Blossoms

Look at me, stitching things I didn't design/create the pattern for... Crazay. This is from the book Classic Orientals for Needlepoint and Cross-Stitch by Mary Duckworth. It makes you wonder if she had to pay for each word in the title and thus couldn't at least stretch to Classic Oriental Designs. Oh the 80s.

I actually made myself do French knots this time, instead of my usual Chinese knots cheat. The pattern called for the black to be done in the darkest pink of the pattern, but it didn't look great in the picture. I'm thinking about outlining the outer circle in black as well.

I've also got this Creative Needle Imari collection, which has some gorgeous designs. I'm still kind of "Oh what to do next..." in terms of stitching. I have some non-craft projects I really need to work on though, including scanning a few thousand family photos.

My mom is finally all moved, so at least I'm not thinking about/attempting to help with that anymore. I had my nephew over here the other morning, which started out rather traumatically (a bathroom accident and then bread in my toaster oven catching on fire), but ended with Shirley Temple. Apparently Benjamin was tap dancing about for the rest of the day.

finished flower

Well the flower is all done. I think it turned out very nicely, though it would be good stitched on a smaller count fabric and with gold metallic thread, but it's still nice.

Now I'm working on a large commission, of a Pogo pattern I created. I think it will turn out nicely, but it's a whole lot of stitching on 22 ct Aida. I'm anticipating taking a break for the quick Pratchett quote once I get a ways into it.

I am so tired and odd feeling, mostly due to the sudden switch from lovely cool whether to freaking hot weather. I hate summer...

Wisteria Part 3

Thus far, this week have been really busy, with less time than usual available for needlework. On the plus side I found out that there's an embroidery group that meets at a nearby library once a month.

I'm hoping to go, though initially I will probably be a bit careful about which projects I bring. Now, I know some very open-minded older ladies with broad senses of humor, but all the same...

Here's all the new progress on the wisteria piece! I'm getting a bit lazy and cheating by sometimes filling in the one or two squares of something with whatever similar color I'm already using in that area. That's right, I'm a rule breaker!

I got some of the printable Fabri-Solvy to try out. Maybe it will be my perfect method for pattern transfer, so I'll be starting a new non-counted embroidery project soon.

I'm so knackered though that tonight I am going to watch some Bones, eat some leftovers, and drown myself in tea.

flower on linen

My brain is so dead lately. I spent a few hours this morning with my adorable niece and nephew. Benjamin snuggled up with me for quite a while (half an hour is a long time to for a 3 year old to sit and talk). I explained evolution to him, though I forget what led to that.

I've been working quite a bit, and added a lot to the wisteria project. Then I started a new piece - the flower you see here. The pattern is from Cross Stitch Designs From India by Carol Phillipson, which has a lot of very nice designs in it, especially of the floral variety.

After this it's time to finish up the chintz napkin!

I am actually quite bad at crafts...

This is the progress thus far on my wisteria piece, but of course it's too early and scattered to be a clear image. It looks like a strange map at the moment.

I know what you're supposed to do is put basting stitching around a square and stitch everything within that square. I'm sure that helps cut down on fatal mistakes that require you to unpick hundreds of stitches.

Really I'm just no good at crafts. I never glanced at a cross-stitch book (or embroidery book really, except to look up how to do fancy stitches). There was some Aida around, so I started stitching without even drafting a pattern.

Right now I'm thinking that after I finish my chintz napkin I'll go back to my long-neglected Frida Kahlo piece. I do miss doing non-counted embroidery, but I have to spend so much time drafting and stitching patterns to sell in my Etsy store. Even now I'm working on a pattern using another Terry Pratchett quote: ("Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.")

Apartment inspections are next Monday, so I'll probably be doing less stitching than usual this week. C'est la vie!

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.

Pepper Progress

Here's a picture of the progress of Five Little Peppers. Hoping to get more of that thread on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I have been beyond lazy this weekend but also quite beyond tired and sore. There's so much to do and lots of time, but no energy at all.

Also posted my pattern for the Ambrose Bierce quote in my Etsy shop.

If anyone has a lovely old book cover that's a favorite, please link me to it! I'm look for other pretty covers to make patterns of.

Whoops!

I thought I had posted an entry about this project but apparently not! My brain is draining.

Today was my nephew's third birthday! I got him some books, because I just don't like buying toys for children (who all have too many toys already). My mom got him a cheap ukulele though, which he was adorably strumming.

Anyway. Not sure whether I'll add another lighter yellow past the orange-yellow (which is completed now). I do like the general look.

tough few weeks

I expect to spend the next few weeks thoroughly embroiled in needlework, reading, and cleaning. Madre is off to Japan. Hopefully she will call when she gets there despite the time, because I tend to worry about these things. I mean, I know planes fly via black magic, but people do assemble them and people are terribly fallible. 

Anywhere, there's good progress on my color fade piece and I might be done with this "People: what a bunch of bastards" piece. I might add a skinny leaf detail to the top, but I'm undecided. I feel like I should do some cross stitch as I haven't done any for ages.

Otherwise I've been conquering the world playing Rise of Nations, though I wish you could be any nation. I really wanted to conquer the world as Wales, since they deserve it. Alas. Maybe next time I play Civilization I'll be the Celts and give all the towns Welsh place names.

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.

Summer Gardens

The garden tour thing is going on in my city. This year you can just wander around people's yards (those that have a garden tour sign) at will, which is fun. Some friends of my mother have the most amazing garden. They fill up their front yard with vegetables and flowers and the backyard is almost completely full plus paths and numerous seating areas.

 

We went by the other day and my favorite thing is that they've put up numerous large mirrors on the back fence. You don't notice the mirrors until you're right up close to them. Just glancing through the yarn they extend the garden so perfectly and make the tall back fence more appealing. They also keep the compost pile and other utilitarian things tucked inside the garden where they're accessible but half hidden among other plants.

 

It is really my idea of a perfect garden and makes me think of childhood. We always had a big garden with lots of vegetables, and while it wasn't so organized and prettily laid out, it was quite full. Plus we were always being dragged to various country greenhouses when I was a kid so most nice gardens remind me of those places as well.

hours of flowers

I came up with a set of flower motifs and geometric but somewhat floral looking things. Two irises and two pansies which I prefer to roses, but I think the rose turned out better due to the half stitch filling. I should use that more, as I always like the effect.

Anyway, this set of motifs is now for sale in my Etsy shop. There are nine separate designs, all fairly small with the largest being no more than 2 1/2 inches in either direction (probably not quite that). It would be fun to do a huge score of pansies in different colors hanging in clusters on a wall.

I just recently re-read four of Juliet Marillier's books. She writes fantasy novels but they're very different from the usual fantasy rubbish. There are no pet dragons or unicorns, it's not an alien world, and the romance is limited and is not the main plot device. They are set in ancient Ireland and Scotland and are historically accurate as far as it goes (we don't know all that much about the Picts, honestly). The fantasy element is that you take for granted that most of the folklore is true. 

I don't really like most fantasy books and I don't generally seek them out.  However, Marillier is one of my favorite authors ever. There aren't very many authors who are writing in the same sort of genre and I highly recommend reading her Sevenwaters trilogy and the two Children of the Light Isles books (which are set/based in Orkney, the first being about vikings coming to Orkney).

tea cups and the Vicar

All right, folks, I am now up to four embroidered matchy-matchy tea napkins! That means I can now have a very gloating and prideful tea party. I'm not sure which tea cup pattern to work on next, the others that I want to do are a bit more difficult to translate to cross-stitch so I'm nervous about starting them. Though I have a lovely geometric teacup that would be really easy to do, so I might do that one next.

Otherwise I started work on my first quote from the show The Vicar of Dibley: "revolting old soak." I did the text in an uncial font which adds a certain something. I'm not really sure whether I want to add a border or not. We'll see.

I think I have reverse SAD. I much prefer winter for many reasons, and it being crazy bright out until 8:30 or later is just getting on my nerves. I keep looking at how light it is and grumbling to myself about it. Blugh.

Great website find!

So I had to reformat my computer and my good graph paper file was accidentally lost. In searching the internet I found this awesome site where you can specify the size of paper and square size and even the color of the lines. It spits out a pdf file which you can save and then use in Photoshop or Gimp or convert to JPGS or whatnot. 

It's a great tool for those of you creating counted embroidery patterns. Check it out: http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/plain/

I finished another tea napkin cross-stitch! It's a small one so I might actually add a second flower in red just to give it a bit more life and busyness.

Wide eyes and bright colors

Yesterday was a bit odd. I had my eye exam appointment at 9:00 am, which was okay, though I didn't like the office. The exam was way shorter and less extensive than any other I've had. Enough to show that my prescription hadn't changed drastically but not enough to show small changes.

I had numbing drops in my eyes for the first time, which was so weird, then had my eyes dilated, which I both love and hate. I hate not being able to see or focus on anything up close but I like the look of dilated eyes (I associate it with doe-eyed sweetness having never really been around hardcore druggies). When I got home at 10:30 I fell asleep almost immediately and slept off and on (mostly on) until 7 pm! I hate days like that, as I'm not a person who enjoys sleeping, and I hate the feeling of literally not being able to stay awake.

So the good news is that I'm not going blind, the bad news is that I'll have to see my GP so they can check to see if I have a sinus infection. It seems likely, as the symptoms fit. I hate doctors, but maybe they'll give me amoxicillan and I can request to have the liquid which tastes so good - or it did when I was a kid anyway.

The new blackwork piece is almost done. I'm just putting the yellow in the center of the flowers, which I would have done yesterday if I hadn't had that sleep marathon. My brain stayed fuzzy the whole time so I didn't attempt to work on it. Instead I watched Rescue Rangers and decided that the next time I'm getting a cat it will be a big lazy male cat, preferably a ginger, who I'll name Mepps after a cat in Rescue Ranger. Or possibly I'll be a bit dada and name it Mole. You never know.

Do you like fantasy books but find them to be basically repetitive and tedious? Well I know a fantasy author who's much more fun than the rest. Juliet Marillier is the lady and I love her books. She has two trilogies and one book duo already out, plus two young adult books, one stand alone, and she's two books into a new trilogy. The first set, The Sevenwaters Trilogy, are some of my favorite books ever, and her duo which are about vikings is super crazy awesome. The first book of the Bridei trilogy was so amazing but the second two were a bit disappointing by comparison, though still good. Her books always involve a bit of magic and folklore but it's not over the top. It's basically the past as we know it with most of the attached folklore being true but no pet dragons or magical teleportation or anything.

Silly excitement

separate cases for warm and cool colors, of course.

I have an ophthalmologist appointment tomorrow, which I'm super psyched for. Generally I despite eye doctors. They treat me as though I'm twelve years old and tell the worst jokes imaginable. I've never been to an ophthalmologist, never having had serious eye disease or anything, but they are the only ones certified to accept Medicare so I have to see them for my eye exams.

The reason I'm excited for it is because I really want to know if my prescription has changed (I believe it has), if it's just eye strain or if I'm managing to go blind, and to ask if they think contacts would be easier on my eyes in terms of needlework. I don't want to wear contacts, I love my glasses, I've had them since I was seven years old, but if contacts will make my eyes ache less then I would use them for needlework.

What I'm finishing up now is the quote from the movie Horsefeathers (hard to say who actually wrote the line). I've completed the green on both sides now and I'm doing a bit more detailing in green above and below the purple flowers. I'll also be filling the middle of the flowers with a goldenrod yellow thread. These are colors I bought all at once, just randomly picked up the green, orange, and fuchsia and noticed in the car how pretty they looked together. I've never done a project using just those colors before but I'm happy to now. It's bright but it works. Gotta show the sexy side of blackwork, after all!

Summer colors

Orange and green together is one of my favorite color combinations, and this is one of my favorite borders I've done! I spent forever getting it perfectly symmetrical. This was a custom order through Etsy, certainly my favorite kind of order to get. It's just nice making something specific for someone else.
I finished working on a couple of blackwork alphabets so I need to pick a quote to show them off. I'm thinking "Cat's in the bag, bag's in the river." I love cats and fluffy things but that line cracks me up every time.

The last week has been really difficult. My pain's been off the charts and even my cat is driving me crazy. She wants to rub against my legs every two seconds and it just hurts too much. I very much need things to go back to the old sub-normal. And more Uncle Scrooge comics. I need more of those. 

Ron Stoppable would be my best friend ever

So it's another Kim Possible piece! This is a quote from my boy Ron Stoppable. It's not like you have to know the show to find the quote amusing though - I try to always choose text that can be enjoyed and understood but anyone rather than a specific in-joke.

This is one of my favorite lines in the whole series (closely followed by "time travel: a cornucopia of disturbing concepts"). The border is from the book Repertoire des Motifs and while not completely symmetrical it's not bad. I do quite love the way it turned out in fact.


The flowers are a dark purple, easily distinguishable from the black text in real life but showing up much darker in picture (and who knows when the sun will really be out again in Charleston).

Rose tea napkin

Finally finished my rose tea napkin. It matches the tea cup very well, especially in terms of the colors. Nice to have two of the napkins done and it's sort of upped my excitement about working on the other napkins.

The custom piece is coming along really well and I can't wait to show it off. I used a few different motifs from the French book Repertoire des Motifs (which I wish to god I could find somewhere, all I have are some bad scans) and combined them to make a circular border around the text. The best part is that I managed to make it perfectly symmetrical. I get a little obsessed with symmetry so I spent the better part of a few hours working on this relatively small border. But it IS symmetrical! So worth it.


You know who I love? Ed Byrne! He looks a bit like an ex of mine, but he's so funny that I overlook it. I highly recommend checking out his shows. I personally love hearing him and Dara O Briain talk. They can talk about anything, it pleases me to listen.

A little work on Frida

Well it was about time I took up Frida again, so I did. I finished the main vine border, the plain dark green on. It goes all the way around her. The second set is almost done and go around about halfway. The third vine design will be a browny green with thorns. The color in the picture is a bit off - I took it at night so I had to up the contrast to get the light colored vine and flowers to be easily visible.

I finally got a magnifier that I can use while stitching (not a great one, just a holdover until I figure out a nicer one to get - any suggestions?) but I still feel like I'm going blind. Making an appointment for an eye exam next week (plus then I can get some cute new glasses from Zenni). 


Here in Charleston the summers are usually full of rain. It's a very very humid area so we'll get sudden huge downpours that last 15 minutes and then the sun comes out again. This is pretty good for gardeners but awful for me. My fibromyalgia pain gets way worse eight hours or so before it rains and stays bad until it starts raining. It's nice to be able to predict the rain (well, sort of) but it makes the summers horrible. Add to that the fact that the heat makes my legs, feet, and hands swell worse than usual and you have a fairly unhappy young lady.


So what to do other than throw myself into stitching, blindness or no! I'm almost done with my rose tea napkin, I did a rustic tea towel design, and I'm working on a custom piece for someone which includes a border that I'm very proud of. I'll be showing them off in the next few days.