Enemy of Entropy

Archive for Needlework

Um, Thank You?

10 January 2009, 8:53 pm. 3 Comments. Filed under Family, Needlework.

Look! TWO posts in ONE day! Maybe I’m finally crawl­ing out of my pit of depression.

My very help­ful child dis­ap­proved of how I was treat­ing my small stitch­ing project, so she sweetly put it in a huge Ziplock bag and “put it away.”

I have absolutely no idea where “away” might be, but it isn’t in my stitch­ing bag, or near my recliner, or in the area where I’ve been sit­ting in the liv­ing room. Now she says she didn’t put it any­where. Buh?

And we stopped at Michael’s yes­ter­day to get the DMC I needed for it!1

I also got the fab­ric for two big­ger pieces, though, so I can start one of those. Tech­ni­cally, I know that I have the fab­ric for Deep Peace around here some­where, but I couldn’t find it, so I got a new piece. Now the orig­i­nal fab­ric will, of course, make itself known.

Smaller, less involved projects are bet­ter to do while in com­pany, though. And it’s date night. The girl is, her­self, out on a date, so I can’t even shang­hai her into help­ing find the small project. Grump. She found sup­plies for a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent art projects while we were at Michael’s, too, so I expect heavy art­ing from her shortly.

We picked up din­ner for the three of us at Lit­tle Azio’s on the way home, which was as deli­cious as usual. That was a lovely way to end a tir­ing, but reward­ing, day.

1 I pre­fer shop­ping at an LNS, but my favorite went online-​​only and this was an instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion thing.

Cur­rent Mood: (cheerful) cheerful
Cur­rent Music: Dead­man “Where the Music’s Not Forgotten”

New Year’s Eve

31 December 2008, 8:52 pm. 4 Comments. Filed under Family, Needlework.

I hate com­ing up with titles. Can you tell?

Happy New Year to all of you. I hope to see more of you in per­son this year!

I’m still not feel­ing well at all, so I haven’t been online much. Despite that, my wrists have been aching as if I were work­ing again. How does that happen?

Our Yule was qui­etly pleas­ant. I hope your win­ter hol­i­day was as good.

I did finally fin­ish stitch­ing the Fairy Tale Sam­pler for Sam. It didn’t take that much stitch­ing (so it can’t be blamed for the wrist pain), but I did have to re-​​purchase some Mill Hill beads. That gave me an excuse (like I needed it) to talk to Susan of Nease’s Needle­work, which is always lovely. But now it’s finished!

My cam­era bat­tery won’t recharge any­more, so I’ll have to con­vince the girl to take a photo of the piece for me.

I think I’m finally ready to do Deep Peace. It’s a gor­geous piece, and some peo­ple I love dearly got all the sup­plies for it as a gift for me a few years back. Unfor­tu­nately, we broke up right after that, and every time I started to work on it, I cried. I think there’s been enough time now that I can focus on the happy mem­o­ries instead of the hard stuff.

I think I need to start a smaller project, too, that I can carry around with me. Com­plex projects don’t lend them­selves to pro­duc­tiv­ity while doing any­thing else, any­way. Sam tends to get me so inter­ested in gam­ing that I can’t get much stitch­ing done. Multi-​​person games are bet­ter for needle­work, because I stitch while the focus is on some­one else.

I’m not really into New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions, and if I made them seri­ously, I’d be more likely to do so at Samhain than the end of January/​beginning of Decem­ber. Still, I’ve been real­iz­ing how much I’ve missed needle­work. My eyes are still giv­ing me trou­ble, but I got out an old, portable magnifier/​travel light and that helps. I think it may be worth­while to check into a mag­ni­fier attach­ment for my Ott Lite (after get­ting new glasses). I’m going to try stitch­ing more reg­u­larly, and I’d really like to learn needle­point and knit­ting and/​or cro­chet­ing. I think I can man­age the needle­point on my own, but not the yarn stuff. Hope­fully I can find some­one local who is will­ing to teach me. Appar­ently there’s a group meet­ing at a local library that may be a possibility.

I thought my DMC was get­ting too old for use or some­thing, because it kept fray­ing apart while I was stitch­ing. I finally real­ized (after buy­ing 3 new skeins of black floss) that I’d been using those nee­dles that doesn’t require thread­ing (which I love), and that they stress the floss (and the floss slips out eas­ily). I switched back to a reg­u­lar tapes­try nee­dle and presto! the prob­lem was gone. I can’t find those no-​​thread nee­dles any­where online, so I guess other folks fig­ured that out far more quickly than I did! I have a two-​​sided nee­dle that came with a mag­a­zine or some such, but I don’t know that I can quite fig­ure out how to use it.

Sam and I are stay­ing in this evening, avoid­ing all the obnox­ious drunks in favor of our own cel­e­bra­tion. The girl is here, too, because her beau is in Europe with his fam­ily and most of her other friends are also out of town (some­thing about a Flam­ing Lips concert?).

After get­ting caught up with all the shows I enjoy, I went look­ing for some­thing else to view. I enjoy Bones, but I find the sizist com­ments (and plots) highly offen­sive. I tried to watch the first episode of The Men­tal­ist online, but it keeps tim­ing out. Sam got the first disc of The Tudors from Net­flix, and it’s inter­est­ing at times. I tend to get annoyed with the lib­er­ties they’ve taken with his­tory, though.

SBQ: Overdyed Floss or Hand-​​dyed Fabric?

1 September 2008, 4:57 pm. 2 Comments. Filed under Needlework.

I’m quite late with the cur­rent Stitch­ing Blogger’s Ques­tion, which is:
If you had to choose, would you rather spend money on overdyed floss
or hand-​​dyed fabric?

Overdyed floss, cer­tainly. I’ve only pur­chased one piece of hand-​​dyed fab­ric, and nobody is likely to go, “Oh, wow!” about the effect in the fin­ished piece (although I’m happy, because I couldn’t find any other fab­ric that was exactly right). I seri­ously doubt that any­one but another devoted stitcher would ever know that the fab­ric is hand-​​dyed.

The overdyed flosses I’ve used, though, fre­quently lead to incred­i­ble effects that are appar­ent to any­one who views the pieces. They’re usu­ally a joy to work with, as well.

SBQ: Balance?

14 July 2008, 10:07 pm. 1 Comment. Filed under Needlework.

The Stitch­ing Blog­gers Ques­tion of the Week (really last week) is:

How do you bal­ance your stitch­ing time with your other oblig­a­tions
such as work, house­hold chores, etc.?

That isn’t really an issue for me, as I haven’t been stitch­ing lately. I really need to go buy some floss so I can get past a stum­bling block on my most active cur­rent project.

Other than that, the only times I’ve ever really stitched have been when I didn’t “need” to do some­thing else, and usu­ally when I’ve been mul­ti­task­ing. It’s rare that I’m not gam­ing or oth­er­wise engaged while stitching.

SBQ: Stitching Publications

19 June 2008, 5:00 am. 1 Comment. Filed under Needlework, SBQ.

The Stitch­ing Blog­gers Ques­tion of the Week:
Do you cur­rently sub­scribe to any stitch­ing pub­li­ca­tions or have you in the past? (Either in print or online) If so, which ones?

I don’t sub­scribe to any at the moment, and I rarely buy them off the rack. I have hun­dreds of them in my stash, and I keep mean­ing to go through and just keep the designs I’m still plan­ning to stitch, but I never get around to doing it! I stopped buy­ing them because I real­ized that I haven’t ever stitched one sin­gle pat­tern in any of those hun­dreds of mag­a­zines.
Read on…

 

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