… doesn’t mean I should actually attempt it. Then again, I won’t know if it’s a bad idea until I try. On the other hand, many of my bad ideas started as good ideas that eventually went horribly wrong because I seem to have little (if any) awareness of my actual limitations.

So far, things are going pretty well, considering that I typically don’t do this kind of needlework and have never designed anything like this before.

I bought a vintage oak Stitchery box and started giving the linen canvas I had on hand the eye. Then somehow embroidery floss magically appeared in my shopping basket at the craft store so I think I ended up committed to this project on some level.

The plan is that once I finish the border I’m going stitch the phrase “Is minic a bhris béal duine a shrón” on it, fill in the background with a yet to be determined ground stitch and yet to be determined animal or plant, or something. It really depends on how long my attention span holds out.

June.

(Sob.)

Snow.

(Sniffle.)

Get this– next month, on the 3rd, a yarn shop is going to open up here in town. I’m so excited. The only way I could possibly be more excited about a yarn shop opening would be if it were staffed by Tom Waits (because somewhere in my mind, I just know Tom Waits would stock the most kick ass pattern books ever.)

I’ve made it a habit to avoid embroidering as much as possible.

Not that I don’t like embroidery, not at all because I really do like it. I think its my fear of unfinished projects. There were a lot of unfinished counted cross-stitch and crewel work kits in our house during my most tender and formative years.

Currently I’m working on stitching designs on pieces of flour sack towel, destined to be apron pockets.

Moving right along then. In keeping with my current thing of making creatures out of garments– sock frogs! Frogs made of socks. One of these days I’m actually going to get around to making a classic sock monkey.

Lilly pad or sock drawer?

My soft sculpting techniques need some refinement but I’m quite proud of my long neglected embroidery skills.

The frog on the right (the one with the spots) was my first attempt, I think he came out pretty darned cute. I changed the placement of the feet for a more comical effect on the 2nd one (the one with the big purple stripe.)

I’m loving how articulating the seam at the toe of the sock makes for those big content smiles.

Lucky kitty with fish

This little guy started life as a pair of knit gloves.

Usually I find stretch gloves perfectly useless as gloves but I haven’t made a softie in a long time and the idea of a maneki neko was way too tempting to resist.

The paw holding the fish is the thumb of the glove, and the waving paw is the ring finger. I cut the head from the palm portion of the other glove. The tips of the amputated fingers are what I used for the nose and feet. There’s no tail because this is a Japanese cat.

The fish is just quilting cotton. Its just this side of 2 inches long, and the tail was a pain to turn. The fish eyes are just French knots.

I had to play with the position of the nose for quite a while, which probably took me longer to get right than actually sewing anything. It kept looking as if I was going to end up with a waving fish holding polar bear with cat ears.

I have a serious phobia of waving fish holding polar bears, so I’m very relieved that my cat finally took a proper kitty shape.

The design is a chinese woodcut of a dragon (I love wikipedia image searches) that I traced to some linen using a Sulky Iron-on transfer pen.