The romantic notions of needlepoint

Today has been a grand adventure so far. And when I say that, it's with a certain degree of sarcasm, but still a partial bit of truth. My days have melted into quiet routine. But today, I had errands to run, specifically paying the car insurance and making a copy of our house key because I lost my car keys and my spare set doesn't have the house key and yesterday I had to wait around for an hour after work so that Dane could get home and let me in...

But interesting things happen when you accept instinctual possibilities and follow whimsical ideas. After paying the car insurance bill, I noticed the Goodwill store across the street. Having not been to that particular location in a while, I stopped in to see if they might have a shirt or two that I can wear to work (as the vast majority of my wardrobe is t-shirts with shiny stars or Ralph Wiggum or Rocko's Modern Life or something on them). And while perusing the back area, a jumbled mess of old Easter baskets, forlorn looking stuffed bunnies from holidays past, fifty mismatched pillowcases and at least one package of The Office postie notes, I found something entirely awesome.



Ignore the buttons. I'll get to those in a minute. First, concentrate on that needlepoint kit. It looks simple enough. Even run-of-the-mill, average, unremarkable. But it isn't. It's a spark of vintagey goodness from 1974. It's a splash of color and fun with the kit entirely intact and unopened, preserving the delicious yarn within. It's the antithesis of boredom, packaged neatly in a portable bundle that I get to open for the first time.

I realize I may sound overly romantic, but here's what went through my mind at the thrift shop. Imagine it's 1974 and this package, along with five or ten of its brothers, is placed on a hook or on a shelf in a craft or fabric store. It waits patiently, the packaging shiny and smooth, without a wrinkle or a tear. Someone comes along, a nice grandmother, seeing possibilities in the kit as a gift for a small toddler.

The kit is bought, taken home, put in the sewing room... and left. Every time the woman passes by, the kit gets excited. It's going to be used. Its purpose will be fulfilled. But she never opens it. She has other things on her mind. She found a more appropriate gift, or her arthritis has been bothering her lately and she just can't do needlework. She feels heartbroken that she can't do what she loves, so eventually, she stops going into her sewing room at all. Eventually, she can't even get out of bed, not because she is pining away from lack of needlework. No, we shall not be that dramatic... but she's definitely feeling her age. And finally, she slips away.

Time passes. Items are passed down through the family. Boxes of craft items are presented to cousins and nieces and grandchildren to paw through and take what's wanted. The packaging on our dear kit has gotten crinkled and mauled. Old. The price sticker came off long ago, leaving a pale sticky ghost on the plastic. Even the paper inside the kit has started to curl at the edges. And finally, the granddaughter perhaps, going through the garage and clearing space for the lawnmower, throws the kit in with other junk, some broken, some no better than trash for the dump. She drops it at Goodwill and goes home.

The kit is now not only forgotten, but essentially homeless. Its last hope of fulfilling its destiny was dashed with this final act of abandonment. It's thrown facedown in a large tupperware bin next to dinged candlesticks and a block of dented floral foam. It doesn't care anymore. It waits to die.

That is how I rescued it. And that entire romantic scene played out in my head over a second and a half and I knew I needed this. I will resurrect the life of this kit and what it was intended for. I will be the first to open it and sort the colored strands of yarn, the first to thread the small needle, the first to weave the strands through the plastic canvas squares. Columbia-Minerva Needlepoint Baby Blocks 5 pc set from 1974... you shall live again!



Oh yeah, the buttons. I also stopped at a cute antique store and found this adorable old jar filled with old buttons. These buttons are not as forlorn as the needlepoint kit was, but they still begged to come home with me. I'll probably sort through them later and use a large portion of them to make some sort of buttons-stitched-to-fabric-in-an-appealing-pattern type project.

Presents are an awesome way to start the day

What can I possibly say about Monica Magness right now other than, Oh my god, Amazing. I was having one of the most god-awful weeks of my life, full of stress and mood swings and fights and flu symptoms and migraines and pregnancy scares (can't afford a baby right now) and a complete and utter lack of any sort of creative spark. I can usually handle the stress when I can turn to my art for solace, but that hasn't been the case lately. (Dane taking over the spare room to play Warhammer Online all night long may have something to do with it as well...)

But this morning, when I woke up and decided to check the mail, I joked with myself that "Wouldn't it be awesome if I got something cool in the mail today?" And like God himself had thought that You know what? Cindi's had enough for one year-crammed-into-a-week-of-shite.... ta-da!



What a beautiful little package of goodies that just happened to be waiting for me. Fabric with skulls on it! How did you know I adore skulls in my "secretly Hot Topic" sort of way? Vintage-y buttons and OMG a dice bead to satisfy my Nevada upbringing. A pincushion full of I-Spy fabric goodness. I spent ten minutes just identifying fabrics and prints. Like, for a solid two minutes, I kept thinking this section right here was alien heads before it dawned on me that they were ladybugs, and then I contemplated the awesomeness of a print that can be two such entirely separate things at once.



(Are you getting the idea that I'm overly obsessed with fabric and prints of all kinds? Why do you think my husband has taken away my fabric shopping privileges? He got so tired of hearing "But look at the priiiint!!! Of course I had to have it! These owls look different than the other fifteen owl prints I have. These ones are greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!")

And what an ingenious tag on that pincushion. You must have the mostest awesomest sewing machine in the whole wide world.

Pardon if I'm overstating my happiness and joy, but wrapped up in this simple bundle of goodness was a ton of inspiration, love, and good will that has brought me out of a gloom faster than any amount of prescription drugs. Monica, you are amazing and a wonderful friend to have.

My fifteen minutes of almost fame

I feel very flattered and privileged right now. An article has been written about my humble little blog! Linda from Top Blogs by Crafters is doing a Get To Know The Crafter series, and I was lucky enough to be able to answer her question! You can see the article here, as well as many other interviews of other wonderful crafters.

This makes me very happy! Now, I sleep. Nappy time.

Do You Has An Owl Too?

A few little owls have followed me to school and made themselves known in the strangest places... I'm waiting for one to appear during a Sociology lecture.

I've been rather wrapped up with school stuff, which is really the way it's supposed to be. I'd love to spend all day creating things and cutting up fabric and just making a mess, but sadly, that doesn't get the bills paid in four years when Dane expects to be able to go for his Art and/or History degree. And it's hard to think of artsy things or just write in my art journal when I have to make cultures with my own lip bacteria or look at a slide of a gonococcus smear. (And yes, you guessed right. That is the bacteria responsible for gonorrhea. Isn't microbiology fun?)

But then, I feel fairly certain I'll see more little owls showing up to keep me company while I study. This guy flew in during micro lab tonight.

Whimsical Repose

Busy last few days. I should be asleep right now since I have class in the morning at 10:35, but I needed to center myself a little, so I took some time to iron the growing stack of new fabric sitting on my ironing board and cut out the pieces for a little cosmetic-sized bag.

What is it about ironing that leads to a state of calm? Is it the repetition? The soft hiss of the steam? The smoothing of the folds that feels like completing a gentle favor to the fabric? It seems terribly domestic and 1950 of me to find such quiet contemplation from a household task, but I like embracing my inner homemaker. (Of course, in many ways, I kind of have to, seeing as Dane doesn't even know how to boil water or brown hamburger meat. If it weren't for me, that man would starve...)

The Supr Top Sekret project I mentioned in this post is finished, so I can post about it. I bought a simple journal, tore out two thirds of the pages, decorated another portion of the pages, then gave it to Tanya for her birthday. The idea is that she'll be inspired by some of my collaging in the book and add her own. Once the book is filled, along with info written in it by her friends and family on "Why Tanya is Awesome", she'll hand it back to me and I will make her a quilt based on her images. The quilt probably won't be done until her next birthday, but at least I'm honest about my procrastination. She thought it sounded pretty cool and vowed to tell her dyslexia to take a hike long enough for her to scribble some thoughts in it herself.

And of course, I failed to get scans of the book, and I'll have to borrow it back from her before I can post some of the pages here. I really am quite a shitty blogger... But then I only have an audience of like, five. Bed now! School tomorrow. Craftiness this weekend and Monday since I have that day off!

To visualize the beginning, you must visualize the end

I'm working on a top-secret project (that may or may not have all, partial, or nothing to do with the above image....). This will not be the highest priority project (i.e. I could be working on this a looooong time because I'm a horrible procrastinator) but I want it to be an ongoing 'thing that sits there in the corner and I have to keep moving it until I get fed up enough to work on it' type of thing. Did that make sense? I'll be starting this Oh So Mysterious project probably sometime really soon, depending on outside factors. Boy, I really am keeping this vague, aren't I.... Well, it's a present for a friend's birthday which is tomorrow, and once she knows about it, then I'll post about it here.

In the meantime... here are some New Year's Resolutions for 2008.

This year, I will greatly reduce the amount of extra project-less fabric purchases, as I should be acquiring a large amount of my dead grandmother's stash.

This year I will attempt to try and use my current fabric stash instead of just looking at it.

This year, I will be more diligent about working on projects daily and keeping progress going on such projects, so as to prevent my Ongoing Projects box from overflowing, and maybe even reducing the contents of said box.

This year, I will keep my work area more organized, or I will at the very least keep things off the floor. And I will vacuum cat hair off the rug more frequently, because three cats, two of which are longhaired, leave a lot of linty residue. (Never wanted to know that about me, did you?)

This year I will count my art, and the progression of, a major priority, topped only by friends and family, school, and my husband. This should make me feel more guilty about procrastinating (in an ideal world).

I have a lot of unrelated resolutions, but they're a bit more boring, things like "I will do the dishes instead of whining to Dane that he needs to do them", so I'll leave them out.

The unexpected gifts of Christmas

The holidays were enjoyable and fruitful. Dane and I went to New Braunfels to spend Christmas with his mom and brother. We were both spoiled with awesome gifts, including a crock pot for me and a Nintendo DS for Dane.

The best part was the day after, when mom-in-law Jackie and I went to Wimberley, a cute little town that's 30 minutes from New Braunfels. We looked around in their cute little shops, and I found not one, but two old handmade quilts for VERY reasonable prices. They only needed some minor repairs, which I feel comfortable doing myself. The first quilt was $60 and is made from feedsacks. The second, a $30 solid colored quilt, is completely hand pieced.

I'm still learning the best settings for my camera, so some of these pictures came out a bit yellowed and unclear.


Wonderful feedsack prints, and a very soft backing. The only problems with this quilt are the split seams on some of the blocks, and a burn mark that goes completely through all layers and will need to not only be patched with a swatch of batting, but the pinwheel block will have to be recreated with a reproduction print.


The feedsack quilt spread out on our bed. The very dark spot in the center of the quilt is where the hole is.


Closeup of the hole. It shouldn't be too difficult to repair. I found a nice off-white quilter's flannel to use for the back and preserve the softness.


The solid colored quilt. The front is rather nice in a geometric way, but what really sold me is the print used for the back.


What a cute print! And this is the only picture where I got my flash settings correct, which is why it's so nice and bright.


This is the only spot of damage on this quilt. The hole isn't even the size of a silver dollar, but it knocked down the price dramatically. The antique shop owner said she was about to cut up this quilt to make pillows! Blasphemy!!!

So, I have my work cut out for me. I looked at some tips online for repairing old quilts, and I'll be documenting the origin of these quilts, what issues there were, and what was repaired, to help preserve as much as possible about their history.