Remember back in December, I had this plan to devote each new month to a new craft? I devised this plan because I was getting burned out on knitting.

I should say, burned out on knitting again. Crafting does go in waves, doesn’t it? With knitting, it’s sort of a seasonal thing, with not much of it happening in the heat of summer, but it’s also a natural, normal response to anything one does so much of. Eventually, you get a little tired of doing the same thing every day. Eventually, you need to take a break. Maybe that break is only a week, maybe it’s a couple months, maybe it’s a few years.

So I was bored with my knitting and wanted to branch out. I’d also been inspired by cross stitchers I follow on the Tumblr (ladies, you know who you are. Right? Or do I have to come over there and get you drunk?) to pick up and dust off those supplies and see what happened.

And in the first rush of finishing a cross stitch piece I’d designed myself — I mean, “design” is a stretch, but I graphed it out all by myself — I realized somewhere inside me that there would be no other crafts in the coming months. I was gonna ride this baby for as long as it let me.

They Might Be Giants iotacons by Andy Rash, stitched for a friend

And I still love it. I really do. The last time I got together with my knitting friends, I brought whatever cross stitch piece I was working on, and one of my friends remarked that it seemed as though cross stitch was my new creative outlet, and I nodded and said, yeah, I think you’re right, but that’s stayed with me and the more I think about it the more I say to myself YEAH, I think she’s RIGHT.

Knitting has always been a huge part of my life, but I’ve never designed anything from scratch. The most I’ve done is tweak patterns. I’m a good knitter — my stitches are even and I can follow complicated charts and I like challenging patterns. But I’m not a knitwear designer. I sort of halfheartedly gave it a shot once but the most I can do is take one stitch pattern and turn it into a scarf or maybe a sock. I understand the principles and math behind shaping a garment but — and this is something it’s taken me a while to admit to myself — I have very little interest in learning enough to apply it. That’s sort of a big deal, to recognize that this is as far as I want to go with the craft, that I’m perfectly happy to have other people design stuff.

But cross stitch? That’s easy. And by “easy” I mean “so completely satisfying and fun.” There are mornings I wake up and need to write. There are other mornings I wake up and need to hash out a design. There are mornings, like this morning, where I’m working on something and I lose all track of time and all of a sudden I’m STARVING and I realize it’s 2 pm and I haven’t had anything to eat or drink except my morning coffee. So yeah, I think cross stitch is my new creative outlet.

I invested in software that lets me design at will without using up a lot of graph paper — because I would, I’d print out reams and reams of graph paper and waste it all because I wouldn’t know what I was doing, and I find that with the very occasional exception I work better on the computer. This is probably because I do a lot of my designing using antique patterns that have been charted using the same program and they’re all housed on this website, so a lot of my work is cutting and pasting and then moving around at will. So yeah, I’m not designing things FROM SCRATCH. I’m taking pre-existing patterns and spinning them into something else. But there’s still a design element to that which is new to me.

Text from The Wire, design and font from old pattern books

And there are a lot of free resources on the web as well (Subversive Cross Stitch is another fantastic place to start; I’ve used her font charts a lot), and I continue to be inspired by the things I see other people do. It’s a bottomless well. Anything can be stitched. It doesn’t have to be subversive.

But I think it’s more fun when it is. I like pairing these beautiful, intricate vintage designs with quotes from The Wire. So much so that I’ve got this idea knocking around in my head to do a traditional sampler based on the quote, “There you go, giving a fuck when it ain’t your turn to give a fuck.” In my head, it would be our “HOME SWEET HOME.” (I also want to do two pieces, one that’s “Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-” and the other that’s “-it”, but it might be tough to frame.)

But that’s a little more involved, and I’m working on it a little bit each day. In the meantime, I was hit with a thunderbolt on Tuesday afternoon while watching the old TV series based on Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I have loved ever since I first watched it on PBS, and as I mentioned before was my introduction to the five-part trilogy. (Did I ever tell you I met Douglas Adams once? It was at a book signing in Evanston when I was in college; Mostly Harmless had just come out. He signed my book, we bantered about my father, long story; five years later I LOST THE BOOK. BIGGEST REGRET EVER.)

So I was watching HGTTG and inspiration struck. That inspiration now looks like this:

This is the first line of the poem the Vogon captain reads to Ford and Arthur before throwing them off the ship. I’m using the text from the TV series, which I think is the same as that of the first radio series but is definitely what I have in my book.

There will be a frilly border because I think that’s appropriate.

I am a total nerd and I amuse the HELL out of myself.

Related posts:

1. A long-term project … maybe
2. The first knits to be completed in 2012

First, a big hearty cheers to anyone venturing over here from the Five O’Clock Cocktail blog, where I have a post today. *clink*

Second, hi! I’m here. Been letting the blog lie fallow for a little bit in the hopes that it will eventually yield . . . you know, I’m not a farmer. Do I want to say “bumper crop”? Because right now I’m thinking this whole metaphor is failing. “Bumper crop of blog posts”? Yeesh.

Instead of writing here I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading and writing book reviews — here’s the latest, for Eleanor Brown’s Weird Sisters. It’s a book that’s apparently been receiving a lot of positive buzz, and while I had some reservations about it, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Look for my review of Elly Griffith’s The Janus Stone tomorrow — also very, very good (or to use a review cliche, “gripping”). (I have totally used the word “gripping” in reviews, FYI. Not trying to be all “Oh I’m so great at this.” Just, you know, it’s kind of an overused word.)

And I have a slew of books to get through before my trip to Ireland next month. (OMG did I tell you I’m going to Ireland?!) And speaking of Ireland, I got it into my head a few weeks ago that I needed a new sweater for the trip, regardless of the likelihood that it won’t be done in time. But with 26 days to go, I do have a finished back:

A word about this color. Difficult color to photograph, red, and even more so when you’re kind of a crap photographer. The first photo I took of this yarn (Wild Apple Hill Farms, purchased at Rhinebeck, for all you knitters out there) made it look brown; the second made it look hot pink. I took my knitting to a friend’s over the weekend and everyone there exclaimed over how different the color looked in person. I think, based on what I’m seeing on my monitor, that this picture is pretty true to life, if a little dark, but honestly — I have no idea. It’s supposed to be a pomegranatey sort of red — like a violet red.

The pattern is Thea Coleman’s Collins. Here’s the Ravelry link.

And I’ve also been going crazy with the cross stitch. For the past couple weeks I’ve started each morning playing around with my cross stitch software, coming up with various pop culturey designs. Most of them make use of antique patterns that can all be found on this site. The charts are compatible with my program so it’s easy to cut and paste and then play around with the color schemes.

So this is what I’m working on now — this photo might give away what the finished piece will look like, for those who have the same taste in TV shows as I do:

I love the border. LOVE it. I had to tweak it a little from its original layout so that it would fit my text, but I’m pleased with how it’s turning out. And I feel no shame in telling you that I chose these colors because they match my couch.

I’ve also got a Doctor Who sampler in the works that I am very excited about.

You heard me.

Related posts:

1. I don’t know why I do this to myself.
2. Books! I read them, you know
3. The first knits to be completed in 2012

I finished the Sinistar cross stitch a little while ago

and have since realized that the task of framing is very much like that of seaming a knitted sweater. The main part of the work is done, and my mind and hands would much rather move on to the next fun thing rather than take the final steps necessary to present an actual finished thing.

But it will get done. I don’t live too far from an art supply store that should have all that I need. But in the meantime I’ve gone on to work on a couple other projects.

I had this idea last month that each month I’d embark on a new crafty endeavor, preferably in a medium I’ve not used in a long time or that I never have. But I’m having too much fun with cross stitch right now to divert my attention to something new. So when I’m not working on this:

I’m designing a Fort Greene-centric sampler of sorts. It may not be a traditional sampler with an alphabet and all that, if only because I’m having a hard time finding just the right style for the letters. But my crowning achievement this weekend was taking the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower — aka my artistic muse, as I can’t seem to ever not photograph it

Taken on January 1, 2011

and render it in a pixelly cross stitchy way that managed to make it NOT look like a blocky penis.

No related posts.

Quick question: Do you recognize this?

This is Sinistar. From the 80s arcade game Sinistar.

Yeah, I didn’t know either. But over the past week I’ve become intimately acquainted with this pixelated dude.

No, not like that. Like this:

It all started when I was working on my Death Star cross stitch while Dan was playing Fallout: New Vegas (this being but a glimpse into our dorky geeky wonderland of a home) and I was brainstorming out loud other things I wanted to put up on fabric with thread. Dan mused that the medium seemed appropriate for all sorts of vintage video game stuff, and I told him about all the Space Invaders and Pac-Man and Mario stuff I’d seen (seriously, if you don’t know, do a Google image search for “video game cross stitch” and be amazed). A while ago Dan used Sinistar as his profile pic, which then prompted me to ask what the hell it was. So anyway, a little over a week ago we were discussing cross stitch and video games, one thing led to another, and the next thing I knew I was creating a Sinistar chart with my cross stitch software.

It’s been a blast to work on, too. Painstaking, because there are ten different colors to use and many of them are very close together in hue. But it’s small, about four inches wide, so it’s going fairly quickly. Which is good, because I have other projects lined up after this.

Just . . . remind me to never work on black fabric again. ‘Sworth it, but damn.

No related posts.

That went quickly. (See: Previously.)

This is what I had at about 11:30 am on Saturday, before I left to hang out with friends. Got up early the next morning (my sleep schedule is so out of wack lately. One day I sleep in until 9:30, the next I’m up at 6, then 8, then 7. I guess it’s not that wide a range, but the difference between 7 and 8 feels like way more than an hour) and had the full Death Star completed by lunchtime.

I did not, it turned out, have the right shades of gray. The darker part I found immediately, but the lighter was more difficult. I experimented with several color combinations, even blended two different colors of floss together, and as luck would have it the combo I liked best didn’t have enough thread to make up the whole of the Death Star, and since waiting to find the right floss was out of the question (and really, unnecessary, since this was always meant to be just for funsies and trying to make it PERFECT was missing the point) I went with my second choice.

And you know? I like this too, in its not-quite-ness. I think it’s perfectly clear what this is, even if it’s not perfectly rendered.

At some point I snapped this picture with my phone and emailed it to my brother the even bigger Star Wars nerd, with the subject “I crack myself up”:

It’s true, too: each time I started a new letter I’d giggle not very quietly to myself. It was like, more than just the rush of a new craft, because as I said last week, cross stitch is more a craft to which I am returning, rather than a new one — so maybe it was the rush of using materials I’ve had lying around for almost fifteen years. But it was more unbridled delight in engaging in something so geeked out, with a needle and thread. Doing something I’d seen other people do with a sort of longing mixed with resignation that I had too many things to knit first. Like they were chores I needed to finish up before I could have fun.

It never really occurred to me before the extent to which I do think of what is essentially my hobby (or one of them) as a set of responsibilities. Time was, that was literally the case, but it’s not now — perhaps there’s a part of me that still thinks of knitting as “work”? That’s not to say I don’t enjoy it, because I do, and I still knit almost every day. But it’s mostly purpose-oriented. Regardless of whether I enjoy the process of knitting a particular item, that item will ultimately serve a purpose: it’ll keep some part of me warm, or some part of someone else warm. And because of this, I tend to think of each project as something to finish.

The ironic thing is that this is precisely what drew me back to knitting from cross stitch all those years ago — I was tired of making ornamental things and wanted to get back to making practical things, things I could use.

But this? This serves no purpose whatsoever, except for amusing me (and maybe other people).

And it’s taken me a long time to realize that there’s room for both. [INSERT LIFE LESSON HERE.]

Related posts:

1. O Cross Stitch, I’m Yours

Cross stitch was my first real craft.

I’m not sure I can explain why it appealed to me as a kid, aside from the fact that it was what I saw the grownups doing and I wanted a piece of that action.

Maybe it was because I was horrible at drawing, and cross stitch was a different way to create pictures. With cross stitch, my letters were always neat and uniform. There was something methodical and mathy that soothed whatever side of my brain appreciates that sort of thing (right brain? left?).

Later it was a way to slough off a long day of graduate school. After a day of theorizing, philosophizing, seeing one thing from a myriad of different perspectives, it was satisfying and necessary to come home to a project in which a ‘+’ definitively meant ‘use dark blue thread here.’

I’ve been thinking about getting back to cross stitch for some time now, mostly inspired by a couple wonderfully talented and hilarious stitchers I follow on Tumblr. (Hello, ladies.) But every time I’ve taken my supplies out over the past year, I’ve wound up putting them back because “I have too many projects right now” or “I should knit more things first.” Which are neither silly reasons nor empty excuses, but one of the things I like about my plan to do something non-yarny every month is that it does allow me to stray, guilt free.

And I do love the subversive, pop culturey, nerdy directions that so many people have taken cross stitching. Honestly, how can you not love this? Or this? And all these?

And again, I want a piece of that action.

So yesterday I downloaded a demo version of a cross stitch pattern maker — the kind that lets you upload a JPEG and it will convert it to a pattern with the corresponding DMC or Anchor floss colors (I first tried a website that lets you do this for free, but I couldn’t get it to work). You can create your own patterns as well, of course. I spent last night first trying to figure out how to get a photo to come out as a pattern — you’d think that it would be a simple pixel to pixel ratio, but there are other factors like how big you want the pattern to be and on what kind of fabric, and this is all mathy stuff that I don’t want to get into now. Suffice to say that I understand the theory but am clumsy at the practice. For now, anyway.

So I turned to free-drawing my own pattern, which was a little harder than I thought it would be, mostly because of the whole “I can’t come up with any ideas” obstacle I mentioned yesterday. I knew I wanted something pop culturey and nerdy, but that’s a pretty vast realm of stuff. I spent a couple hours cruising the Internet for inspiration, but nothing leaped out at me. I knew it didn’t have to be a Perfect Idea, but I wanted to at least be excited about it.

I do have a couple things I want to work out on canvas, but they’re a little too big and complex to tackle right now, like jumping immediately to a cabled sweater just after you’ve learned to knit. Which, by the way, I did, but I am wiser now. That sweater was a disaster.

So the first thing had to be very easy to chart out. A small piece, with simple shapes.

Then it hit me. Gah, so obvious!

I’m actually a little embarrassed by how long it took to chart this, but you know, I did it by hand and it took a fair amount of trial and error to figure out how big the overall canvas needed to be, the placement of things, the lettering, and simply figuring out how to make the software do what I wanted. So really, I’m less embarrassed than I am pleased.

I just hope I have the right shades of gray.

Related posts:

1. O Cross Stitch, I’m Yours

I own a number of things that I inherited from my grandparents — on both sides, I suppose, but mostly from the ones I lived with growing up. And by “inherited,” I really mean these are things I picked up from their house when we went through it to prepare it for sale after my grandfather’s death in 1997.

Some of the things are big and required movers to get from their place to mine. Most of them, however, are small items — and yet, though they are a fraction of the size of a piano or dining room hutch, hold much more of my grandparents in them.

Like these . . . I guess they’re saucers? My grandmother would use them as thread scrap receptacles when she worked on an embroidery project. When she got to the end of a piece, she’d snip off the end with her gold stork scissors and put it in one of these. There wasn’t a wastebasket near her spot on the couch, so this saved time. The next time she’d get up she’d bring the collection of thread scraps with her to dispose of them.

When she taught me how to work needlepoint, and then cross stitch, and later crochet and knitting, I’d use one of these saucers for my own thread and yarn scraps. I’d come home from school and we’d sit at opposite ends of the red and white upholstered couch, watching late afternoon TV — usually a syndicated epsiode of M*A*S*H — while we worked on our projects. I know the first thing I ever made was a cross stitch of my name, in a bubbly font decorated with hearts, using purple for the letters and pink for the hearts. SO GIRLY! I don’t think I was even 10 years old yet, and I chose the colors, but I was also embarrassed by them. I think my mom still has it somewhere; next time I’m home I’ll try to get a picture — especially since I think there’s a post on its own in this little side narrative.

I’m pretty sure these objects were not meant to be used as table top disposal units, and I am positive that my grandmother used them for this purpose instead of putting a small wastebasket next to her seat on the couch because the saucers were pretty and less intrusive than a clunky trash can.

So they’re mine now, and I keep them in the kitchen, in the cupboard with the plates and glasses. I’ve used them in ways my grandmother would probably not approve — one was just used this morning as a spoon rest for my coffee stirrer. They also make fantastic soy sauce bowls for when I bring sushi home, and though she probably would not have been a sushi fan, I think my grandmother would be happy knowing that these delicate, decorative saucers also have a practical use she hadn’t foreseen.

Now that I’ve picked up embroidery again, I brought one of the saucers out from the kitchen. Even though I have a wastebasket nearby, I like how it feels to put my embroidery floss scraps in a saucer first, because it was how I first saw them used, and how I first used them. And yes, a part of me feels like I am 70 years old and should order plastic coverings for my chairs and sofa and whatever else old ladies are supposed to do. But mostly what I feel, what I’m saying is — “I remember.”

No related posts.