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!.

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!

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!

#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.

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.

Terrifying Space Monkeys! Or perhaps just cross stitch patterns

Anyone remember when I made this lovely cross stitch o' doom?

Well, some crazy brave soul was interested in making one of their own, so here's the pattern for it.

My Inception cross stitch is still ongoing, and coming out rather nicely. Have finally worked out my issues with pale colours - it turns out to be a rather simple issue, basically it's easier to see errors in the pale coloured stitches whereas your eyes just see the dark stitches as plain blocks of colour and you don't notice if the tension's a bit wonky or the stitch isn't lined up perfectly. But armed with this knowledge I'm now attacking the pale portions a little differently, which may end up making a world of difference. That probably only I will notice. I'm a fool to myself when it comes to the ol' cross stitch!



And some more pics under the cut of how Arthur's been going.

Stitchety stitchy stitch

My Inception cross stitch continues to trundle on apace. Eight out of sixteen pages of the pattern are complete now! But it's more like 3/4 of the way done. And I've still not reached a stage of rage yet! It's clearly a magical cross stitch project.

More pics of progress leading up to now under the cut.

1 Up!

Cross stitch o' doom progress

It's all very exciting. It might still be ages until it's completed, but it's coming along very nicely. Am still rather suspicious about that.

Let us scroll backwards through stitching-time!

Despite all my current woes IRL, my cross stitch seems to be going very well indeed. I am deeply suspicious of it. I'm sure it has some cunning plan to annoy me tucked up its sleeve...

Here's some more cross stitch progress. I am rather excited now that Arthur is mostly done, and you can even see most of the guy falling away behind him. And I've reached both the right and left hand edges now. It's moving on quite quickly. Hurrah!



Earlier in the week:

I am utterly bemused by the world right now. Blah blah blah, woe is me, etc etc.No-one wants to hear another blogger moaning on the internet!

Also probably of no interest to anyone is the continuing adventure of my Inception cross stitch. But it's so incredibly useful to me to be able to look back through these posts and see how far it's come on in such a short space of time. Arthur appears to be the one part of my life not mocking me right now! So, spammed with images of his progress y'all shall be, whether you like it or not!

I'm thinking there are a few bits I may want to go back over at some point - maybe blend a few colours a little better, perhaps add some backstitching around Arthur to better define his arms from the background. But on the whole I'm really pleased with how this is shaping up.

Yaay! My Inception cross stitch is coming on in leaps and bounds, as is only fitting. I need to take it out of the frame to get pictures now, which is encouraging. You can see a bit of Arthir's head now, and his gun, and I was very excited to realise I've already reached out to the left hand edge. I need to go order some more of the darkest blue thread though - I've already used nearly a whole skein of it, and I'll apparantly use nearly 60 metres of just that colour in the whole piece. Eeep. The angry-making stage of large cross stitch project procedings must be just around the corner...

Maybe this project will be different and I'll lov it the whole way through. Maybe.

Anyway, right now, it's awesome.



Here's how it looked over the weekend:

Like this!

"Forget you" wouldn't fit. Also, it doesn't scan right.

Liklihood of me murdering a builder: rising.

Ways in which this wee cross stitch makes me smile: many.

This is my new totem of staying calm. I'm going to mount it behind my work space when I actually have one of those again.

The pattern's adapted from a few twee wee samplers.







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This entry was originally posted at http://anonymityblaize.dreamwidth.org/52107.html.

Star Trek crafts: I Wish I Knew How To Quit You

I may have made a few too many cross stitched Star Trek badges here. I didn't mean to fill a whole sheet of cross stitch fabric with them, but somehow I did. I'd just add another one every so often when I was between projects, and then somehow I ended up with twenty of them (these are just the ones that came out best!). A worrying number of my projects lately have felt somewhat involuntary. I am possessed by some strange spirit of craftiness. Weird.

Anyway, have some Star Trek insignia. They're all on 58mm (2 1/4") badges. And if anyone wants a pattern for any of these just ask!

Fandom Awesomitude

Gradually catching up on messages and emails and comments and all the wonders of the interwebs. And so here's some more crafty stuff.

The fabulous akisilver and the wonderful epicycles were my winning bidders for the LJ Help Japan  auction and both asked for very exciting stuff.

So I got to make a kitschy Doctor Who sampler:

 And a steampunk Hetalia badge:

Both projects were great fun to work on, and all for a good cause. Many hurrahs!


This entry was originally posted at http://anonymityblaize.dreamwidth.org/51169.html.

Bitching and Stitching

So, five days with minimal access to the internet seems to do weird things to my head. I am a data junkie, it's appalling. But now that BT have replaced a THIRD section of busted wiring hopefully our landline will hold it together for longer than a few months this time. And if O2 could find a way to persuade 3G signals to penetrate the apparently hefty walls of my building then I would actually be able to communicate with the outside world with all my stupid devices just like their bloody adverts claim. Anyway...

Just five days away has left me with a lot to catch up on, and a backlog of things to post, but on the upside I did get a lot of cross stitching done the past few days so you can actually see some bits of Arthur now. Hurrah!

(ETA: The aforementioned internet issues meant I didn't post the first few updates on this cross stitch project here at blogger. You can see those posts over at my LJ here)



Some pics of the days in between under the cut.

Powerpuff Pattern

A few people over on my LJ seemed interested in stitching their own Powerpuff Girls piece so here's the pattern for it! I've changed a few wee details here and there since I stitched my own version to make it (I hope) even better.

If anyone would like me to post patterns for any of my other cross stitch pieces please let me know and I'll see what I can do! (I reserve the right to maybe be a bit precious about the giant cross stitches o' doom as they're very personal to me, but quite frankly I don't think anyone's mad enough to want to do them anyway.) Check out my Flickr tag for all my cross stitch stuff.

Feel free to do whatever you want with it, but credit or a link back here would be much appreciated. And if anyone does stitch this I'd love to see it!

So, if you wanna stitch this:

Then here's your pattern under the cut (click to embiggen):