halloween, homos and authority. and a red hat.

i was going to post a bunch of xmas pictures, even a few tutorials, when it occurred to me that i still have halloween stuff that hasn't been posted!

obviously, i should catch up on them first. hence, some of the stitching i was doing in october and november. (i posted the needlework vulva a while ago)

these two halloween pieces were just for fun, and were done right after a bunch of pieces that were my own designs. sometimes it's just nice to chill out and follow instructions, you know?

plus, i LOVE the patterns! they're designed by Prairie Schooler (book no 156) and have a vintage halloween vibe going on. i'd love to stitch up the moon and the cat too.

the skeleton


and the owl


they were both stitched with glow in the dark thread, which is annoying to work with, but oh so fun anyways. the skeleton bones are all glowing, and the owl's eyes.


once i'd stitched them up, i moved on to this for a friend's housewarming.


in typical craftydame fashion, i didn't count out from the centre (i hate doing that!) and my piece ended up being an odd shape that wasn't very frame-able.

to solve that, i sewed a piece of kona cotton onto both sides of the aida cloth. then i slipped it into an ikea frame that i'd painted previously, and ta-da!


the homo sweet homo idea has been around for ages, and i don't think it's possible to say who really started it. i'm not as fond of the more traditional sampler style cross stitch (with flowers and borders and bunnies, etc), so i chose to do a more graphic design. i used the same lettering as i did for the queer piece, ages ago now.

after i did the purple one for tara, i played with it a bit more, trying varying aidas. see how tiny the bottom one is? i didn't actually cross most of the stitches!



and somewhere in between all these pieces, i stitched up a radical cross stitch design to hang in my kitchen. (cause the colours match) their patterns are fabulous, and are available from their etsy store (along with issues of hoopla, which i also recommend highly!)


after saying that i'm not into the traditional cross stitch style (even with ironic words in it!), this may seem like a bit of a contradiction - however, there are NO bunnies. ;)


if you looked at the listing for the pattern on etsy, you might have noticed that the colours are a bit different. that's for two reasons. one, because i have six million skeins of thread, but never the right ones. i'm trying to use what i have instead of buying more, cause every time i walk into the stitching store to buy one skein, i walk out at least $20 poorer! and two, because i wanted the colours to be a bit brighter, to match the blue and the green towels i have in my kitchen.


i've worked on a few more needlework pieces since the xmas hoopla settled down, but one is a set of two, so i'll wait until they're both done, another needs to have the edges finished, and yet another is soooo sooo close to being done that it's ridiculous, but since it's my "PG" project that i work on in dr's offices and such, it probably won't get the finishing touches for a while yet.


however, one thing i did do, that i haven't done over a year, was pick up my crochet hook again! several friends were talking about crocheting, and i'd bought bulky yarn in a lovely shade of red at micheals on boxing day, so i got inspired.

i actually started out with a pattern, but quickly changed it drastically. i think i frogged and re-crocheted the majority of the hat about 4 times. it was getting ridiculous, truthfully.





i'm still not entirely in love with it. i kinda feel like it makes my head look like a mushroom, but no one else seems to agree. but i do love the colour!