For the geek in me
Lately I haven’t been doing so much politically inclined crafting. Instead I’ve entertained my inner geek with an enormous cross stitch I’ve been wanting to make for a couple of years. The thought of the amount of time it would take to finish has put me off, but finally it’s done!
A cross stitch of an entire map from Super Mario Bros 3!
And a few close-ups:
It took about three months to finish, and since I was in between jobs for most of those months I had lots and lots of spare time to work on it. Finished size 28 x 34 cm (with about 50 000 stitches…).
Now I want to make the “Zelda – a link to the past” world map! But maybe that would be taking on too much?
Exploding swallow print
A few years ago I loved to screen print and did it a lot for a while, but for some reason I quit and haven’t gotten around to do it again. Now I’ve started printing a little again, and I’m having so much fun!
The original for this is a sketch for a tattoo I found last summer and fell a little in love with.
Here’s a good tutorial on how to make your own prints. Via TIGER c/o SEWICIDE.
I sublimate my rage… revisited
In january i finished a cross stitch based on a qoute I found at bitterstitch.com, but never felt completely happy with it. Now I’ve finished a new version of the same quote, and I like it so much better! I love the colour combination and this version feels much more balanced than the first one.
The finished size is about 35 x 40 cm and both the font and the edging comes from Antique pattern library.
Big poo, small poo
I loved Kakariki’s post about the knitted poo a while ago, and immediately knew that it would be perfect for one of my friends. She has this amazing bizarre sense of humor and is one of very, very few I know who would use the phrase “my prettiest vomit” as if it’s a perfectly everyday thing to say. (The vomit was blueberry pie in snow, imagine the colour combinations…)
So she got these for her birthday this weekend:
She got one big poo, and one small. The big poo is filled with wheat grains, so if it gets a few minutes in the microwave it’ll be all nice and warm. The small one is stuffed with lavender, perfect for the linen cupboard!
And they’re both so easy to make, basically made of cylinders, with just a little shaping in the ends to get that special poo-feeling.
Some time to breathe
At last spring is within sight in Sweden and after working way too much during the past year I finally can do something else with my time than spending it on a train or at work. I intend to make as much of it as possible before the next job starts. Which basically means sleeping enough, seeing my friends, playing video games, embroider and all those other things I’ve had to put aside more than I want to think about.
So I’ve started by doing a little gardening in miniature. I don’t have a garden or even a balcony, but at least there’s some room in my window. The first plants will be basil, thyme and chilli, in an old box that used to contain chocolate. I’m really looking forward when they start growing!
Work in progress
The new version of the “I sublimate my rage…” cross stitch is progressing. I’ve got a lot left to do, but here’s a sneak peek:
I sublimate my rage…
A cross stitch I made of a quote from Bitterstitch.com. I’m considering if I should add something more, like a border or something, but I’m not sure. I’m pretty restless at the moment, so we’ll see if I’ll ever do it or just move on to some of the projects I have in mind…
Sampler bonanza
When I design my cross stitches I love to look in old sampler books for inspiration, and I want to share a veritable treasure of samplers I found a while ago: Antique pattern library. Loads and loads of beautiful old patterns, scanned and made into PDF files, free to download! And there’s not only patterns for cross stitch, but for knitting, crochet and other techniques too. Check it out!
It does not behoove me…
My latest finished work, one that I’ve been wanting to make for a while: a quotation of the Finland-Swedish poet Edith Södergran. It says “It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am.”
(Cross stitch and back stitch, size about 20 x 14 cm.)
The ninja
The cross stitch ninja, a kind of self portrait I guess.
This is my first attempt at embroidering something other than cross stitch and I’m pretty happy with the result.
(More of my work can be seen at my Flickr page.)
/Cross stitch ninja