Recently in Embroidery Category

Okay, so I missed a week or two. Shoot me. No, don't.  I have too many projects to finish. Either way:

• My brother is out of Afghanistan! He is safe and sound with his family!  I am so grateful!
• I had a wicked awful dream that could make a killer plot for NaNoWriMo if I can flesh it out more.  I always wanted to write at least one horror novel.  Just one.  One that is enough to make the skin crawl in the shadows of the night.  Just one.
• On an SCA front, we will have a new Baron and Baroness this weekend, and I'm already seeing those I determined will be total dickheads fulfill my expectations and several I thought would fall to the wayside declare they will do the best they can for the good of our Barony.  Those latter folks make me feel proud.  The others will definitely get a good scowling.
• My craft room is functional!  Super Hubby taught me to lay tile, so I spent the weekend ripping up carpet and laying said tile in a non-sexual manner, and feeling quite proud of myself.  Of course, I wish he had some advice for not wearing most of the adhesive.  I couldn't get my damn shoe off...
• My craft room is functional!  It bears repeating.  It's not finished, but oh, the paper mache and paint will splatter once again!  I'm all giddy and stuff!
• I finished an emergency embroidery project that was well-received by our baroness-elect.  Of course, I forgot to take pictures.
• Apparently, Zombie Apocolypse is the theme for this year's Halloween party.  That was the original plan, sure, but we couldn't get the venue we wanted, so I thought I'd put it off until next year when there's more time to plan...  Yeah, I had people and their children - seriously, their kids - pout at me.  The words "But, Richard has been planning this all year." came to me and I had to relent.  So, zombies.  This is not a bad thing, but the difference in venue definitely poses some interesting hurdles.  No time to teach the zombies how to do the Thriller dance, though.  Bummer.
• Next year's Halloween party theme is Freak Show.  Oh, yes, baby, I so have plans...
• It's going to be hot as hell for the event this weekend, isn't it?  *sigh*
• Oh, wait, it's supposed to rain all weekend, so the humidity will prevent me from actually being able to get out of my dresses.  Joy.
• Weight Watchers...still doing it...sort of...I keep hoping for the jello-giggly mindset to turn to concrete...
• Holy moley I want a whole lot of chips.
• Tomorrow will ben an adventure of juggling.  Eventually, we will get to site.  Whether or not we have food, we'll see.

And, this introduces your Friday.  Friday will be as plain or awful as you see it.  It's Friday.  It's always better than monday by default.  Live it up! ________________________ I am totally counting the points for these italics.  Totally.  Maybe.  Well shit.  This was easier on paper.

Yeah, so the townhouse is drowning in boxes, packed and unpacked.  My last bit of sanity, such as it is, is hanging by a thread.  The cats are threatening to send themselves to China (that should tell you something).  Life is full of chaos, chaos, and "why the hell are we keeping this crap?"  As a result, there hasn't been a whole lot of creating. This kind of bugged me.  I'm not really happy if I'm distracted from my creating for a long period of time. Enter Lara. She's awesome.  She's fabulous.  She makes fabric and anything fiber beg for mercy.  She gave me a call a couple of weekends ago with an emergency.  The call went something like this: "So...how long do you think it would take you to embroider to black snakes?" "Um...I don't know and why?" As you have been told time and again, we are members of the SCA. Sometimes in the SCA, people get important accolades for various achievements, like service, the arts, sciences, fighting, being really cool to new people, showing up... Well, a friend of ours was getting knighted.  This was some seriously awesome news. Now, Lara volunteered, she said, to make him a cloak.  This is not an uncommon gift for such a ceremony.  However, she did not receive the materials to make said cloak until very close to the event.  If you're making a cloak for someone who is receiving a peerage, you don't bloody throw it together.  But, you do if you can't get the materials from other people until the last minute. This is why a new unofficial rule has been made in our group: if you insist on being awesome enough to be elevated, you better damn well give us at least a month to plan or by god, we will send in cracked-out over-weight can-can dancers to your damn ceremony. Anyway, my friend needed help.  Hell, I needed an excuse to ignore projects.  (What is it about projects you must do?  They take on an air of suckage compared to projects you want to do.  I have learned I can no longer take commissions because of this.  That might be wrong, but apparently, unless the projects are emergencies or happen on my own time, they take forever for me to finish.) So, I  embroidered snakes. There were two, but the other snake was a mirror image of this one, so I just took a picture of one. They're pretty easy, which is good because I had four days to do them. This is not a complaint.  I was happy to do them.  I love me some embroidery.  But, man, there were at least two nights were I saw the dark side of two in the morning, so I'm rather glad they weren't any more complicated than they were, and I'm also very glad I learned several new stitches. Yay learning! The pictures of James wearing the cloak are still on the camera, but it was lovely.  Lara did a fantastic job, and I was happy to be a part of it.  It was a fabulous moment in time.  (I will try to post the pictures later.) However, if she ever elevates and gives us less than a month to procure an item such as a cloak that is worthy of her status, I will personally infect her house with swin flu and rabies. I'm just sayin'... ___________________ I have apparently become the go-to person for emergency embroidery projects.  Until the SCA, I didn't know those existed.  I don't mind, but it's kind of funny.  People outside the fiber arts think "emergency embroidery project" is an alien venture.  It can't possibly exist because, you know, everything is done by machine. Yeah, well, in my world where machine embroidery is cheating "emergencies" happen, and by God, I will try to meet them.  Take that you damn machines.

The Mardi Gras mask is in its second stage of drying. February seriously got away from me, but I am determined to meet my deadline.  It's not an overly difficult mask, just in need of some purgurtory time in the oven. I have to pay some serious attention to my project list, which I wrote specifically to prevent this kind of project crunch. If anyone else has made such a thing work, please instruct me. Anyway, I thought I'd at least post a couple of pics as I have some ongoing background projects that get attention when things are drying, the hooks are resting, or I'm trying to prevent total project ADD. Right now, the main project that hovers in the background is a set of sweet bags that I'm trying to complete as an SCA project.  They're gifts for the royals from the embroidery guild.  Each king and queen will receive embroidery bags.  The queens get red roses; the kings get golden crowns. I only took on two of the bags, one for each, only because I'm slow as Christmas to embroider, and I have so many other projects going on.  (However, if there is a dropping of the ball with embroidery works in the guild like we did last Gulf Wars, there will be some serious reckoning.  I might not be the head of the guild, but I have had it up to my forehead with people in this society not communicating when they can't get something done.  It's a teeth-grinding pet peeve.) Anyway, right now, I'm working on the red rose. For some reason, I decided to learn some new stitches along the way, so it's sort of become a strange sampler. The green is all in split stitch.  The middle petals are in satin stitch.  The rest I'm working in chain stitch. Don't ask me why I decided to do that.  Insanity is the only excuse I have. Either way, I think it's coming out rather nicely nonetheless. The only other thing I have to post is the possible colors for the OWOH Wee Dragon. She requested a spiraled deep forest green and black. I currently have what I consider a deep forest green.  But, one person's deep forest green might be another person's "Oh my god, what were you thinking?!" So, I emailed her and asked. Still, this photo is the closest I could get to what the actual green looks like in person.  The rest seemed to washed out.  (I swear I'm a better photographer in the Great Outdoors.) I hope she likes it. Of course, there are other projects.  There are always others.  I like to pretend I have a grip on things. And, I do. Most of the time. I know I'm not alone here.  What do we of the Want To Spend Free Time Doing Projects fiber do?  We want to give up eating but there's that whole starving thing.  In this current economy, most of us can't give up our day jobs.  I feel like some half-crazed mad scientist cackling at the next crazy idea to make this work.  Oh, yes, just give me some paper mache, a few skeins of yarn, and some electricity, and by God, they'll never say I'm mad again... Sleep. We don't really need that, right? ____________________ Changing careers has been the most amazing boost to my creativity.  I'm not sure that's a good thing.  I'm thinking after so many years of sitting locked in a cage, my creativity has become this monster unleashed that has demanded I either scratch its ears to keep it happy or risk wondering why people are asking where the neighbors went. Creativity is a cruel master.