Celtic G - finished!

Well the G is all done and now it's ironed and framed as well! I'm fairly pleased with it. I would have done the date differently, but needed to do it the same way it appears on my nephew's. Though really, I'm pretty sure they'll never be confused about when they were born, so it doesn't matter.

Since that finished I've been working on the pattern for my Mock the Week - Unlikely Small Ads piece. It. Is. Frustrating. I have a newly discovered sympathy for the newspaper layout people. Though to be fair, they're not dealing with trying to find numerous yet diverse backstitch fonts and whether enough room can be made to squeeze in some cross-stitch fonts. 

It is *almost* done though. I'm just waiting to hear back from an English friend about the way something would be written there.

When I got too frustrated with it/couldn't sit with the computer anymore, I started working on a photo cross-stitch piece, as My Photo Stitch is my new favorite website. I've converted a number of flower photos I've taken, and actually started working on this wisteria and bee one. Let me just say, I hate this kind of stitching and pattern, as it's so...random. I do love the site though, and I'm trying to find good pictures of my niece and nephew to use.

Humor for sale!

This is my second project using a quote from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, and the pattern is now for sale in my Etsy shop. This line is one I find particularly true and funny, and it comes from the book The Last Continent.

I was about to say "one of my favorite Discworld books" but I love them all SO much that I can't even really choose a favorite from the various recurring character books. Anyway, I created that border pattern myself and it's not as annoying to stitch as it may look. You just have to do things in an efficient order.

Now I'm working on a pattern of a round of the TV show Mock the Week. The prompt was "Unlikely Classified Ads" and so I'm doing a newspaper sheet layout of my favorites. It is one of the most frustrating things I've EVER worked on though. Laying out newspaper pages in a pleasing and symmetrical manner is a bitch!

My OCD tendencies decided that I must own every single color of DMC thread, so yesterday I spent FOUR HOURS winding newly-purchased thread onto bobbins and organizing my thread. At first I started putting them in numerical order, but since I don't stitch many patterns made by other people I realized that would just make picking colors for my own patterns more difficult.

I can literally spend hours arranging the thread by color, trying to get it perfectly ordered within each shade and hue. This is an impossible task, but I fiddle with it every time I start a new project. I'm buying the thread a bit at a time (the cost does add up quite rapidly!), so this drama will stretch on for a while.

Celtic G

I knocked this out really quickly while I was listening to The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander.

This is just the color work, of course, I still have to do all the black back stitching. Here's the B I did for Benjamin about a year ago (with a picture before the black outline and after).

Now though I'm taking a break before finishing it to work on a pattern for my shop. It uses the Terry Pratchett quote "Logic is a wonderful thing, but doesn't always beat actual thought." 

Hoping to finish it tomorrow. I've got another good non-fiction book going, so maybe that will help speed me along.

At the cost of eyes and hands...

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.

So close!

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!

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.

Up Up and Asleep

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.

Working the productivity...

I've been sitting around watching QI, working on the Celtic letter cross-stitch, and dreading trying to color Frida's background. I'm starting to think it would be safer just to do a thick border of vines around her.

Come to think of it, I could do a border of vines and flowers and then paint only up to that point so there was less risk of color seeping into the figure area. That seems like it could work, right? Right?! Seriously, the thought of damaging Frida, who turned out perfectly, is driving me to distraction. I wanted to work on her at the beach and I think I can work on the vine border and have that done by the end of the week.

The Celtic E is looking very beautiful and almost seems worth the immense amount of work that's going into it. I'll be doing the next ones on even weave linen which would make for a much easier time. I'm also starting to get a good picture of the sampler I'd like to make for my sister and her growing family. I have a super pretty tree pattern that would look nice at the bottom and a ton of nice animal and plant motifs.

Sadly I will miss most of the blooms on my lemon tree as I'll be at the beach next week. On the plus side, I bought this thick letter stickers that include some punctuation including brackets. I basically only bought it so I could wear the bracket as a moustache and it looks so awesome. I would wear this all the time.

Fancy Script and Fireworks

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.