Poisoning Pigeons in the Park

I stitched this ages ago, and sold the finished piece a few months back, but I've only just put the pattern up for sale. I'm really proud of my dead bird based on the classic blackwork bird design.

I've been thinking of putting together some blackwork design packs (of my original designs) with themes, but I'm not sure it's worth it. So many people seem weirdly nervous of blackwork, even though it's the exact same level of difficult as cross-stitch (aka - super easy). 

My current mission is to get a friend to try non-counted embroidery, which she's nervous of. I don't think basic embroidery stitches (back stitch, stem stitch, satin stitch, etc...) are any harder than doing cross-stitch. Really it's just a great relief to mindless follow a pattern printed on fabric, with no need to be constantly counting and checking up and glancing between fabric and pattern.

I have too many things I want to work on right now, one is a big Christmas present (15,000 stitches! It will be my biggest piece yet), then I want to restitch my Roman mosaic, add some embroidery to my mini-crazy quilt, work on my patchwork Aida concept, do another piece for the Illustration Stitch-Along (free choice this month), etc...

Tom Lehrer, part two

Well, she's all done. Live pigeons, dead pigeons, bottle of poisons, and a few skulls for good measure. Classic. 

It is obviously only the first of my Tom Lehrer lyric pieces. Next will probably need to be a line from The Old Dope Peddler. Also of course I need to decide whether to sell the pigeon piece or keep it for myself. I don't really have room to hang up more art at the moment, but eventually I might...

Now I'm waffling over whether or not to start another piece with a quote from Kim Possible. I can't tell whether it would be at all amusing to anyone else though, and while I know a few adult KP fans (it is seriously a hilarious show) I don't know that there are a lot of them. The quote is "Your fancy pants will become your very undoing," (it's best if you say it in a German accent). So, opinions? Workable? 

Otherwise I'll start work on Scrooge McDuck/Don Rosa quote piece that will be a Christmas present for my dad. I finished another Christmas present but I haven't blogged about it since it's such an obscure reference. I did design a nice blackwork ax for it though, which I'm a bit proud of.

Life is skittles and life is beer...

I love Tom Lehrer's music. Absolutely love it. My dad found it when he was in college and introduced me to it when I was in middle school. My first exposure was the song Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, which my dad chose to teach me (we drove a lot, so we sang in the car all the time) because I don't like birds. I spent a good portion of my senior year singing "Bright College Days" at people.

Yes, that was me in the park as a 10 year old running and screaming at the pigeons to make them fly away. You can't just run at them, they don't go far enough. I perfected a sort of squawky crow noise that worked wonders. I still do it as an adult, even from a wheelchair. 

So here's a WIP shot of the Tom Lehrer embroidery I'm working on. The border below the text will be a line of dead pigeons. Then I'll be doing rows of poison bottles and a skull on either side. Overkill? Perhaps, but that's the point of the song!

My favorite line in the song is actually "We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment, except for the few we take home to experiment," but it doesn't make a good stand-alone embroidery piece. The line I chose is recognizable to fans but not the most predictable choice. Plus people who don't know the song might also find it funny. 

The only downside is that while working on it I literally can not get the song out of my head. Even while listening to other music my head is still singing about poisoning pigeons.