Posts (page 2)

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

To give my left hand I break, I started working on the Peacock Tapestry again. Thanks to the floor stand I got for Christmas, I can work on it without using my hand at all. I don't need to hold the pattern because it's on the laptop, and I organized all the floss into one of those plastic organizer boxes.

It's looking really good. I've changed tactics. Rather than working one colour at a time over the whole piece, I'm doing six. I was going to try parking threads and going by rows, but that kind of technique doesn't work with TW designs. There are too many distinct areas and the colours don't really flow from one place to the next. Working multiple colours is working wonders though. I've already found three spots that I missed when doing the colours separately. This makes it so much easier to see everything in relation to the rest of the design. I'm having fun watching it develop.

There is one obvious drawback to this. I can't work on it in class or in the Concourse anymore. At least, not without taking the whole stand with me. ;-)

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

It's been one hell of a week. I've been sick, first with an ear infection and then a touch of the flu. I've been all queasy and gross feeling all week, and still am a bit. I had toast for dinner today which helps.

My computer died again. I spent a good 6 hours between Monday and yesteday on the phone with Dell. On Monday they decided my hard drive was busted, and sent me a new one yesterday. It was still busted (which I could have told them) so I called them back and spent some time explaining and trying to get them to listen to me. Eventually they caught on that I have a piece of crap with lots of stuff wrong with it so they told me to send it in with most of the peripherals and they are going to check it all. It's about damn time. I stole Dean's iBook for the next week while they fix it so I can still do school stuff.

Tudor visited on Tuesday and delivered a copy of his book, which is amazingly wonderful. Go buy it. I was feeling icky and out of it and forgot about the offer of tea. Bribes work best when you deliver on them.

I crammed like mad in order to finish the WTC quilt squares before Wednesday, but they are done and mailed now. I'm so glad that I'm done. I never should have volunteered for the second one. It was really making my carpal tunnel act up. Oh well. Hindsight.

I got some Koigu KPPPM in the mail that I ordered a few weeks ago. It's beautiful and amazingly soft. I'm going to love the socks I'm making out of it. It bugs me that it's made in Ontario but you pretty much have to buy it from the US. *grumble* It's worth it though.

My amusement for the day: Rocky talked about truthiness and the Colbert Report. Philosophy classes kick serious ass.

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday I started working on the Tapestry again. I've been stubbornly ignoring it because a few weeks ago I got a big tangle at the back and I knew I'd have to cut that mess out and start that spot over. After all that work in that area I was not looking forward to taking it out, so I refused to work on the thing at all. It's all better now. It took about 20 minutes of careful cutting and untangling to get everything back to normal but it was well worth it. The whole snarl looked much worse than it actually was and I lost much less work than I thought I would.

For those of you that are asking why I couldn't just leave the tangle there, since everything looked good from the front: needlework is a strange thing, your reputation depends on the back of your work looking as good as the front, so a knot or a tangle is a huge no-no. Sure, no one would know once the thing is finished and framed, but I would know and the framer would know and that would drive me nuts every time I looked at the thing.

Once I get some notable progress I'll take pictures so you guys can see the pretties. Maybe I'll take pictures of the back too. ;)

For now I'm going to go work on it some more. There's lots of thunder outside making me happy. Storms rock!

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

It's coming along good. I have all the leaves done in the section I'm working on. I'm starting the pears this morning, and should have those done shortly. After that I need to do the filler-colours between the leaves. Once that is done I shall take the promised progress pic for you all.

Edit: The promised update.

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

I got bored with midterm studying and started surfing cross-stitch sites, and came across some neat patterns on Stitching the Night Away. This one caught my attention because of its aboriginal style and turtle motif.

My brother loves turtles, so I think this is going to turn into a gift for him. I'm not sure how to finish it though. This was my first attempt using waste canvas. It seems to have turned out well, though removing the threads was a bit tedious. I'm glad I tried it with a small design and not something larger.

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

I finished the first half of the biscornu I'm doing for the exchange. No pictures until its done though.

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

I finally received my biscornu and it's the coolest thing. I love the design and the colours so much.

Also, my partner sent me lots of loot to go with it. That was much appreciated what with exams looming a week away and massive essays and such.

I'm so happy!

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

I've again participated in yet another cross-stitch exchange, this one autumn-themed. Now that my package has been received and my partner has gotten hers, I can show off what we've done.

Dasha sent me a lovely needlebook that I've been using non-stop since it arrived. It's great. The colours are amazing, the fabric inside is also very fitting, and the size is perfect for the project I've been using it with. She also sent an adorable Russian doll keychain, and a very pretty card for my collection.

See how awesome! I wanted to make myself a needlebook a while ago, but after making my brother a wallet I learned sewing defeats me. I've got this one to do once I get some more practise sewing with stuff that I won't worry about wrecking in the process.

Here's a closeup of the whole pattern:

And a detail shot of the front:

I keep taking it out to look at and pet it. Dasha said she keeps doing the same with what I gave her. I'm glad we're both happy.

I made her the Miniature Autumn Sampler by Teresa Wentzler (I know, I know, I'm obsessed) but turned it into the cover of a book. It's attached in such a way that she can swap the cover onto a new book if she needs to, or take it off the backing completely for use as something else. Part of the requirement for this exchange was that we had to try new finishing techniques and the stuff online was boring so I made something up. Now, I forgot to take pictures but Dasha took some and gave me permission to use them, so here we are.

Here's what the finished product looks like:

The detail shot of the fruit for those interested:

I did really like doing this piece. It was certainly much easier than my other two projects. Even though it's a TW it didn't induce the frustration that usually happens when I work on the others. I liked it so much I might do it again down the road. The pattern is not that costly and I have all the materials, so it's likely. Of course, now I also want to do some of the freebies that I saw on her site, since they'd be detailed but easy as well.

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

I've been eager to learn to spin for a while now, but I didn't know where to start. One day I got bored and starting looking for information on the internet, which lead to my buying a spindle and a bunch of roving to try. Unfortunately, it was taking a long time to arrive in the mail (and we know how impatient I get with the mail) so in a fit of desperation I made this:

My roving arrived that same day, so I decided to see if I could get the hang of spinning from the pictures and such that I'd seen. It was easy! My first single came out surprisingly thin, if a bit underspun in a few places.

Unfortunately, there was no way to wind on in order to spin some more, so I contented myself with the knowledge that I could do this and decided to wait another week for the spindle I ordered.

It finally arrived, and I went straight to work on my first yarn. The first skein is the sky blue that I ordered with the spindle, plied with some of the superwash merino that I had already received. I find the blue is harder to spin evenly, though the superwash is a dream to work with. That is why this skein is more even than the other even though I spun it first. The second skein is more of the blue, plied back onto itself.

I'm still practicing with the blue one, since the other I'd like to be able to spin consistently enough to make yarn for socks with. This is what I currently have:

Originally published at Somebody To Love. You can comment here or there.

You might remember that in my last post I mentioned making my sister some yarn out of the cat hair she'd collected from brushing her cats. I thought we didn't have any pictures of it, but when Dean started showing me the pictures taken last weekend there were quite a few that he'd taken of it. These are the two that I liked.

Most of this came from the same cat, though with 5 of them and a dog around I'm sure there are bits of all of them in it.

The star of today's post: ROSS (and Stephanie's legs)