Onward and Upward

Well, I've completed the only full version of the largest design in the napkin. It is ALMOST perfectly centered, so now I'm quite annoyed with myself for not trying to plan that.

Granted, I don't think I could have, as there was a tiny stain in the corner and I had to make sure it would be covered up. 

Anyway, I'm pleased with the progress and can't wait to be done! There will be another break from this project though, while I finish the third border on my "une fille formidable" piece.

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.

Things I love Thursday

Technically it's Friday now but I fell asleep for most of the day.

Tea cups. I adore tea cups and collect them. Not full sets, just individual lovely tea cups. My mom just got me a new one today, in order of us putting up a third shelf for my tea things. The picture is my new tea cup!

Carl Barks. Fantagraphics is publishing the Carl Barks library in installments (or at least what he wrote for Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge). The first one comes out in October and I'm actually thinking of pre-ordering it, something I never do. I can't wait though. I grew up with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics, mostly the ones by Barks and Don Rosa. When Rosa's "Life and Times of Uncle Scrooge" came out my dad and I would go to the grocery store every month and buy the new issue in the series and then read it aloud together. It's one of my favorite memories.

Please and thank you!

So there are a few things I especially adore in this world (okay, many MANY things) but as far as TV shows one of my favorites is the cartoon Kim Possible. It's one of those perfect cartoons that has a lot of adult references and humor in addition to the usual stuff. It's also just genuinely hilarious and I relate a lot to the bumbling sidekick character, Ron, as he's my twinsy.

Anyway, one of the commonly said phrases in the show is "please and thank you" so I thought I'd embroider it on a tea towel.

I know most people don't like this kind of rough free-handed cursive but I love it. Something in the simplicity and roughness pleases me greatly.

Now I'm working on another Kim Possible quote in cross-stitch with a gorgeous floral border: "not dumb luck, dumb skill."

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.

Roses are pink...

I've finished making the pattern for the second tea cup napkin. It will match the teacup shown, which is an easier design to match than the first effort was. I've basically finished picking out which tea cups to stitch and I'd like to get all the patterns made up before I start stitching more. 

There are more commercial pieces that I should really work on. I've been restless in general. My kitchen is in an awful state and I've been watching too much TV. Too many things I don't want to think about. On the plus side my lemons are slowly getting bigger and the new blossoms will start popping in five days or so (and there are a MILLION of them!).

I have a number of quotes I'm choosing from for my next piece, but I think I'll skip back to non-counted embroidery for long enough to do my St. Trinian's tribute piece. It will have one of the images of a field hockey player along with the words "With hockey sticks and balls of steel, we are St. Trinian's!" Love it! Otherwise I'm leaning toward some sort of snarky quote. Or something. And here's a picture of one of my first cross-stitch/blackwork projects! It's a phrase my sister and I came up with (and still use often).

The Tea Cup Project has begun!

Well I've begun a project I've been thinking about for about a month. While at the beach my mom found me some lovely fancy tea napkins that are an even-weave fabric. I myself collect tea cups so I thought a fun project would be to do up cross-stitch designs of the motifs on my tea cups so that I have a matching napkin to go with the.

This would obviously be a closer likeness if I were doing non-counted embroidery but I said "Oh but the fabric is so tight and the stitches will be soo tiny..." This was a mistake. I am now going blind. Those stitches are teensy! They're like a millimeter and a half across! On the other hand, I really like the overall effect. It looks nothing like the design on the tea pot but the colors are all there, it shows there's greenery as well as flowers and includes the little bit of pink on the cups. I also love how the pattern generally looks (which is good given that I created it myself).

So now I'm torn. I don't like mismatching things so having one cross-stitched napkin and the rest in free embroidery doesn't appeal. However, doing seven more napkins of these damn tiny stitches doesn't appeal either. I will be getting a better spot lamp soon and possibly a magnifying glass of some sort as well so hopefully that helps with the aching eyes. I'll also be getting an eye exam to check to see if my eyes have gotten worse. After that, new birthday glasses from Zenni! Yea!