Daria, Jane, and Trent

My pattern of Daria, Jane, and Trent is now for sale in my Etsy shop. I think it turned out quite well, though the magic of backstitch decided "We'll twist these stitches just enough to make Daria look happy!" The universe has a funny sense of humor.

I'm already at work on the Fashion club stitching, and maybe a quarter of the way done already. It will eventually be one big group listing.

I've been so tired in the afternoons lately that I've gotten nothing done because I start falling asleep while I'm stitching. My instinct then is to get up and make lunch because that's involved enough that it wakes me up. I'm very much against napping, since I always feel dreadful or confused when I wake up from one. It's weird though, because sometimes I still can't fall asleep until late, despite barely making it through the afternoon.

Understood Betsy pattern

Well, it's another book cover pattern for sale in my Etsy shop! This one for one of my very favorite old children's books. Understood Betsy is an AMAZINGLY perfect work of children's fiction. It should be just as well-known as the Little House on the Prairie books, yet it's not and this saddens me.

You can read Understood Betsy for free, since it's in the public domain. I think it's also still a common title to find in libraries. I really highly recommend it. I didn't read it for the first time until I was an adult, and I don't have or want children, but it was so much fun and appealed to me so much. A good book is good at any age (that does not mean that any book you liked as a kid, or as an adult, is a good, well-written book).

Anyway, here's a sneak peak at my newest project. I'll give you a hint and tell you that there is a third word coming and it is predictable. When the pattern is for sale though I'll also be offering 'clean' versions.

Grateful Dead - Steal Your Face

Remember this awesome embroidery? Well now you can have the pattern for free!

If you stitch it on 18 count Aida it will fit on those four-inch square coasters (the design window is three inches, this will measure just under 3 inches on 18 count).

It's been a long time since I sent this away, but I think I used DMC 304 and 312. In the colored areas (left mostly blank on the pattern, for ease of printing, with there to remind you what goes where) I used half-crosses rather than full cross-stitches, because that way it they don't overwhelm the outline.

As you can see I accidentally forgot the backstitch lines on my piece, and it looks fine without it. That's what happens when you fill in the colors without looking at the pattern (because why would you?) and then get so excited about finished that you pop it in the coaster. You can't open those things back up easily, not without cracking the top window! These are things I have learned.

Just click on the pattern image, then right click it and select 'view image' for easy printing (or saving, or whatever, you know what to do).

A'th'Cheat

This pattern will be up for sale in my Etsy shop soon. It comes with not one, but two fancy full square borders. Both say "Yeah man, I'll gnaw your face off," along the tops and bottom. The first's pillars with Cheat spots and the second's have some of his many alter-egos. 

I've also created a Homsar pattern that I have yet to stitch, and have gotten a fair bit done on my napkin. I think it will be done in another couple of days. 

For now the napkin has started to put me to sleep, so I've been working on possibly my favorite pattern design ever. Details soon!

Oh, I'm also trying to start a Facebook account and Tumblr account for my store. Both will include information new patterns, contests, notifications of store sales, and pieces by other talented needleworkers. Only bear with me, I can only slightly navigate Facebook.

If you've stitched any of my patterns, please send me a picture of it!

blinding progress

I am slightly kicking myself for deciding that doing a chintz napkin to match the chintz cup was a good idea. This is SUCH a frustrating pattern, because of all the tiny bits of one color spread out in a way that makes it difficult to keep at all organized.

It is going well though and it will be amazingly gorgeous when I'm finished. That's some consolation.

I've been posting some older patterns in my Etsy shop. You can now find the Moody Bastarditis pattern, Not Dumb Luck, Dumb Skill, Reality Continues to Ruin My Life, Never Bored When I Am Present, and Captain Haddock (though those last two are quite new, of course).

The shop has been more successful than I ever dreamed and it makes me really happy that other people actually want to stitch my patterns. I'm going to start work on a "Living in Sin" pattern with a super traditional border. It will give me something less frustrating to work on when I get sick of the chintz napkin.

Oh, if anyone would like the pattern for the Royal Winton Queen Anne chintz, just let me know and I'll send it to you. It's easy enough to make yourself but is tedious and annoying.

Family Rules finished

Here is the absolutely finished image for my family rules pattern (which is for sale in my Etsy shop, and I'll personalize it for free). Once personalized the pattern is completely square, which makes me happy. This one is going to my aunt Betsy for her step-daughter's family.

I've altered the pattern ever so slightly to be more more even spaced, because I can not leave anything alone, ever.

Now I've gotten started on another napkin that matches one of my tea cups. It's the one for the Royal Winton Queen Anne pattern and I'm going to cover the entire napkin. It will take a long time (the stitches are barely 2 mm across) and is already frustrating the life out of me. I'll take a picture of my progress tomorrow.

I think I'll start another humorous project too, to give me breaks from the napkin (which my eyes will need!).

finally back to stitching!

Well I finally healed enough to get back to stitching my family rules piece. It's still a little slow and I'm having to hold the frame in a different manner than usual, but I *really* needed to busy my hands again. I get antsy when I can't accomplish anything.

Now the piece is nearly done. It still needs its border and the personalization but that shouldn't take too long (granted it's tedious and boring). This will probably be going to my aunt's stepdaughter (and her family) but I'll be sending her a picture before I personalize it, just in case she doesn't like the colors or whatever.

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. :)

Five Little Peppers... Finished!

I am finally done with the Five Little Peppers piece! It was an uphill battle. There was a flaw early on and, being lazy, I decided to just alter the pattern a bit instead of unpicking hours of stitching. 

Of course then later on I didn't think to allow for that and had to unpick a ton of shit. It could have been worse, but christ... I nearly abandoned the piece at one point. Glad I didn't though. All in all, I think it's a lovely piece. I definitely want to do a few more book covers.

Now I've got one more Christmas present piece to work on. The pattern was giving me trouble so I'd half decided to skip it. It would be a really fun piece to give though so I think I'll try to make it work.

my adorable nephew!

Let me tell you, there are some days when I despair of making my own patterns. I've only ever stitched one thing that's entirely someone else's pattern. I've taken some pieces of borders from the Repertoire des Motifs and various quite old patterns but they've always taken a lot of tinkering and extra work. I think the effort is worth it, but sometimes it does keep me from stitching since the thought of having to the make the pattern will put me off. C'est la vie, I suppose.

In contrast to all that frustration I had the most wonderful visit with my nephew, Benjamin. He came over to my apartment for an hour or so while his mama did some errands and he was the most well-behaved little thing imaginable. Did everything the first time I asked him, didn't mess with my stuff, and was generally adorable. He carried those mice around during the whole visit (they're my mice, not his). Now I'm in the dilemma of "should I give him and his sister the mice for Christmas..." but he doesn't really like soft toys at the moment and I think it's probably better to keep the few toys I have over here. 

Yes, I am justifying keeping my adorable stuffed mice all to myself. They're named Nourishing and Dark Tan after two of the rats in Terry Pratchett's marvelous book, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. I quite want to go back to Ikea and get a dozen more since they're so cute (and only 99 cents each).

Five Little Peppers - first look

Well here's the first look at Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. It's quite a large piece, being about 12 1/2 inches tall and even for the size still feels woefully simplified.

I'm enjoying the way it's coming together though and I'd like to do more similar pieces. What lovely decor it would be for a children's room or library to just have embroidered book covers on the walls. 

Though for myself I wouldn't want to have all my books in one separate room in my house. Part of my enjoyment is looking at them. Staring at the shelves and just... remembering. Remembering where I got the book, when I first read it, who read it to me, etc... Every book is a time capsule of some point in my life.

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.

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.

pretend quilting

I finally present to you the completely finished (and framed) color-fade blackwork piece. It's not exactly what I wanted, because I didn't start with a large enough piece of fabric but it does look pretty. 

Plus it gave me a lot of ideas for color fade pieces which I could then do properly. Before that I need to bulk up my thread collection. I have a ton of embroidery floss, but not enough oranges and not enough blues and missing some important reds. It feels like I never have the colors I want.

I got a new computer, as mine was getting run down (especially in the touchpad department) and I'd like to have a backup that still works normally. The new machine is running Linux because holy crap I hate Windows 7. I thought I just disliked it, but having to use it for more than two minutes at a time amped the dislike right up to despise. 

We used Linux on all the computers at my high school (a tiny boarding school) so I'm not completely unfamiliar with it (though even if I was Ubuntu is SO intuitive that it should be easy for anyone to use). The best part for me is downloading all the free applications. I got a geography lesson program and can now identify all the countries on all the continents and a number of island nations. When something big happens in Moldova or Togo I'll know just where they are! I'm beyond psyched about this.

So thank you, Microsoft, for completely screwing up the operating system I grew up with and liked using. You even managed to make networking my two computers a pain and not workable. Now that's talent. Change for change's sake is always a bad idea.

more color fade action

Well, I'm sadly growing more and more annoyed with this piece. I didn't plan it all that carefully, so I didn't use a large enough piece of fabric to do a real rainbow fade piece.

For that you need to go red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange, yellow, yellow green, green, green-blue, blue, blue-purple, etc.... My blues which look bluer on their own just look teal in this piece and the whole thing is making the OCD cringe. I'm almost done though and then I can give it to someone as a gift or try to sell it.

I'm working on a smaller even more gradual color fade piece that's just green going into blue in a four inch hoop. 

I suppose I'll have to start on the Celtic style G for my niece at some point. It would be nice to have it ready for my sister's birthday or Christmas, which won't be a problem even if I don't start for another month.

Today I saw my nephew Benjamin with a mandolin pretending to be Chuck Berry. Which I'm sure you'll agree is adorable. Though I'm slowly trying to ween him from Chuck Berry as there's only so many times I can listen to the same four songs. Plus there's lots of other good early rock and it enforces the idea of taking turns.

People: What Are They?

This is a question I often struggle with. People. Do they suck or do they rock? I suppose it depends on the day and your relation to them, but I'm a curmudgeonly old lady who's gotten a bit too particular over tea cups, books, and baking supplies.

Of course this has led me to believe that Jon Richardson is my ideal partner. I'm somewhat compulsive, I always know where my keys and purse are, I'm a bit particular but not super intense about it. The perfect mixture of his "putter" and "leaver" personality types. Plus he's handsome. Plus I am super awesome and quite a catch. Who could resist.

This piece of embroidery, which is probably still a work-in-progress, is a quote from The IT Crowd. Now, I much Black Books as it's a bit less reliant on stereotypes than The IT Crowd, but this is still a very funny show. I highly recommend it.

on the subject of cheese

Hung out with my nephew for three hours. Extremely tired.

This is a GK Chesterton quote, which I love. I also love cheese, obviously.

My dad is coming down this weekend which I'm super excited about. 

Now I must pass out.

progress on the color fade

I've made some more progress on the color fade project. I need to go on another thread run to find the right colors in the right shade group. It doesn't help that the light in the embroidery thread aisle is the worst in the store. It's coming along well though and I like the effect.

The Quilt National show at the Dairy Barn was absolutely amazing. I've to a number of the Quilt National shows and this has been the best. There's a lot less hand quilting in it, which is a shame. A few shows back there were a couple huuuge amazing, completely hand quilted pieces but there were also a few quilts that just left me a bit blah. This show everything was amazing.

This is my favorite piece, Rook Road by Elizabeth Brimelow. The minute I saw I told my mom it looked like a map and it turns out that's exactly what Ms. Brimelow was quilting! My vision rarely lines up with the artist's vision, and it doesn't need to, but it is exciting when it does. The presentation of this quilt is also incredible and really allows some of the wrong side quilting to show through beautifully.

It's everything I love about quilting. Creativity in design, creativity in display, and a clear but uncommon vision.

things in bad taste...

My dad often gives me recommendations for things with the added warning that said article is in bad or questionable taste. This is similar to how he enjoys many of the British shows I share with him (Still Game, Father Ted, and Black Books among others) but feels he needs to add the bad taste quotient, just to maintain "old guy" credibility perhaps. 

In any case, I know he'd say the same about this piece using the A.D. Wintle quote. Truthfully it's not the type of piece I would normally do either but I just so enjoyed the quote and the fact that I couldn't find any context for it. Who knows how Mr. Wintle meant this, perhaps he was speaking of horses. I shall never know, but I do love it in this context. 

Tomorrow should be a pretty inspiring day in terms of crafting. In Athens, Ohio an art museum called The Dairy Barn hosts a quilt show every other year (alternates with a bead show). I've gone with my mom before and we're going again tomorrow. There are a few things I did as a kid (not a tiny kid, but a kid) that just belonged to my mom and me, which isn't all the common for those of us with four older siblings. This is one of those and it's always an amazing show. 

Plus I love being in Athens. One place my dad lived we had to drive through Athens to get there. We stopped on the way there and back every other weekend, so even though I never lived in Athens I know it very well and I'm very attached to it. Ohio University is located there so it has great shops and restaurants, plus a lovely little park with a small stream where my dad and I would sale paper boats we'd made. It's a happy place for me.

Tougher than the toughies and sharper than the sharpies

There are few things I love more than Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck comics, particularly those by Carl Barks and Don Rosa. Obviously Carl Barks duck comics are amazing but Don Rosa is maybe even more special to me. Barks' comics that we had belonged to everyone, they were bought for my brothers and I got the ones still in readable conditions when I was old enough. Rosa's comics on the other hand were sometimes bought new just for me. For the youngest of five children that's a fairly rare occurrence.

So anyway, here's my first Uncle Scrooge embroidery piece. Scrooge's general motto was that he'd be "tougher than the toughies and sharper than the sharpies, and make his money square." In the design I had to include his number one dime and his money bin. 

We finally got a break in the ultra-hot, ultra-humid weather with a couple slightly cooler days. If it were completely overcast it would be perfect for me. I really can't be out in the sun at all, it hurts my skin almost immediately, so even if it's a fairly pleasant day it's hard for me to be outside. I'll be much happier come the end of September, which is hopefully when Madre and I will go camping. Love being out in the woods. I can't go hiking anymore but I can lie in a hammock and look at the leaves and feel a bit more peaceful.

color fades for the win...

Oh how neglectful I've been! I had a house guest and then I left my camera at my sister's house. That's the pain of having an adorable nephew (and niece), you leave your camera a lot of places.

Anyway, here's my new piece. I had yellow on it but the fade from green to blue was so perfect that I wanted to redo the yellow to get a nicer fade into the green. This all means a trip to the needlework shop (there's a lovely little local place) and it's just so annoying having to leave the apartment.

On the plus side, how gorgeous is this?! Oh I'm so happy with how it's turning out. It is my first art piece. Well, I did that cross stitch of Obelix so we'll just say this is my first abstract art piece. Hopefully I can eventually frame it and give it to la madre. It just looks so quilty to me and quilts make me think of her.

Was there ever some tiny piece of information you would do anything to get? Any tiny bit of someone's thoughts you would die to know? I have something like that, and I dream about it and that person so often. Once a week, sometimes more. The dreams alternate between good and awful. Sometimes the truth is wonderful and perfect and sometimes it's so soul crushing and hurtful. I would rather know though, no matter how painful it might be. I'm not good with matters requiring that sort of courage, but I'm working on it.