At first I really took the Stay at Home order to heart and thought that not only should I stay at home but that I also had a responsibility to help everyone else stay at home too which meant that I should only shop for essentials. I also thought that we should leave the store as quickly as possible so that meant that even though I went to the drug store to pick up a prescription I should not visit other aisles which meant no browsing for Easter decorations and no chocolate Easter bunnies.
Food shopping was challenging since we hadn’t gone on weekly shopping trips for years and pretty much shopped daily for whatever we needed. But our younger daughter said we weren’t doing social distancing correctly so my husband has been really trying to consolidate his food shopping trips.
While others ramped up their online and pick up purchases to help the economy, I embraced a make do philosophy. When I started crafting I looked to see what I could make from the materials I already had. And I framed my first embroidery piece in a frame I already had. But then I didn’t have the right frame for my second piece and I needed mats for the next two pieces so I decided I could order some items online. Michael’s had opened for in person shopping by the time I started my first pulp cover cross stitch and I didn’t have all the thread colors I wanted for that so I decided shopping there was okay.
Vacation posed another shopping challenge. I already wrote about how I went to the Dollar Store to buy suitcase presents but what about actual vacation shopping. Popping in and out of little stores is always a highlight of vacations but this year while the stores were open they are very small and the streets were crowded, so we didn’t shop and I didn’t get anything new for my collections!
I will have something to share soon though because we did just make a series of online purchases.
Vacation was always going to be tricky this year. In 2017 right before we moved to Chicago our younger daughter and her family joined us in Rockport for our last East Coast vacation for awhile and at that time she declared that we would return in 2020 for a family reunion vacation. Unfortunately at the end of that vacation we found out that our older daughter had colon cancer and shortly after that she told us that it had metastasized.
We all vacationed together in Saugatuck, Michigan for the next two years. At the beginning of this year we knew there were no more treatment options so when it was time to plan a family vacation we knew we couldn’t plan to go to Massachusetts and I was even reluctant to reserve a cottage in Michigan. But our younger daughter went ahead and reserved the cottage we had last year saying, “Whoever can come will come for however long they can come.”
And then the coronavirus hit. After some considering she decided to go ahead and pay the final installment. “Even if all I get to do is sit in another house that will be a change,” she said. A smaller family now the six of us headed for Saugatuck last Monday knowing that Oval beach was open but not knowing what else to expect. I did think it might be less crowded. In fact, it was more crowded since apparently people stuck closer to home and rental houses were at a premium. We limited our interactions sticking to early morning masked visits to the playground, two rides on the chain ferry, a daily trip to the beach, and an ice cream cone most days. We didn’t go out to eat except for a spontaneous lunch at The Grilled Cheese Shack a new outdoor venue we stumbled upon.
It felt pretty safe to vacation in Saugatuck. I checked the NYT coronavirus map each day and Michigan was the same color as Illinois (unfortunately while we were there the Illinois numbers went up and Illinois got darker). It was easy to stay 6 feet from others at the beach and in the water and most people wore masks in town.
Last year I wondered if my older granddaughter was outgrowing the suitcase present tradition (see previous post). That was certainly not the case as she asked me even before we left if there would be presents in my suitcase this year. I was glad I had found enough presents on my only trip to Michael’s and a supplementary trip to the Dollar store. Since there were no visits to the small amusement park or the children’s museum or play space, the suitcase presents became one of the highlights of the vacation.
Last year my daughters and I went to an outdoor yoga class in an orchard but this year my younger daughter and I did Yoga with Adrienne each day. “If anyone had suggested doing iPad yoga on vacation last year I would have thought they were crazy!”, my daughter said.
The Lakefront is finally opened for walking, running, and bike riding only dubbed “Keep it Moving” by the city. My daughter says she imagines someone patting people on the butt admonishing them to, “Keep it moving” if they stop for a moment to tie their shoe or take a sip of water. This is not the case at all as people flagrantly flaunt the mandate by picknicking and even swimming. On my recent walk I briefly stopped moving for a moment to appreciate and snap a picture of the Keith Haring sculpture “Self Portrait” that was recently installed and that will be the center of an AIDS memorial garden someday.
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.
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 