Stitching Saturday

Here I am! Up above you see my latest monster - hey, Linda, this book of knitted monsters you gave me has yielded TONS of knitting this year. I seriously want to knit every monster in this book. And I just might.



He's Gort, The Gym Bag Monster, in case you're wondering. In the book, he's striped, but I made him solid.

And all the others I've made striped. Go figure - I suppose I have a rebellious streak. :)



Also, that Red Heart yarn is PERFECT for monsters - squishy soft, a tiny bit bulky, and nice under the fingertips. I've already finished one cuddly monster with this yarn and this guy is #2. I just ordered a dream set of nickel plated needles from Knit Picks, but I've yet to try them - up above you see my trusty Addis, which I am officially in love with.

I'm starting to realize that this blog may become a monthly one, what with all the stuff I try to cram into my days as of late. Feeling Stitchy has been fun, crammed with events, new bloggers, and stitchalongs, my day job has been equally busy, and I even got to do a bit of traveling this month...

My beautiful niece was graduating from high school, so I made the hike to Memphis to see it. I loved Memphis - but being an unusual person, I was struck by unusual things - I LOVED the trees. They were so tall, so green, and so gorgeous - I don't have any photos that preserve the feeling of height and majesty, but it's a gorgeous city.

I had my choice between Graceland and The Memphis Zoo, and so I picked...



Zoo. Of course - zoo. I go to one every chance I can get and I never tire of them. I loved the pyramid theme - and it was well-kept and lovely. There's an awesome Grizzly Bear enclosure that gives them full room to run, and it was fun to watch them play together. Certainly the liveliest Grizzlies I've seen yet in a zoo. I saw one cute lazy panda who really loved air conditioning (who doesn't) and tons of cute apes. I was really impressed by the amount of room the animals have to roam - in my experience it's a close second to the Bronx Zoo and San Diego Zoo.




We also got to visit a curious little place called the House of Mews - it's a tiny shopfront crammed with cats. They all seemed happy and well-cared for, and there are oodles of cat lovers who come in to coddle and pet them. I loved how they hung out in little laundry baskets - I guess it gives them a feeling of comfort and a sense of their own private space.





At my nieces's house, I found myself walking from room to room, admiring my younger niece's paintings:



She's 15 but already has a sense and feel for color and texture. I really loved this butterfly one, and just wish I'd gotten better pics of her other stuff.

Well, that's all for now - hope the summer's been treating you right! :)

Three things thursday: red, teal, chartreuse-y green

A couple of days ago I was tweaking the colors and fonts on Feeling Stitchy, and one of those fun, odd serendipitous color things happened.

I had been planning to feature this awesome Marilyn embroidery (stitched by mega4beth) for days:



I spent much of the day tinkering and toiling with Feeling Stitchy's css, and finally settled on a rather odd teal and chartreuse-y green combo:


Then, I blogged mega4beth's embroidery, and all of a sudden the same two colors were staring right back at me, plus a delicious bright cherry red. If that's not color serendipity, I don't know what is. One of the many reasons I don't mind staring at my monitor until my eyes bleed. :)

It's been so so busy, but again, in a good way. I find myself having to schedule every minute, and each moment that passes I can think of 5 different things I could be / should be doing. The challenge is to settle on the most important, without leaving out the rest. But we have lot of new bloggers starting, and it's warming up to be a wonderful year. That, and I'm liking the new comment system - we finally switched to Disqus.

How are you guys? I'm still here, really! :)

Stitching Saturday: My new Hamtaro mousepad

Here I am, to show you my new Hamtaro mousepad. It was another super-busy month at Feeling Stitchy - so I've been silent here, but blogging a ton, stitching, and fielding new ideas and requests for FS. It's pretty much a full-time job away from my job, but I love it.

Anyway, back to Hamtaro - I bought this stitch-your-own-mousepad kit months ago at Hobby Lobby - it had a silly pattern I couldn't resist that said: "Put on your big girl panties and deal with it." I was going through some tough decisions at the time and I thought a bit of cheesy hilarity would help.

But when I saw this cute Hamtaro pattern on Cross me not I knew I had to stitch it:



The mousepad kit comes with a vinyl surface to stitch on - the squares were teeny, so I stitched him over 2 squares, to make him bigger:


Here's the backside, which is oddly cute as well:


When you're done stitching, you just slide your embroidery into the plastic mousepad cover:




Once in the protector, Hamtaro is safe and sound, and only looks blurry in photos - he's super-cute in real-life though:


The stitching bulks up the mousepad surface a tiny bit, but it's still a pretty good functioning mousepad. I suppose I would like it a little less slick, but I can deal with it. I used slightly different colors than the ones in the pattern - DMC 402 for the mustardy-gold color and a slightly darker cream color (sorry, no number) because the vinyl is already off-white. Super fun!

I've also stitched up 3 motifs from the sweet birthday set Mollie designed for this month's stitchalong:




And I finally completed my own modified version of the February stitchalong, using pipe cleaners, blue aida cloth, and some pink yarn for couching:


Side view totally looks like those creepy black caterpillars you weren't supposed to pick up as a child:


So it's been a BUSY stitching month! Due in part to all this stitching, I watched all of my remaining  episodes of Buffy and Angel, and have sadly had to move on to other shows.

How you you been? :)

typography tuesday: valentines

  valentines courtesy of Ben Kling


These Valentines by Ben Kling have been making the rounds on Facebook, so you've probably seen them already, but I thought they were awesome, so here's a re-share. :)

Visit Ben Kling's blog for the large sizes.


  valentines courtesy of Ben Kling

I'm typically not much for the Holiday of Love, but this year I went on a totally uncharacteristic pink-and-hearts spree. Sorry I've been absent most of the month, but I've been blogging like crazy over on Feeling Stitchy to celebrate embroidery month. I've pretty much spent every waking moment (and some asleep ones, too) on the blog and have lots of interviews and giveaways and love for our awesome and geeky community planned.

Speaking of typography, this weekend I did a giveaway post for Hoopla, and included a pic of the hand-embroidered chapter headings in the book, which I loved:




I also did an English-Spanish interview with Alicia, from the DMC España blog, and would you believe that in all the questions I asked her, I forgot to ask who designed their blog header, which I love:



Hope the Day of Love treats you right. If it doesn't- watch an awful romantic comedy (but wait - aren't they all?), have a glass of your favorite whatever, and eat a bunch of candy. That's what I've got planned for tonight! :)

Photo a Day - January

Phew! I learned a lot from this photo a day challenge. For one - I lack consistency and a sense of common theme. I mostly used vintage-y effects to bring them all together, but I was inconsistent and I'm not impressed.

However, the most valuable thing to come out of this was that I had my camera with me, every single day - something I haven't done in years. I got into the habit of daily photos again, and took a few pics I liked (just not the ones you see here). :)

Oh, and you know I'll be hiding those pics of me in about a day or so. There are few things I loathe more than photos of myself. I know it's weird. Such is my lot in life.

Do you like any of the pics I took? I know they're pretty eh. Thanks for bearing with me, though! :) I didn't do bad with my January resolutions, either. It was a crazy busy month - going out of town, photographing, and blogging in every spare moment I could get, but it was also a really wonderful month.

Maybe in March I'll do another Photo a day. February is gonna be a killer, though - so so so busy! But in a good way. :) Did any of you do a Photo a day? How did it go?