i've been putting off posting about these for several reasons. for the first piece, i really wanted to write a post about the olympics and why i made it, but i just haven't had the mental clarity to really explain my feelings. so i'm just going to say that i don't think we realized the cost and effect of the olympics until it comes to our community. the winter olympics are going to be in vancouver in 2010, and it's already affecting us drastically. homeless people are being kicked out of their communities, the city is shutting down hotels that rented by the week (all anyone can really afford on welfare, it's so low), there are reports of increased police aggression towards homeless people (the vancouver police are bad enough as it is!), the federal government is increasing pressure against
insite, the supervised injection site that has done incredible things in the downtown eastside, it's just disgusting. the government and the big companies are all gung ho to spend tax payer's dollars on what will essentially be a week long party. we need health care, we need social services, we need our full human rights commission back. we DON'T need a big party! i'm all for supporting athletes, but i'm tired of athletes coming before the arts ($40million cuts, thank you very much stephen harper), and i don't think we really need to show off this much! it literally makes me ill to start thinking about it too much, it's so upsetting. i started this after watching part of the opening ceremonies for the beijing olympics, and all i could think about was how much it must have cost.
drafted on graph paper and then cross stitched on 14 count aida cloth. it's not perfect, but i love it anyway! it'll fit a 4"x6" frame with a bit of space to spare.
the back, not super neat, but not too bad!
i actually framed this, but i haven't taken pictures of it yet.
this second piece i was waiting until i framed it to post it, but since i haven't had the time to finish the frame, i'll just post it as it!
the pattern for the letters is from a vintage knitting book, i fell in love with them and immediately had to use them! the top and bottom border were designed using a swirl from a DMC design available on their website, drafted on graph paper by me. i don't like how "square" crosstitch often is, it was impossible to find pre-drafted border designs that were this fluid. it'll fit a 5"x7" frame.
the back, pretty neat. i'm trying!
and here's the letters that i used, scanned from a vintage knitting book about "graph" knitting. i'm not a knitter, but really, it looked like intarsia to me!
4 comments:
nice work! i love both of them!
The backs of my work are never that clean-- you must be more patient than I am. :)
I totally agree w/ your assessment of the Olympics. When they were in Atlanta, Georgia, US, my cousin reported a lot of awful stuff about what was being done to "sanitize" the city of homeless folks and sex workers. It was really upsetting to the local economy in a lot of ways as well. :(
As an Olympic Survivor (Atlanta 2006), I feel your pain. And I've got bad news: it only gets worse as the Olympics get closer and it doesn't go back to normal after they're gone. :(
San Francisco was bidding for the Olympics a few years back and I was the only one here who just kept saying, "NO. We do NOT want that!"
The cost of living skyrockets during the Olympics (and does not fully come back after it's done), there is an accompanying housing shortage (which you mentioned), and also a gigantic population increase following the event, which I did not expect. Seems like many *many* people who come for the party decide to crash on the floor afterwards. Wheee.
Sorry to be such a downer with this comment. Just wanted to say I totally feel your pain. Also, I understand that it can be difficult to be the only one realizing something is B-A-D when everyone is so gung ho about it.
In other news, the back of your QUEER piece is un-frickin-believable! It's better than most of my cross-stitch looks on the *front!*
thanks rachel!
bee listy, anal more than patient! every once in a while i get into this zone while i'm doing needlework and i don't care at all about how long it will take, i just want it to be PERFECT. i get really obsessive about it, and stay up way too late, stitching "just a little bit more". i did a set of embroidered bibs a while ago that were the same way - my stitching was so precise and tiny that jenny from sublime stitching complimented on my split stitch - um, it was chain stitch!
http://craftydame.blogspot.com/2008/08/more-exciting-and-late-news.html
kelly and bee listy, i'm so dreading the olympics. as we get closer, the list of atrocities just gets longer and longer. when it first came up, when we were just bidding on them, a lot of people were strongly against them, even typical middle class NIMBY folks. you'd see family minivans with "healthcare before olympics" bumperstickers right up there with the "my kid's an honour roll student, blah blah" stickers. once it was definite, a lot of that seemed to die down, like people just gave up. they're pissed about the overspending (duh, we knew that was going to happen!) but they don't seem to care at all about the rest of it. the only people who are publicly speaking out against it are the really politicized aboriginal and homeless groups from the downtown core, and they've received very little community support, even when the cops were raiding offices and the city started not renewing grants for groups too closely affiliated with them. (it's so sick. ugh.)
my little brother thinks the olympics are great, just one big party and it's incredibly frustrating trying to talk to him. he's the only one in our family who supports them, and he's quite convinced he's right. apparently the closing of the rent by the week hotels and the selling of the land to developers just before the olympics is just a coincidence! he's the only person i know who went to university and came out MORE conservative. (mom and i look and each other and say "where did he come from?")
kelly, not a downer at all! sometimes reality sucks.
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