I made a mixed media camping scenario for the wet felted playmat I made for my Chicago grandnephew. I painted two peg people and made their sleeping bags, tents, and rowboat from commercial felt. And I needlefelted the boat’s oars and the rocks for the fire pit (and added a bit of unfelted batting for the flames). I used some twigs to make a fishing pole with string and the sticks for roasting some needlefelted marshmallows. Those are mostly for show though since I don’t imagine they’ll last long and the peg people can’t even hold them!
Since my grandnephew has the play mat already and I’m not sure when these will be gifted, I set the scene up on the back of a felted mat (the same color as the river on the playmat) and a piece of green felt (a much darker green than the meadow on the playmat) so I could appreciate the results. It was fun to take a break from cross stitch but it was actually a bit more challenging than I expected it would be. At first I tried making a tent and a boat that would fit both people but I thought they were too big (it was hard to estimate the dimensions of the playmat). Also I had sewed them using blanket stitches and it just didn’t look right. So I scrapped those and started over again cutting everything smaller and using a running stitch. Now the peg people each get their own tents and they can take turns using the rowboat.
I finished my second Nero Wolfe cover! One of the challenges of the first cover was recreating the lettering of the title because the letters are so close together. I had used some back stitching between cross stitches on the body on the the first cover and I decided I should try that with the title of the second cover. So there are no spaces between the letters and I think it worked really well.
The challenge with this cover was the black and purple background. It was hard to figure out how to recreate the creeping nature of the black onto the purple in the original. My husband suggested using two purple and one black thread or vice versa around the edges of the splotches. I tried it using some of each and thought it helped but I was really worried that the black and purple still didn’t look right. Now that’s it’s done and framed I think it works!
In the first images of the cover I found the purples were quite different and those are the colors I recreated. I had printed out that first image but hadn’t saved it as it wasn’t in as good condition as the one above. The image was no longer available when I tried to search for it recently (I guess the book had been sold) but during that search I found another cover in the same series!
I’ll use my husband’s brillant mixed thread suggestion for the background when I tackle this one. But first I’m going to take a break and make a felt camping set with wooden figures for the felt playmat I gave my grandnephew.
Our local library is open again! Last year it closed for a remodeling that opened it up on both the outside and inside. When we first moved here it had a pretty awful glass enclosed ramp and when they took it off it turned out it was obscuring the best part of the building – the frieze above the front entrance designed by sculptor Abbot Pattison. Unfortunately a lot of the new spaces that were a part of the remodel including an early learning play space for children, a dedicated teen space with YOUmedia! digital learning lab, and additional meeting and study spaces are closed right now in the time of corona. But at least the stacks are open which is a good thing since I came to the end of the Nero Wolfe reading immersion (which I think was keeping me sane but that’s probably for another post).
When my older daughter was a toddler and we would go for walks in our neighborhood she would wave her hands around from her stroller seat shouting, “Hook at this, hook at that!” which was her variation of my behavior on walks as I pointed out various things, especially architectural details, on the houses and buildings we passed.
This year when I started walking to her apartment instead of taking the bus because of the coronavirus, I took various routes and one of the more interesting buildings I found to “hook at” was this royal one.
One of my favorite things about being a collector is that other people begin to contribute to the collections they know about. Sometimes people get overwhelmed by other people’s contributions. My sister famously once stated quite positively, “No more eggs!” Of course years later she asked why no one ever gave her stone eggs anymore. It can get overwhelming when you have to think of a place to put your hundredth cow, say. But I don’t think anyone would complain about an addition to a virtual collection. So I was excited when my husband came home from a morning walk with pictures of another little library in our neighborhood.
Look at that tilework! Now that my virtual collection (in posts Little Free Church Library. Sheboygan Little Libraries, and Another Little Church Library) is growing I’ve really got to take a walk up Addison to take a picture of the Snoopy doghouse little library I keep seeing from the car.
I am still reading my way through my Nero Wolfe collection. All but two of the books are paperbacks and I bought most of them at used book stores but I found my first few copies under my mother in law’s bed. A couple of them are from the era when paperbacks had illustrated rather than photographed covers and when I started reading “The Second Confession” I kept turning it back to look at the cover which was practically detached. I was ready to begin cross stitching another piece and I realized I could recreate the cover.
Transferring it to a cross stitch pattern was challenging and I couldn’t quite get the typeface of the title but I’m pretty proud of the result.
I had already begun embroidering it without solving the problem of the small type at the top. Of course I couldn’t actually cross stitch the words but I knew if I left it blank the design would be unbalanced. I had been working from the top and had just gotten to that area of the piece when I got the Mr. X Stitch newsletter email from Mr. X Stitch touting the latest issue of their magazine which features 15 noir designs. Not only did this prove just how on trend I can be, it solved my design problem. The cover of the magazine had an image of a hand holding a cigarette with what looked to me like lines of type. AhHa, problem solved.
At the beginning of the Stay at Home order I pulled out some of my craft books including an embroidery book called “Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery” which featured the work of many artists including Mr. X Stitch. I was interested in seeing more of him so I googled him and signed up for his newsletter and here he was at just the right time!
Speaking of googling I tried to find out some information on the artist of my Nero Wolfe cover and while I found no information on him I did find another cover by him that I love. So it looks like I’ve got a new series going.
The colors of these covers are just right for my bedroom and perfect for the bookcase that holds my Nero Wolfe collection.
It seems that the boarded up windows are going to stay for awhile so businesses have started painting them. I ventured to the craft store the other day and saw a variety from business to art to Black Lives Matter affirmations and a tribute to Breonna Taylor.
I published a post on coronavirus language in television commercials that I had been working on for a few days earlier today (Monday June 1). I just sat down and read the latest news and I don’t even have words for the times we find ourselves in now. I just wanted to acknowledge that my previous post seems tone deaf now.
We usually watch two shows a day – a House Hunters at around 4:00 and a network show after dinner. At first television was a welcome respite from our fears of the coronavirus and its effect on the economy but then the commercials for these “unprecedented times” began airing. Not only did they interrupt the escapist aspect of the shows their fuzzy electronic music and their euphemistic language made watching them quite unpleasant. But since I was unwilling to stop our daily viewing I needed a coping mechanism. Not surprisingly this turned out to be a collection – a collection of the euphemistic phrases used instead of accurate and scary language like “deadly viral pandemic”.
So here goes:
Unprecedented times
Uncertain times or Time of uncertainty or Time of tremendous uncertainty
Times like these, These times, This time, or All this
Tough times
Troubled times
Difficult times
Turbulent times
Challenging time or times
Unusual of times
Extraordinary times
Unsettling times
Strange new times
Current situation
It got even worse when the shows started ending either because they had reached the final episode or because they were unable to make more due to these (pick your favorite phrase). So we were very happy to find out that we could watch Amazon Prime shows on our TV through our cable box. So far we’ve watched one season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, two episodes of The Boys, and one episode of Bosch. Now we’re adjusting to shows with no commercials at all!
For her birthday in the beginning of April my oldest granddaughter was going to have a really special birthday treat and go with her “little family” and her best friend’s family to Great Wolf Lodge and enjoy lots of water slide play. Obviously that didn’t happen but her birthday was not forgotten and she had surprise visits throughout the day as friends and family came to serenade her from six feet away.
My niece was one of those who came by and a couple of weeks later she invited friends to stop by her porch window and wish her son a happy second birthday. We brought his present to the door and walked back 6 feet.
The walk or drive by birthday became the standard in my daughter’s neighborhood and when one of the parents had a birthday they kicked it up a notch. All her mom friends gathered on the sidewalk grass strip in front of her house for a birthday toast.
My youngest granddaughter’s birthday is coming up in June. She has been talking about a pool party since last year and while that’s still the plan it will probably just be a family party because while socially distanced birthday celebrations might work for adults they sound pretty impossible for children!
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 