new project

Started a new project the other day. It could be finished but I think I'll add another row of the moth pattern before the top one, but with slightly different colors. 

I do like how they've turned out, and it makes the frustration that comes with satin thread almost worth it. I hate satin thread. Hate it to death! Sometimes you need the effect though.

Might I recommend to all a book and a sequel to that book? The books are Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy by Lisa See. They are absolutely wonderful. She's most known, I think, for her book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan which is quite good, but the two I just mentioned are a lot better (and that's saying something). Shanghai Girls follows two sisters sold in marriage to strangers in California. They're going to avoid going but then the Japanese come and their tickets to the US seem like the only escape. That's just the very beginning of the book but you can read longer descriptions elsewhere. Trust me when I say it's a wonderful, worthwhile read and the sequel, Dreams of Joy, is even better.

shine on, shine on harvest moon...

My best African violet

The days have been long, but I've immersed myself in reading about Mao's 'Great Leap Forward' and the resulting massive famine and extreme leaps of stupidity. 

I think my creativity gene might just be on vacation. Or that colorfade has sapped everything from me. Maybe that's it, repetitive patterns are bad for the brain! That piece is almost done, as it the smaller green to blue with the same pattern. 

Tonight I started on piece from Leslie Wilkins' Traditional Blackwork Samplers. Then I messed it up and had to unpick an entire evening's work. Thank you, brain-dead Meredith. 

It's a good night to look at the moon. Why? Well, it's full and it's the Moon Festival tonight! So I stood at the open window and sang all the moon songs I know, quite loudly.  A lot of them are old 30s and 40s songs, so maybe some of the oldies in my building got a nice surprise.

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.

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.

In Pursuit of Order

I can't wait to start chewing these cuticles
and driving everyone crazy with symmetry.

The older I get the more my slightly OCD habits become more obvious. I'm a bit odd in that I don't have a particular compulsion for cleanliness, I'm quite a messy crafter. I'd love for things to be perfect and each thing to have a place but I don't have the physical ability to make that happen. Plus I dislike other people organizing my things.

At boarding school after meals we have "stacking." You scrape and the stack the plates at your table, put all the silverware on one plate, stack the cups, etc... I had trouble with cups. There were two types of small plastic cup that were the same size but stacked differently so one stacks a bit shorter than the other. I would trade one type of cup for the other with a nearby table so I could have two symmetrical stacks. Obviously they could all go in one tower but that was too high and made me nervous because of the possibility of it falling over and clattering everywhere.

I also get obsessive about arranging things. I can spend days reorganizing my books into their various genres (and of course they MUST be alphabetized by author). I even spend too much time organizing the books on my Kindle. I don't have enough DVDs to warrant alphabetization so I organize them by spine color, and I like to re-do that every few months. I do the same thing with my embroidery floss, since I like the colors to be organized by shade from light to dark.

What I'm more worried about is that I'm starting to have compulsions about making sure the door is locked. I live in public housing, there are very odd people about and it is important to the keep the door locked. After a year here I now check it's locked every time I walk by and sometimes worry over whether I locked the door when I go out. I don't particularly want to be that person. I have enough to worry about already.

It's hard for me to look at my mom's computer desktop because of useless icons all over the place. I always have to stop and clean it up. I look over people's shoulders and know that I could do whatever-it-is on the computer faster and more efficiently than they can. This drives everyone crazy and makes them want to kill me.

What obsessions/compulsions do you have?

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.