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Stitch, bitch, repeat…my stuff

Posted by: annahell on: Friday, January 22, 2010

In: random | she's crafty | snooty art hound
4 Comments

Mood:	10% wistful, 50% ebullient, 22% other
Music:	The Yeah Yeah Yeahs-Heads Will Roll

Continued from here.

Let’s just get right to it, shall we? Here’s a picture of the scarf I completed right around the beginning of the new year…

Anna with scarf #1 FTW!

…and another look…

Who's a pretty scarfy scarf?

It’s my first real knitting project and I’m quite happy with how it turned out. I used 17 gauge bamboo knitting needles and one skein of lovely, variegated, chunky alpaca (I think) wool. The color is a weird, almost ugly combination of orange, magenta, purple and grey.

Mom bought me the yarn, some Addi turbo lace needles, and a copy of Debbie Stoller’s Stitch ‘n Bitch for my birthday when she and my aunt came out to visit. My aunt taught me to knit when she was here, but it took me a couple of weeks of practice making swatches on cheap acrylic yarn before I felt ready to move to the more expensive yarn. I didn’t follow a pattern, I just made a garter stitch (knit every row) and played with the width until it felt right.

It’s about 8″ wide, which is pretty wide for a scarf, and around 7′ long, which seems crazy, Dr. Who long. Regardless, I love it. We’ve had some really cold days here this year and it’s nice to have a soft woolen scarf to wrap around your head and neck like five times if need be.

Next up is my first foray into embroidery and cross stitch since I was a teeny tot.

untitled (lol) by Anna Hell

I apologize for the crap photos. I’ve had to resort to using my webcam until I buy another, big girl’s camera. Anyway, I started this project almost a year ago! I awoke from a feverish dream (or something) with the basics of this pattern in mind and I felt compelled to finish it…very slowly. It’s approximately 5×7 inches and it felt like it took me a google-illion hours to finish. The truth is prolly closer to 50 or 75 hours, but there are a lot of stitches in it. I’m pretty happy with it, but I feel like it’s more of a sketch/practice piece than anything real.

This is the doodle I started the other day…

pop heart sketch by Anna Hell

I have an idea for how I might use this later, but it really just started off as a fun diversion after I finished the bohemiath above. I know it sounds weird to take a break from needle work by doing some more needle work, but regular embroidery is way faster than cross stitch and it was nice to be able to sketch out something so fast. Like I said, this might be incorporated into a larger piece (8×11 or pillow size?), but I just started this…

Elizabeth's Grace Lace Beret

…and I should really finish it before I get distracted with five other projects, as is my nature. I’d also like to do a Blog, Sweet Blog title card and experiment with some “topographic” embroidery.

So, I’m happy to have finally finished a couple of projects, but only the heart thing and beret will count towards my viva la resolutions art things if I finish them this year. Wish me luck!

What projects are you guys in the middle of/planning to start?

Tags: anna hell, annahell, art, art so good it makes you angry, arts and crafts, blog sweet blog, crafting, cross stitch, embroidery, fiber art, get down with the sickness, stitch art

Stitch, bitch, repeat

Posted by: annahell on: Friday, January 22, 2010

In: random | she's crafty | snooty art hound
3 Comments

Mood:	Get down with the sickness
Music:	some episode of The L Word

O hai Englandz! We'z gonna need to have deez castlz and landz, kthxbai!

If this seems out of order, it’s because I started this the other day when I was home sick…and why I made reference to it here and showed some here. Let’s just pretend like this is a Blog, Sweet Blog time machine ride to the not-so-distant past!

O hai Interntubes!

So, I’m sick today, but I couldn’t help but share some of the cross stitch/embroidery and knitting work I’ve completed recently. I also want to show you some of the super wonderful Innerwebz stitch art I’ve seen over the past couple of months.

I’m not sure if the other people’s stitch art thing will become a regular feature or not. There are plenty of great websites that do this all the time, e.g. feeling stitchy, mr. x stitch, and craftster.org. Also, I tend to think every.single.project I see on those sights is lovely and amazing. I would just be re-posting every item I see and that’s hardly the sort of top-drawer, Blog, Sweet Blog curating you’ve come to expect. I think I’ll just let the pros handle craft blogging and I’ll just add some of my new besty craft sites to the right-hand blog roll.

Let’s start with the some of the online projects I’ve really loved…

Max by mimilove, click the photo for her page!

The piece above made me do a weird combination of gasp and squeee the first time I saw it. It combines many of the elements of life I love…Hello Kitty, actual kitty, watercolor, an interesting color palette, and weird, delicate embroidery. Mimi’s site is a treasure of similar wonderment.

So…have you ever been up in your own head, working on a certain project and you start thinking…

Wow, that is some good stuff right there. I am soooo good at art! I think I might even be sell-the-cat-move-to-Portland-and-join-an-art-collective good.

…and then you stumble onto something from Tod Hensley and it makes you feel like you just graduated from Baby’s First Art Class? Well, that totally happened to me when I saw his work. It’s a hurtful experience, but I highly recommend looking at super-talented artist’s work when you need to go back to keeping it real.

Untitled by Tod Hensley

The subject matter isn’t exactly something you’d show your mother (unless you’re me), but the stitching and design are expressionistic, tribal, folky, and sickeningly complex. I think I like this one more…

excerpt from a larger, untitled piece by Tod Hensley

The last of the other’s work is an off-the-cuff, yet totally mind-blowing relaxation sampler by Mrs. Kitty.

Playing with color and texture by Mrs. Kitty

It’s so good, it makes me a little bit angry and full of the awe. I think a lot of the old-timey samplers are interesting to look at, but would have been dreadfully boring to actually work. Mrs. Kitty’s piece looks like the most fun way to learn every stitch and also work with color and design.

This is getting long, so I’m going to cut it up into two posts. Click here for a look at what I’ve been up to lately, craft-wise.