Oct. 29th, 2019

crockpotcauldron: (Default)
I have been a busy bee.

Did you know you can embroider on duck canvas? It's not perfectly square like the evenweave canvas they sell for embroidery, but canvas is canvas. I have done a few little cross stitch pieces here and there, mooching off pixel and perler bead designs because cross stitch leans very heavily towards flowers and angels, you know.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B37lFkjHIK7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
I'm noodling around with various designs, but my embroidery thread box has scampered off to greener pastures, and I am just scavenging threads from a kit I found, so my palette is distinctly limited.

I've also been doing a bit of papercutting.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4AuZ3bHj87/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
This is one of my favorite illustrations by Sidney Paget - the scene in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle where Holmes and Watson try to pull clues from Henry Baker's lost hat. It's a very awkward shape to frame, though. I don't have what anyone would consider good paper crafting supplies - no fancy paper or nice punches, no mod podge or scrapbooking stuff. So I faked up a background with watercolors, and cut the border out of black paper with an x-acto knife. Everything is stuck in place with loops of masking tape. Turned out pretty good!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B4LtoTYnXQD/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
This is a honeybee and some calendula flowers for my mom. I looked at some illustrations, sketched it out, and just started cutting. I'm actually really enjoying papercutting - it's like appliqué without the fuss of sewing, and I haven't even drawn blood yet.

I whalloped my wrist on a metal chair, so that's it for art for a few days. It doesn't even look bruised, but I got it right on the bone and it hurts to bend it, so I've had my wrist in and out of a little neoprene wrap for support, and have been putting liniment on it. Had to be the dominant hand, too.

Besides that, I've been having a pretty good time. Bought a couple of good puzzles from the library, and have been making progress through my dime cart novels. I have read some Japanese fairy tales I've never read before, a novel about a deaf kid befriending a backyard fae child, a slightly awful but beautifully illustrated book of original fairytales from the forties, the biography of a WWII POW, and a Brother Cadfael mystery. I still have about thirty dime cart books left to go through, most of them nonfiction - a couple of dog psychology books, a bit of Victorian history, a Rita Hayworth biography, and more. The nonfiction is mostly mysteries, Irish mythology, and a book Mark Twain wrote a scathing review of. I'm slowly chewing my way through the pile, and I would really like to get it down to just the one section of my shelf. That's about nine books away, assuming I don't get anywhere near the dime cart in the meantime.

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