It's better

Here's a preview of the pattern I'm featuring tomorrow on Feeling Stitchy for Wonderful Wednesday - this lovely free pattern was tweeted to us last week by Modern Folk Embroidery, and to me, it speaks volumes.

I'm going to be totally honest - these past few weeks have been hard. Every day, I find myself re-assessing where I am, and how I am to respond. The acts of hate I have seen out there don't belong in the country I love, and yet, they're there. There is division in families, friendships, workplaces and churches. I find myself asking each day "what can I do?" What can I do to stem the tide of hate, what can I do to protect the people in this country who are afraid, who are being attacked, and who are vulnerable?

It's taken some time, but here's my answer: every day, however I can, I'm going to do what I can do.

Every month, I've decided to donate to a different organization, even if it's just a small amount, to protect the rights of people that are being threatened in this country, and protect the fundamental freedoms of this country which make it truly great. This month, there were quite a few, so I started off with more than one, and I'll continue as my budget allows:

To protect the freedom of the press and ensure that no president may threaten a free press, I subscribed to:

The New York Times

To support publications that write things I am enriched by, write challenging articles that are rigorously fact-checked, and make me want to learn more, I subscribed to:

The New Yorker

To hold the governing bodies of this country to their highest standard, I donated to:

The ACLU

These are all small things, the mere lighting of a candle, but each time I can, I will do what I can. Where my budget will not allow, I'll do my best to help with my hands and my feet.

But above all, when I see people being threatened, or who are being hurt or are afraid, I will stand up for them, however I can. As my favorite prayer says, I will do all of this "with God's help."

Bowie completed

It is quite nice to finally be done with a project - this was a nice cross stitch from a free pattern - just complex enough to take me more than a week to stitch, but simple enough that I couldn't get discouraged or bored.

I'd say this is a perfect cross stitch for a beginner who is looking for a new challenge. Much appreciation to the creator, F.P. Molina who did a great job with this one. If you're into knitting, there's a knitted chart up for grabs, too.

I subbed a few colors I didn't have on hand, for something close (the orange, the blue, the darker flesh tone, and the pink on the mouth). The rest of the colors are from the pattern. Great fun, and the person who received it loved it.

Free pattern from F.P. Molina

Bowie in progress

Just a little something I'm working on - I'm teaching someone nice to cross stitch, and it's such a pleasant, familiar feeling to separate the little piles of floss and work in an orderly fashion...



I'm still playing with the older camera - and it's a tricky business getting a clear, sharp photo - but the added challenge has made it fun. I always enjoy working within strict limitations, and seeing what I can make of them.









I only realized this week I've reached my 10 year anniversary of blogging - 10 years! In honor of this occasion, I've been tweaking the template a bit to spiff things up a bit. Apologies if you see something bizarre as I muck around in the code. :)

Stitching Saturday: It's just my face

Pretty much the second after I saw this pattern by Plastic Little Covers, I had it purchased and ready to stitch up. I whipped out the text in about 2 hours of stitching while getting my car serviced (hilarious for onlookers, I know) and the borders took me another few hours.

If I was in a hurry, I'd stitch it as it is above - just a few bits of the border look just as delightful. :)



But the full borders do add a nice vintage touch. This piece is PERFECT for me - I am a lifelong sufferer of CBF. I used to call it my "street face", aka the face I wear so no one will mess with me, but if the truth be told, it isn't exactly something I can turn on and off, and it is on more often than it is off. :)

Well, I'm gearing up to work on a new crewel class review for FS - more on that as soon as I stitch something! Thanks to everyone who commented on my huge cross stitch piece - I'm working on her steadily while watching 1980's Battlestar Galactica. :)

Stitching Saturday: A little cross stitch

This weekend and last, I decided to catch up on a little cross stitching. This is one of those pastimes that takes forever. Above was my starting point, last Saturday morning...



And here she was after a good 6 hours of stitching...



And here she was after another 6-8 hours of stitching. Can you even see the progress? :) I'm filling in the wings. Reading the graph is one of those things you must have an absolutely clear head for - all those little black and white symbols make your head spin. :)

Any of you working on something huge? Or am I the lone crazy one? ;)

Stitching Saturday: Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum

detail from Angel of Autumn

I have carried many angels with me in my moves, life changes, and travels for the past 14 years. They are Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum's angels, and they have tagged along for the ride as I moved from college, back home, to New York City, then back home to Texas again.

Angelica was begun in my second year of college - I'd say it was 1998. I'd just lost someone very dear to me, and maybe this was what inspired me to begin a project of such impossible scale: thousands of tiny stitches on 32 count linen, with beads, metallic threads, and 1 over 1 thread stitches. I hadn't even worked with linen before. Had no clue what a beading needle was! Personally, I think I was a bit crazy to even attempt it:



About a month ago, I pulled Angelica out of the box she'd traveled in, almost finished, for 14 years. So you might notice a few discolored edges and a spot or two.

I had worked on her little by little, growing at turns discouraged with the task before me. Then, rather inexplicably, when all I had left to do was finish the beading, I folded her up and carried her around NY for another 6 years.



All it took was a few turns with the beading needle to remember why I'd almost abandoned her. :) But I refused to give in now, so close to the end, and I finally finished her!

I thought it was weird that I'd so randomly unboxed her - why, after all this time? Then I popped over to Marilyn's site for a quick visit and saw with great sadness that she'd just passed away.


This is 1x1 stitching, by the way. I remember almost pulling out my hair in the process. :)

I'm too old to believe in coincidences, and I've had too many loved ones pass to the other side to think that they do not nudge us at times to finish what is left undone.

So I picked up the 2 other angels I'd left incomplete (yes I'd started 2 more without finishing the first - bad crafter! :) and I vow that this is the year I'll finish them.

Angel of Autumn



Angel of Spring



Here they both are after 8 hours of additional stitching:


Yes, I know it's almost impossible to detect my progress. :) It's very easy to get discouraged working on projects at this scale - Pam just finished her own huge cross stitch project (it's AMAZING) and that gave me a little nudge of encouragement, too.

If you've never visited Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum's site, Told In a Garden, I highly recommend it. You can easily see her training as a fashion artist in the way her designs move. That, and the detail on her faces is simply out of this world. I know frilly dresses are not for everyone, but I think that anyone can appreciate her artistry. But more than that, the words she left behind, the things she found important, what she chose to commemorate, these are all things that speak volumes to me about the kind of woman she must have been.

And, if the Angelica images look familiar to you, you may have seen them on the DMC Threads blog - where they appeared in a tribute post for Marilyn.

So there we are, what I've been stitching lately! I've also been working on more Wee Little Stitches (pics soon) and have made a bit of progress on my blanket. Have any of you ever stitched any of Marilyn's designs? Or maybe just something incredibly huge that you thought you'd never finish? :)

And here he is...

So here's an update on the silliest cross-stitch project, ever. Well, at least, that's my goal. The unlucky party on the receiving end of this gift should be receiving maximum embarrassment from this. :) I wanted to use a font that was a bit more fun, but it was hard to find something that fit the circle hoop above (which I'll probably keep it in). I was re-thinking the phrase because it's absolutely everywhere and so Hot Topic, but if the goal is maximum embarrassment for my friend, I think it scores....

I also experimented with metallic floss - silver, in particular, but the combination of it on a black background just looked super-cruddy:

You'd have to see a macro close-up to see just how bad it looks, but it's bad, people, it's bad. It's odd how regular floss has a much nicer sheen to it, something about the texture makes it sit and look so much better in cross stitch.

What do you guys think? If you could have a red-eyed, creepy Robward say anything in cross stitch, what would he say? I'm sure the creative collective consciousness has something better than my awful Hot Topic phrase. Or worse? Worse works, too! ;)

Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving - I spent mine with a friend's family and it was just perfect, fun, funny, and awesome. Oh, and I'll be showing you my wonderful Christmas decorating soon! Yes, that is sarcasm. :)