of the skull that I meant to do.

My brain just can't hold anything anymore.

I have had a bit of wine so I'm not going to keep typing. Never know what might slip out!

Steal Your Face

Well here's the basic pattern for my Grateful Dead coaster. Again, it's from the Steal Your Face album. I think it turned out pretty well for the size. It should really have been a larger pattern in order to keep more of the detail, but this is for a coaster with a fixed size and even then I had to stitch it on 18 ct. Aida. I'll be doing the red and blue sections in half stitches so the black stays prominent.

I may design a larger more accurate version and who knows, maybe I'll do a series of band logos. When I was 15 or so I would do my own punk covers of Grateful Dead or Bob Dylan songs to annoy my mother. If only I'd known any Pink Floyd songs that would have annoyed her the most! Though I think in generally she's a bit scoffing toward most covers or any song she actually likes.

I've also gotten a bit more done on my Tintin piece and may possibly have found a decent orange to use for his hair. So now the trick is whether that orange makes the skin tone acceptable. The skin tone color is close enough to what's in the books but you know how it is, can't tell how it will work with the orange until the stitches are next to each other. It might at least work in half stitches, but I've used so many of those in this piece already that I'd rather have full stitches.

Tintin!

I grew up with Tintin and Asterix comics, and while Asterix will always be my favorite, I'm very attached to Tintin. We had some of the Tintin cartoons too, which I adored.

So here's my Tintin-in-progress. It will be just like my base image (just without the black fill background. I think I need to get a lighter skin tone though and also need to look for a good color for his hair, so the project is on hold for a bit. I think it's a really good translation from my base image to the cross stitch though!

Now I'm trying to design a pattern of the Grateful Dead logo from the Steal Your Face album. With Christmas coming a lot of the things I'm stitching either can't be posted here (since they're presents) or are so obscure that I don't think you guys would enjoy them. I did design a fabulous blackwork ax though, so if anyone needs an ax design, just ask!

I'm desperately hoping that I won't have to turn the AC on again this season, but it's hard to say. Sometimes it's still pretty warm during the day. All my plants are inside though and I've rearranged some of my succulents. These days my only non-succulents are my lemon tree and a lone African violet. Oh, and the cat grass but that doesn't really count.