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.

moths and daleks

Well there's news all around. I finished my moth piece. Again, it comes from Leslie Wilkins' Traditional Blackwork Samplers, though I've removed a lot of the little elements which I felt took away from the lovely moth. I'm fairly pleased with it. Not thoroughly pleased but I'll give it to someone so I don't have to look at it any more.

Also, someone will be stitching my Dalek pattern on stage in a play they're in! It's the play The Great Fire, being performed in Chicago at the Lookingglass Theater (which just won an award for Best Regional Theater). So hundreds of people will be witnessing my pattern being stitched whether they know it or not. Too bad you can't send business cards with a .jpg file! It's a nice warm feeling though.

I have been so lazy with the crafts though. I resolve to start work on a new funny pattern tomorrow though. Perhaps a Tom Lehrer quote.

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?