Showing Off Type Stuff

I have no idea why I've been so reluctant to post about this, as I've been inwardly flailing for quite some time now. I guess I'm just not very good at bragging when I really have something to brag about. Anyway, enough faffing about...

The upshot is that my Forbrydelsen cross stitch pattern is going to be in The Killing Handbook: Forbrydelsen Forever!

It's exciting enough that one of my patterns is going to be in a book, but it was all made even more fabulous by the fact that Emma Kennedy is writing the book (and I loooooooove her) and Emma Kennedy emailing me was enough to have me flailing around like a mad thing. Then she said this on twitter and I just about keeled over from too much squee.

As if that wasn't awesomesauce enough, Emma Kennedy, glorious human being that she is, showed my Sarah Lund cross stitch to the wonderful Sofie Grabol who plays her, and let me know that she "absolutely adore[s] it."

And then, blog-reader, I died of over fan-girling. I am typing this from beyond the grave. I am on the astral plane of people who like liking things, with my ghostly arms permanently stuck in Kermit-like wibblyness and my voice about three octaves higher than usual.

I think I may have perhaps slightly given the impression of how excited and chuffed I was. So here ends my not-so humblebrag. If you're a fan of the original-strength Danish version of the Killing think about buying the book when it's out on November 15th!

~~~

And in unrelated news about actually related persons, my mother is still the coolest Mum ever, and I clearly got my awesome from her. Not only did she send me this handmade Tatooine collage as my birthday card, but she has just started art school. I'm still having trouble imagining Mama Blaize as a fresher, but I'm ridiculously proud of her.

When I Eat It Is The Food that Is Scared

So I made a Ron Swanson cross stitch to go with my Leslie Knope one! And now I can check one thing off my things-to-post list. Hurrah!

More pics and the pattern under the cut!.

The Force Is Strong With This One

A Chronosynclastic Infundibulum

To The Batmobile!

I'm Geeky And I Know It

The return of the etsy treasuries!

The Next Generation

Gifts for Gamers

Harry Potter In The Tardis With A Lightsaber

Forbrydelsen Forever!

While I was on my unexpected blogging hiatus I found myself in need of a craft project to keep me from going stir crazy. I had worked on a nearly completed pattern of the lovely Sarah Lund's face, from the original (and vastly superior) Danish version of the Killing, but there was something not quite ready about it. And then I had a sudden epiphany - I'd designed a Sarah Lund pattern that did not include the iconic wooly jumper! And that clearly wasn't right. But my attempts to actually render that amazing garment in cross stitch looked so weird that I gave it up, until it occured to me that the pattern of the jumper would make a fantastic border. And so that's what I did!

Here are the crafty stats: the design is 8x10 inches on 14ct aida, with 7452 stitches made up of 5 different colours of thread, and the project took me a little over two weeks. And here's how she turned out!

The God of Thunder and Home Lighting

Today I'm posting a little piece of Thor and Loki craftage that I made ages ago and kept forgetting to post until now. I think this is officially Geek Lamp 3:

Vote Knope!

So, I totally failed to post these pics of my finished Leslie Knope cross stitch sooner, but here I am now. I can't remember right now how big the stitched design is but the frame is an A4 one to give you some context. There's just the four colours of thread and she took a little over 3 weeks to stitch. If anyone wants the pattern just let me know and I'll edit it in. There should be a Ron Swanson piece to go with it sometime soon I hope!

So here she is!

Community is back tonight!

Hoorah! Hurray! And most definitely cool, cool, cool. I have missed it so much.

So it seems appropriate to post a little thing I made myself a while back, which was inspired by this moment;

I added this to my favourite grey hoodie:

Some more pics

#IAmSpartacus

Reposting this pic as the Twitter joke trial reached the High Court appeal today. It's utterly baffling to me that this nonsense has got this far without someone doing anything remotely sensible. If you have no idea why I made a cross stitch of a criminal and "clearly menacing" tweet, you can read more about this Orwellian nightmare  here and here.

And on a lighter note, here, have a stitched Star Trek coaster.

Bags, bags, bags

It's chaos and mayhem in casa Blaize at the moment, but the good kind - lots of redecorating and reorganizing, and in some cases just plain organizing of things that were never actually organized in the first place. And we have a new car, which facilitates lots of organizing but is also scary because I haven't driven in about eight years and need to relearn. But more importantly a car means a trip to Hobbycraft and buying supplies for the next few ridiculous craft projects, which is very exciting!

But until those crazy crafts are completed, have a post with some bags. These are a few of the pay it forward gifts I made last year, and there's some more stuff to come just as soon as I work through the backlog of unposted crafts!

Lend Me a Hand

The Dream is Real. And It Is Made of Cross Stitch

It's finally time for me to unveil my completed Inception cross stitch! I am terribly excited about showing this off, and I hope other people like it as much as I do!

I began thinking about this project around this time last year, but didn't start stitching until towards the end of June. It took me a long time before I was happy with any of the umpty jillion patterns I tried and discarded. I noodled around with several screengrabs and whatnot of the hotel corridor fight for quite sometime before settling on doing the Arthur poster image, mainly because it had a wider range of colours than using a scene directly from the movie. I was finished the actual stitching part by the middle of November so it would seem that I keep taking around five months to do one of these cross stitches o' doom, regardless of the size of the project. (For reference, Arthur is over twice the size and contains over three times the number of stitches as my stitched Serenity, and almost double the stitches of the Enterprise one.)

At no point did I get frustrated with this project, which is a novelty to me. Not even a minor pout or kerfuffle. I can't decide if that's the reason this has been my favourite project so far, or if it is genuinely the best thing I've made. I've certainly never stitched better. The stitches and the tension are much more uniform across the piece than I've ever achieved in the past.

Here come the stats! The stitched design measures 22cm by 29cm. It contains 31,108 stitches from 25 different colours of thread. I used nearly 150 metres of those threads, and almost 50 meters of that is the very dark navy that dominates the piece.

So. Yeah. This happened.

Trekkie goodies

As I transfer pictures and patterns and other random files to my shiny new computer I've discovered loads of stuff that I've made and not yet posted any pics of. So working through the backlog should keep me busy for a while, which is quite nice - I was worried I'd have nothing interesting to post until I'd finished any of the umpty-billion half completed and then abandoned craft projects I have cluttering up the place!

So to start out the year, here's the gift I sent for the ontd-startrek secret santa.







And to keep up the Star Trek theme, I was asked if I would share my Star Fleet insignia cross stitch patterns, so if you want to stitch any of these...



...then here's the pattern! (Click to embiggen.)



This entry was originally posted at http://anonymityblaize.dreamwidth.org/59136.html.