Back to Blogging

It's November, and I think coming up with a daily post might help bring me back to blogging. For a while, I was thinking it probably wasn't worth it. I mean, who even reads blogs any more? (And then I remembered how much pleasure I took in blogging when I first started...when so few people were in this space and there wasn't even a way for readers to comment!)

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I'm sure everyone has seen this by now—at least three different people shared it with me—but I think it raises an interesting question: 

Do you rescue other people's unfinished projects? 

I think this is an interesting project she is undertaking, but I've got to get my own half-started projects done before I die at 99. (God rest her soul.)

Take a Trip with Me

At the beginning of June we went on a little trip. The dude hadn't been anywhere since December, and he needed a break. I planned a long weekend to Pittsburgh. I know it doesn't sound glamorous, but it was a great trip. I'm enamored with the city.

We visited a number of museums and the like: The Mattress Factory, Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History (great dinosaurs!), The National Aviary*, and the Andy Warhol Museum. At the latter, I took two photos for you. I always take textile photos for you!

The first is a national costume worn by Andy's mother. You can tell someone's region by the costume, but I'm only expert enough to know that much and not which area she was from. (Although it probably said somewhere on one of those little cards.)

These pants were embroidered by Claes Oldenburg's then-wife on the occasion of Warhol's first exhibition. I love that she has "exhibition" written right where it counts. (In the cabinet she's only identified as "Patty," but her name was Patty Mucha). (In fact, she sewed a lot of Oldenburg's soft sculptures.) (Which means she did the grunt work. Trained as an artist and she did the grunt work. Sigh.)

If you are looking for a good restaurant, go to Tako. 

On our way out of town, we went to Fallingwater. I've wanted to go for forever. It was awesome, and now I want to go to other FLW buildings. (I'm up to three including Hollyhock House and the Guggenheim Museum.) I am, however, glad I did not have to deal with Frank Lloyd Wright as my architect.

* I did not know there was a national aviary (bird zoo**) in Pittsburgh. In many of the exhibits the birds are loose and flying around you or walking right up to you. It is awesome, you should go. 

** I'm sure you don't need the help, but I kept saying we went to an aviary and people gave me the puzzled look, so I started saying bird zoo.

Reverse Bucket List

I've made some starts today but they are all gifts I cannot share. So I consulted my 93 ideas for nablopomo and decided to make a "reverse bucket list," instead of a list of to-dos, it's a list of dones. I will focus on needlework, otherwise, we'll be here all night.

Recently I bogged that I was no longer taking classes, and Jo asked if I'd done stumpwork and punchneedle. And I have, in classes. In fact I learned stumpwork back in the olden days of Spirit of Cross-stitch (mid90s).

Done That
Assissi
Bargello
Bead embroidery
Blackwork
Candlewicking
Crewel
Cross Stitch
Drawn thread
Filet lace (Lacis)
Hardanger
Lacis
Needlepoint
Pulled thread
Punchneedle
Ribbon embroidery
Stumpwork
Surface embroidery

So there are definitely things I could learn, like Schwalm, Mountmellick and other whitework techniques, goldwork, Japanese embroideries, Wessex, and the list goes on.

Whenever I make lists like this, I am reminded of my idea to make a Stitcher's Life List ala the Knitter's Life List. It's in there people, It's just a matter of it coming out of my head before it comes out of someone else's!

Embroidery

Embroidery is my crafting roots. My mother embroidered everything when I was young, and we had little crewel kits to keep us busy on rainy days. This cute little bookmark is a return of sorts. Pattern here.

For those of you who miss the cross-stitch content, I am looking for a day that I can dedicate to that craft, and searching for a small project. I don't want to neglect that which brings us together.

It's...What?...I DON'T KNOW!

In another installment of you don't have to be a journalist to write for the internet, HuffPo has shown off a cross-stitch needlepoint.

Photo by BriocheBun

Oh, for crissake's, people. Even Wikipedia gets it right. All of the stuff is called embroidery--although there is also something called surface embroidery which is specific rather than general. But cross-stitch, needlepoint, blackwork, and crewel (among others) are all embroidery. But you don't have to say "cross-stitch embroidery" or "blackwork embroidery" unless you know nothing at all about needlework and you want to make sure that granny stuff doesn't rub off on you. It's all done with threads, a needle with an eye, and ground fabric. The ground fabric and the threads are what distinguishes each type.

Fortunately, someone gave a sassy answer in the comments so I didn't have to heave my shoulders and sigh while rolling my eyes and writing another sarcastic response to people who don't know anything about a subject writing about it without doing any research.

The fact that this is a celebrity face in cross-stitch only serves to rub salt in the wound.

Two Project Post

I didn't have it in me to post yesterday. How is it that vacation always makes one more tired?

I stitched this Pine Mountain kit on the way to the airport. It's a good thing I had it with me because we got stuck in Traffic-with-a-capital-T. There was an accident on one major road we take to the airport, and when we finally got off that road it was smooth sailing. When we were in the middle of Sunshine Skyway, my father said we had 30 minutes to go. Our flight was at 7:35, and it was 6:05. Not great but not bad. Of course we ended up in more traffic and arrived at the airport at 6:50. My sister put our tickets through, the machine accepted them, and my mother asked the woman at the desk if we would make it.
"When's the flight?"
"7:35."
"No."
"But the machine just took our tickets."

She sees our baggage claim tickets have printed; she takes our bags, hands us our receipts, and shouts, "GO!"

We thought for sure we'd get held up going through security but there were only eight people in line. Which stops moving when we arrive. Because some little shit ass brat brought a knife with him. And for some reason, they have to stop xraying bags until a  supervisor can look at it. (Because opening the bag is above the agent's pay grade, or what?) In the end, we had time to get food and perform necessary functions before we got on the plane. I don't recommend cutting it that close, but if you do, make sure you have a project with you! It will keep you calm.

Yesterday I made this bird's nest charm. I'm very pleased with how this came out. If I did it again, I'd use only three beads. I think it's a little easier to make a circle around three beads. This would be a nice charm for a mother; you could use pearls and gemstones the color of her little chicks' birthstones. I used a creamy pearl, a gold stone bead, an amethyst bead, and some kind of green bead because it's what I had hanging around.

Dilated

I have been having trouble with my eyes. I'm finding that I need more magnification when I stitch because it's hard to focus otherwise. And it's especially difficult to look up from my work and focus in the distance or even the middle distance. Since I was about 20, I've occasionally used glasses to correct my vision--I have one eye that sees near and one eye that sees far. I don't need glasses to see, but sometimes it works a little better with than without.

That's pretty much what the ophthalmologist told me today--I don't need to wear glasses but I could. But when I saw how much sharper I see in the near eye, I realized it's time. Of course, since I had to get progressive lenses (when did I get so effing old?) I couldn't get the cute Nine West pair (the lens needed to be bigger). I did resist the Pradas the technician showed me. I ended up with the Kate Spade Madelyn in olive tortoise. Because picking out new glasses when you have dilated pupils and no bff to give approval is just what you want to do.

The good news is that the doctor saw my stitching--and I was stitching 40 count over one with no magnification (though my arms were waving about like I was playing the trombone)--and told me that I had to see the embroidered quilts at the Perelman Building at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I'm pretty sure he's right.

Okay, I've cooked dinner in my sunglasses. When will my eyes return to normal?

Dananananananana Nananananananana

These shirts are for my other nephews. The little one watches the big one's shows. Now he says, "I Batman," which gave me the idea for the shirts. (I was going to do sweatshirts but Target failed me.) The bigger nephew was going to get a robot shirt, but then my MIL told me that she bought little one a wheelie bag (overnight case) and his momma thought the big one would be jealous. Thus, two the same. Eventually I am sure they'll all develop their own tastes and ideas and likes and dislikes and then it will be twice as hard to buy them things.

A pair of jeans each and a set of Lincoln logs to share, bring on my flight. (Maybe, we're on BA.)

I used to make fusible web sweatshirts for my nieces all the time until eventually they got too old. Fortunately, these boys aren't too old yet. And I will succeed in making something for everyone on the list. Well, maybe. (I am closing in on the deadlines, but I was reading my December archives and for some reason, I feel way ahead over those years. Ahem.)

I also made this eyeglasses case for my BIL the computer whiz. I combined this embroidery with this eyeglass case pattern to create:

Back to finishing the stockings.

Embroidery: A Book Review

Last time I was at the library, I picked up three books: Games Mother Never Taught You (must read), Sand in My Bra (okay), and Embroidery: Techniques and Patterns by Marie-Noelle Bayard which I shall review for you here.

The book is divided by type of stitch including outlining, filling, counted, drawn thread, and couching.

Each stitch is clearly illustrated with photographs on its own page. Bayard gives the number of steps required to make each stitch, rates each from easy to difficult, and suggests threads and fabrics that would highlight the texture of the stitch. The book seems to have an excellent mix of easy, intermediate, and difficult stitches. While there are more than 100 stitches, it is not exhaustive; no queen stitch, for example. But there are plenty of stitches that make this book worthwhile.

And the directions for the French knot are fabulous! She lists the four main mistakes people make while making the knot, so you can avoid them and make pretty knots.

Each section of stitches culminates in a beautiful project, very lovely and sophisticated as we have come to expect from the French designers. I would caution, however, that only a single stitch is used from each section on each project, which I found disappointing.

The index is visual and alphabetical, and each stitch family is stitched on a different color fabric so you can immediately tell if you're looking at an outline stitch, a filling stitch, or couching.

pretty, pretty

Today I was going to review a book, since I have done no stitching this week. Maybe tomorrow, but I've got to prep for the guest.

But then, lucky you, this fell into my inbox. A woman in San Francisco used to bind books. Which she embroidered. Oh, beauty! They are on view at Arion Press in SF through April 13.

Bust-in' out all over

The new issue of Bust came today, and in it, I found an advertisement for this site: Sublime Stitching. The designs by embroiderer Jenny Hart are retro and cool, "not your gramma's embroidery." The pirate's probably going to jump to the top of the post-afghan stitching pile since the Dude's writing a pirate movie. The mermaids are groovy too. Make sure to read Jenny's story about how she got into stitching; it's pictorial and very touching.

I haven't done a lot of surface embroidery since I was a kid: I did a lot of crewel back in the 70s. Until my dissertation advisor's retirement last year... I contributed a square to a quilt people made. Mine was the only embroidered piece--I did a portrait of Lizzie Borden sneaking up on her father with an axe. I based it on Chris Hamilton's paintings of Lizzie Borden that I found on the web (they've disappeared, though a google images search will take you to the ghost). It makes sense in context: my dissertation was on women's violence. I did it in chain stitch with rayon floss. What a bitch, but it looks great. If I can get a picture of it, I'll post it here. Shoulda thoughta that sooner.