Tag Archives: Embroidery

Busy doing nothing

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Time is rapidly running out on my holidays, but I’m kind of looking forward to going back to work – this year is going to be full of all sorts of interesting challenges which I want to get stuck into.  I could very easily get used to this leisurely lifestyle though :-)

Not that the last few days have been that leisurely – we decided it was finally time to face down the monster that is cleaning the garage.  As you may know, we don’t own a car.  Our garage then, not needing a vehicular space to be kept clear, has become the all purpose storage space for things that might come in handy one day, broken stuff that might be repairable so it seems silly to throw it out, useful boxes, leftover building material from various projects, furniture I’ve been meaning to Freecycle, stuff the previous owners left behind… you get the idea.  Plus it doubles as a wood shed, and houses the usual tools and stuff of any garage.  Yeah, basically a room-sized junk drawer.

It was getting to the stage where we couldn’t actually find any of the tools, and getting to the woodpile in winter was work for a skilled mountaineer (ok, so maybe not that bad, but it was a bit tricky squeezing past the lawnmower).  So all year I’ve been saying that when we had a few free days we should clean it out.

So having quite a few free days, with no excuses left, we finally tackled the job.  We hired a skip and filled it with everything of the “might come in handy some day”, “don’t even know what this is” and “outright rubbish” categories, restacked the wood pile to limit its gradual spread across the floor, sorted out the Freecyclables ready to post offers, cleaned and organised everything that was left, and we now have a perfectly usable garage.

Yeah, I give it about a month before it’s back to chaos again, but in the meantime I can feel proud of our efforts :-)

Progress hasn’t been as steady on craft projects, but that’s because it’s been so hot – it’s hovered around 30o most days this month, accompanied by Christchurch’s famous hot and dusty nor’wester.  And hot and sweaty really doesn’t go well with keeping crafty things clean.

But yesterday the weather finally broke and it rained and was nice and cool.  Which coincided nicely with Jenny having a free day, so she came round and we had a sewing circle – or sewing line, really – it’s hard to have a circle of two… and actually it was more of a knitting and embroidery line – she was finishing off a jersey she’s knitting, and I was working on my cross-stitch. But we called it a sewing circle anyway ;-) and it accomplished the same goal: company and conversation while working on crafty things.

So I did make a small amount of progress:

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And I have added a bit more to my knitting experiment.  I’ve just been playing with different patterns and using up some of the random odds and ends of wool Jenny gave me, and just picking up stitches off the sides of existing squares to start each new one, so it’s developing very organically*.

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*Translation: messily

In bookcrossing news, I got a catch which was definitely a record for me, and may even (according to Gorydetails) be a site-wide record, for longest time between release and catch.  I released Ossian’s Ride in April 2003, and it’s finally been caught almost 10 years later.  Just goes to show you should never give up on a book!

Other, less notable, recent catches:

Currently reading:

  • Napoleon’s Buttons by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson
  • Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety by Daniel B Smith (audiobook)

Back by maternal demand

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OK, I get the hint Mum – time I posted something.  My only excuse is my usual one: Honours is hard and I have no life.  Yeah, I’ve been saying that a lot lately, but study is definitely taking up a huge proportion of my time, and not leaving a lot left for anything else.

Anyway, the end (for this year anyway) is in sight – I’ve written an almost just about semi final draft of my paper, and if I can catch up with my lecturer on Tuesday to clarify a few last points I should be able to get it finished in the next week or so… and then I can relax a bit and enjoy the summer.

Talking of summer (or at least late spring), a couple of nice summery photos I took in the Botanic Gardens a few weeks ago:

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We were sitting in the gardens waiting for the doors to open for a talk we were going to at the museum when this blackbird flew down and landed on the bench we were sitting on. He let me take a few photos before he decided we obviously didn’t have any food to give him, and flew off again.

Ok, so I have had a bit of a life – last month was UC’s Platform Arts Festival, and we managed to get to a few of the events – a couple of talks, a poetry reading, and a couple of film screenings.  Highlight was probably the screening of Buster Keaton’s silent movie The General accompanied by a pianist from the School of Music who’s made a study of the art of silent film accompaniment. He gave a talk beforehand on the technique, then we watched the film, while he played the piano (completely improvised – he didn’t have any music, and said he prefers to just watch the film and play what comes to mind).  It was totally amazing, and added so much to the film, so that you almost forgot it was a silent movie (and not only that, but a silent movie made nearly 90 years ago!).

Lytteltonwitch is back in NZ briefly, so last weekend she, Otakuu and I went out to Hororata for the day.  We’d intended a bookcrossing expedition, but it was raining so heavily we ended up just spending several hours sitting in the cafe (which is under new management so no longer has an OBCZ shelf :-( ) and talking.  So not many books got released, but it was a fun day, and good to catch up with them both (even though Otakuu is living in Christchurch now, she works nights so we don’t get to see a lot of her).

I have managed to make a little progress on my latest cross-stitch (actually, I’ve just looked back, and it’s been about 4 months since I last posted a progress report, so in that time I’ve actually made quite a bit of progress):

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Last night we went into town for the Luxcity event, which opened up part of the Red Zone for temporary art installations based around the idea of light.  Most of the art was pretty uninspired (though we left before it was properly dark, so maybe they got more impressive later on in the night), but it was great to be able to get back into the city for a night, and there were a lot of people taking advantage of the opportunity, and a great atmosphere.

The CBD is such an alien landscape these days, with so much empty land where buildings once stood, and weird little islands of buildings left behind:

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Opposite Alice’s there’s only one shop left standing. The picture framers I used to use for getting my embroidery framed used to stand next door to this shop. Don’t think I’ll be getting any work done there for a while.

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The Farmers car park next to the library is strangely beautiful in its half-deconstructed state.

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A different view of the cathedral (I took this through the security fencing from Gloucester Street, still the closest you can get to the Square).

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When we arrived, some of the artworks were still being installed. This one was being put up on the site where the Press building once stood.

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A lot of the art seemed to involve suspending things from cranes – nice to see them being put to a use other than knocking down buildings, even if the artwork itself isn’t particularly exciting.

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Weeds growing on the library building…

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… and on the footpath in front. It’s still very much an abandoned city.

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The sunset completely outdid anything the artists could create with light :-)

There were food stalls and performance spaces among the artworks, with musicians and acrobats.  In one of the spaces, someone had covered the fences with “provocative” messages (actually, most of them were pretty bland stuff about reclaiming the city), and provided pens and cardboard for people to add their own (I love whoever wrote “Potato!” as their mesage :-) )

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One of the signs had a starter of “I love…” and someone had written underneath “Minecraft”, so MrPloppy added a little picture of a creeper.  When we came past the spot again later in the night, the creeper theme had spread, and there were pictures of creepers and comments about Minecraft all over the signs…

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Talking about Minecraft, MrPloppy managed to get it running over our network so we can play multiplayer worlds.  We had to abandon the first world we created though, because a weird glitch in the world kept spawning cows, to the point there were so many of them that whenever you went near the area the game would crash because the graphics engine couldn’t keep up.  It looked really funny though – thousands of cows surrounding a hole in the ground, with more being produced all the time (sometimes flying into the air as they were ejected from the glitchy block).

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So that’s a rough update on what I’ve been up to when I’m not studying or working.  Promise I’ll be better at posting over the summer… possibly….

Randomness

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Yesterday was not the best birthday ever.  For a start, deadlines and panics meant I had to go to work, and it was a frustrating day with all sorts of technical problems putting us even further behind (though on the plus side, one of the analysts did go out and get pastries for afternoon tea as a birthday treat for me, which was sweet of him).  And I wasn’t feeling all that birthday-ish anyway – what with post-nuclear family meltdowns, and a spot of rockiness on the home front this week, there’s been a definite deep dark pit of despair vibe in the air recently.

Oh, and to totally top off the day, there was an earthquake yesterday – just a 4.0, which to us toughened Cantabrians hardly rates a mention these days, except that I was sitting on the toilet at the time!  And there really is nothing more disconcerting than feeling that rumble and wondering whether this will be a big one, and if so, are you going to be able to get your pants up in time?

But MrPloppy did his best to get me in a happy birthday sort of mood, with some really thoughtful and fantastic presents (highlight is the 150th anniversary edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which is a gorgeous book, combining the original text with contemporary and modern illustrations of various species he mentions, and sidebars with biographical details and extracts from his other writing – weighs a tonne though, so I don’t think I’ll be reading it in bed…), and an attempt at a birthday cake (except the never-fail recipe he used somehow failed, and it didn’t rise properly – but I did appreciate the thought, if not so much the cake).  So it wasn’t all bad, really.

Otherwise, life has just been full of work and study. I did force myself to take a break last weekend and do something fun instead of hitting the books yet again, and spent a few hours pleasantly ensconced in my long-neglected embroidery project:

Until of course I ended up with a kitten on my lap and had to stop and hide the dangling thread temptations.

Talking of kittens, I should probably post some pictures (more difficult than it sounds with Parsnips, who is such a bundle of energy and craziness that most of the photos I’ve attempted just show a blur).

They alternate their time between destroying the house and decimating Christchurch’s weta population (seriously – I think they bring in at least one a day at the moment, and chase it round the house until the poor thing has lost all its legs, at which point they get bored and leave it for us to find… I’m just glad we only get the little ones down here, not the giants!)

Kitten poo and mad people

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As usual when life gets busy, I get worse at journalling.  The main thing that’s been taking up my time (apart from work), is studying.  I knew the Honours year is a hard one, but I didn’t know it would be HARD.  We’re only three weeks into term, and I’m already finding it a struggle to keep up with all the reading that’s needed… not to mention the thinking.  It’s great fun though, and I’m absolutely loving the challenge.  Just don’t expect me to have a life outside of study for the next four years….

Work is another challenge, but thankfully another enjoyable one.  I’ve had a kind of promotion (it’s complicated), the end result of which is I’m involved in a really exciting long-term project, which (if all goes well) could give me even bigger and better opportunities further down the track.  It means I’m a lot busier than I was, though, and I’ve got a lot more responsibilities to juggle.

Oh well, at least I never get bored :-)

In kitten news, they’re just as cute and just as infuriating as always. Just when we thought we had them litter-box trained, Parsnips has decided the carpet beside the front door is a much better place to poo. So we spend a lot of time cleaning the carpet and trying to find some sort of smell that will discourage her – so far lemons and the fancy spray from the pet shop have failed. Any suggestions gratefully accepted!

Anyway, pictures of the cute:

And in embroidery news, I’ve made a little bit of progress:

Can you tell what it is yet? :-)

All of a sudden it’s just a few weeks until our big Ireland trip. This time three weeks from now I’ll be somewhere over Europe, descending towards Heathrow (having already been travelling for nearly 40 hours, and still with another 6 hour bus trip ahead of me to get to the Outlaws’ place – whose stupid idea was it to do the whole thing non-stop???)

I’m almost completely organised – my to-do list still has a few wee jobs on it (like find my NZ/UK converter plug so I can charge my phone), and I don’t actually have a flight home from Brisbane yet (the airline cut the flight I was originally booked on, and the alternative goes via Auckland, so I’m considering staying the night in Brisbane so I can get the direct flight to Christchurch in the morning), but otherwise it’s all coming together nicely.

Actually, speaking of Australia, I should put something on BCAUS to at least organise a meetup in Sydney on my way over.  Organising a Brisbane meetup will have to wait until I know how long I’m there.

In totally weird news, a certain local Bookcrosser has been masquerading as a new member and posting anonymous comments on an old LJ entry.  It was pretty obvious who it was from the start, but I played along to see where she’d take it.  Not very far, as it turned out – she lasted three comments before she started insulting us.  That was amusing enough, but then she followed up by sending me a friends request!  As the Tui ads would say, Yeah, right.  No idea what planet she’s on…

Truce

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The kittens and I managed a truce this afternoon in the battle of the embroidery threads, so they slept on my feet while I managed to add a bit to the cross-stitch project:

It’s still going to be a very long time before there’s anything worth seeing in these updates.

A week of firsts

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Well, not really, but I couldn’t think of a more interesting title.

It was the first meetup of the year, though. My threats to stop organising obviously worked, because we had a good turnout for a change: Rarsberry, Otakuu, Kiwiviv, and Bruce, Stephanie and Linda (one day I’ll remember their bookcrossing names!). The venue was voted a success too, which is great news for me, because it’s so easy for me to get to after work.

As usual, many books were exchanged: I passed on The Benefits of Passion by Catherine Fox, A Cameo Role by Sarah Grazebrook, On The Run by Gregg and Gina Hall, and Amazing Rain by Sam Brown, and picked up Silent Snow by Steve Thayer, Odd Hours by Dean Koontz, and Three Men In a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

And I *almost* managed to complete Xanthi’s birthday challenge to eat a vegan meal, but the lure of the garlic naan’s butter was too much. At least it was vegetarian, though – that has to nearly count, right? ;-)

The kittens had a first: their first vet visit today, for booster shots and a general checkup. They were both declared fit and healthy, and in a few more weeks (Parsnips needs one more booster, being a couple of weeks younger than Pushkin) will be allowed to start going outside.

They (as all kittens do) alternate between being evil and angelic. One minute they’re chewing through the cord to my phone charger (just when my phone’s battery was about to die, of course!), and the next they’re snuggled up sweetly together and the cute outweighs any annoyance.

No cross-stitch update – kittens and long strands of embroidery cotton really don’t mix (the kittens might beg to differ – they’d really like them to mix!), so unless I lock myself away in the bedroom I can’t get anything done. Maybe if it’s a nice weekend I’ll take it out into the garden.

In other bookcrossing news, a few recent catches:

Vixen 03 by Clive Cussler travelled from Dunsandel to Nelson for a second-generation catch, and The Power-House by John Buchan went on a similar journey from Twizel to Motueka. And another catch from my BC Birthday releases: Prized Possessions by Avery Corman.

I can’t remember who it was who was searching for the elusive 8-no-cover-pics in the recent releases and catches bar, but I spotted one the other day, and screenshotted (screenshot? I don’t know how to verb my nouns) it for posterity:

Next

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Having finally finished off a few works-in-progress from the stash, I decided to reward myself with starting something new – a kit MrPloppy gave me for Christmas years ago, which is huge and ambitious and will probably take me even more years to finish. But aren’t the colours pretty?

I didn’t actually get much stitching done on it yesterday, by the time I’d sorted the colours, prepared the fabric (I attempted to use your overlocker, lytteltonwitch, but failed miserably. One of the threads had come out, and though I followed the diagram and am pretty certain I rethreaded it properly, it only overlocked properly for a couple of cm before it went all weird. In the end I gave up and just used the zig-zag on my ordinary machine.), discovered there was supposed to be blending filament (Noooooo! Not again!!!) in the kit but it wasn’t there (good excuse for a visit to Hands :-) )…

Oh, and if I thought the dragon was complicated, this is going to be worse – of the 94 (!!!) symbols on the graph, 80 of them are tweeds (i.e. threading the needle with two colours at the same time). Luckily there’s only three that involve the blending filament, but this is still going to be a very slow project. Oh, and as you would expect with 94 different colours, there’s a lot of changing needles – that tiny patch I stitched last night has six different colours in it alone. So don’t expect to see anything recognisable for quite some time…

Finished!

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Finally finished the backstitch and beading on the dragon:

Now I’ve just got to find somewhere to get it framed, seeing as my favourite framer is gone. Or maybe I’ll just add it to the ever-growing stash of things to round to framing one day…

Now, what should I do next?