Link to a fabric and book giveaway!

For my stitchy, creative friends:

Amy Barickman, the founder of Indygo Junction & The Vintage Workshop in Kansas City, is having a giveaway on her blog. Check out her link to see how to enter. It might do me some good to work on a project that is sweet and cute instead of subversive for a change!

Happy Monday!

Tschus.

Sunday Smorgasbord

It has been a very productive week! I've managed to crank out a few pieces of stitchery for people. I feel very fortunate to have a steady stream of orders as it makes me feel productive and useful. My self-esteem needed a boost, quite frankly. The tough part of this is that I'm at the end of the month before my next RA shot and my hands are hurting from stitching so much. But I am not going to complain about this!!

So while I'm stitching, I'm also watching a ton of movies and tv shows on Netflix. It helps to pass the time. I'm mainly watching episodes of Bones. Once in a while I get a hankering for a bad horror movie. Ron and I ran across The Human Centipede which we started watching last month but I shut it off after 30 minutes. How f*cking disturbing!!! Has anyone seen this? Right now I'm exhausted from a workout and a pain pill so I told Ron if ever we are to finish this movie, now is the time. Who the hell thinks up this stuff? I really hope this guy dies a horrible death in the end. Wow.

So in viewing this, um, film I have run across some hilarious interpretations on Etsy.

Funny shit but an extremely messed up movie.

We also watched Wolfman the other night. I don't recommend it. It was extremely long and del Toro's acting wasn't very good. Maybe I'm just more of a zombie girl though.

I finally caught Congo which, as you should know, contains about 5 minutes of my beloved Bruce Campbell. I had to see the whole thing though. It wasn't as bad as it could have been although the lead actor's hair was quite distracting. We also gave Zombie Strippers a try. John Hawkes was in it. Wtf? I didn't even see him. Maybe if we had been able to watch the whole thing, we would have caught his performance. But not even Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson could compel us to watch more than 15 minutes of this train wreck. Christ, at least Traci Lords is in some funny movies.

My blogging skills suck today. I think I'm too out of it to think straight let alone be witty and creative. So I'll close this with a photo of my LMAO bookmark. Did your ass really fall off because you laughed so hard? Really? If so, maybe it looked like this.



Have a groovy Sunday. Tschus!

Vee Dee

I've managed to get a few things stitched up.  I seem to have a little creative burst and here is what I have finished so far:







I have some more ideas and some are already in patterns. The above zombie valentines are doing fairly well. They take a lot longer to make then I thought but I like them. Hopefully I can keep up the momentum. Sometimes stitching all day means I don't get anything done around the house and the joints don't always care for it.

The weather is finally freezing and there is a bit of snow here and there. I took a couple photos around town in the last week or so. I've been fighting bronchitis and some aches and pains. It hasn't been much fun but it could be worse. I'll try to take some photos tomorrow when I drive up to The Plaza.



Sometimes I do get up and watch the sun rise.



Gas tanks?



We think those are natural gas derricks.




Tschus.

December re-cap

The end is nigh.  End of the year, anyways.  I hope everyone had a lovely holiday.   We really didn't do much as money is tight and family were unable to be with us. But it was a very nice Christmas and the first in our new house!

The last few weeks I've had an influx on orders through my Etsy site. I had a stroke of luck when someone received one of my pieces through her secret santa. She was so happy that she shared it on Reddit and I got orders from that. Thankfully due to those orders and some subversive ornaments I sold, I was able to order a low-priced sewing machine. Next up, geek pillows! (Once I figure out how to run a sewing machine.)


Tschus!

Art therapy

This post is about a piece of art I created to help me heal from a miscarriage. If this subject bothers you, please stop reading now.

I'm not sure how to start this post so I'll just go through technical details first and see what happens.

I started this from a photo that Ron took of me the night we got our first positive pregnancy test. Seeing the word "Pregnant" on the stick was amazing. I always wondered how I'd really feel about it and I felt a rush of happiness. I've never seen such a wide smile on Ron's face before! We laughed, I cried, and then we just settled into a state of nerves and giddiness. Vowing not to tell hardly a soul, we ended up spilling the beans to some friends, his mother and a few coworkers.

As many of you know, that is the kiss of death on an early pregnancy. Why this is, I'm not sure. The happier you are and the more people you tell right away, the greater your chances are of losing it.

Anyways, you can read the miscarriage story here if you don't know it already.

I printed off the never-before shared photo from that night on a piece of fabric designed for computer printers. Then I found an image from good 'ol Google of an outline of the female form. I traced it onto the photo fabric and free-formed a very crude uterus and blood puddle.

This piece is about irony and grief. It's a juxtaposition of the happy, obligatory smiling face next to a positive pee stick and the blank, mute form of a woman, bleeding onto the ground.







To be honest, just manipulating the original photo and then stitching this up made me a little sick to my stomach. There were tears. I had to pause a few times and just do something else for a bit. However, it is finished and now the preoccupation I've had for several weeks over this project is laid to rest. When I look at this, I see happiness, pain and some peace. It's almost as if during the process of creating something, you take all those emotions out of your head and put it into your piece. I can visit the piece and go through the emotions if I choose to, or I can just reflect on it.

There you have it. Art therapy. Eventually I'll get some mounting board and frame it so it can join other pieces on my art wall.

Thanks for reading and looking at it. I appreciate comments but don't feel obligated. Tschus. :)

Shaun of the Dead, in Galaga form

My latest swap piece is finished. The theme this time is a horror mash-up: take something from the horror genre and put it with something seemingly unrelated, like Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

So if you've never played Galaga (seriously?!), then I suppose you need a frame of reference. Click on the hyperlink. It was an old arcade game that I used to play when spending hours at the mall. It was the only game in the scary, dark arcade that I played well. I'm still addicted to it and will happily play when it's available. The old game is pretty pixelated.

I had some help to come up with the pattern idea. Mr.X Stitch suggested using Shaun and Ed for the shooters when I threw my idea of a zombie/space shooter at him. Ron helped me with little details, such as including "red" on Shaun's shirt. I took my old Bruce Campbell pattern and changed the figures into Shaun, Ed, Mary the zombie and a generic zombie from an old Nintendo game. (I'm not sure which one but when I googled 'pixelated zombie' it came up.) I checked a bunch of screen shots from the movie to come up with basic colors to try and match the characters.



It didn't take terribly long once I made myself sit down and do it. I unfortunately didn't consider the size of it when finished so it was a weird dimension, like 8 inches by 7 inches. Not exactly frame-able. So I glued it to a thin piece of canvas and bordered it with some black ribbon. It is drying now. I think it could be popped into an 8 inch by ten inch frame if the person wants to hang it. I believe she lives in Germany so I will have another piece floating around Europe. Cool stuff! I like it. As soon as it is dry and I have some cash, I'll send it on over!

Have a good one, tschus!

“Fleeced” stitch

Didn't I post this yet? Ah well I'm sure you've seen it on my Facebook page. If not, this was the last stitch that I did. It's a quote from the tv series Deadwood. Al Swearengen is one of my faves and I had to finish this piece before I got to the actual town of Deadwood.

I want to make it into a pillow however I've never made a pillow in my life. So I'm considering a small sewing machine purchase and reading a crap load of tutorials. Any thoughts? I'd love some kitchy cowboy fabric for the back.



That's all for now. Pain, tired, looking at some life transition stuff....heh. No biggie!!!

Tschus.