Failed Ornaments of 2021

Failed ornaments...

The first one is me practicing on black fabric. It turned out pretty cute!

This one is me trying to put Aida onto a frame that wasn't sturdy enough to hold it.  So it broke.  I don't know how people do it. 

"We're all looking for tasty, big mushrooms!"

I am very tired. Covid is a BIIIIITCH getting over. But I did just finish this cute embroidery and I don't want it to go unposted, since I'm trying to keep this up better, so here is a mushroom pattern I completed.

I am obsessed with mushrooms, having grown up with them in the forest and having always been told that they are all poisonous. I'm sure my parents told me that to keep me from killing myself by eating random mushrooms in the forest, because that is exactly the kind of thing I would have done. But that made them all the more mysterious. Pattern is by poeticembroidery.

Getting back into embroidery

So, I really kind of stopped doing embroidery for a while and focused on cross stitching. I have missed embroidery, though, and thought I would revisit it this year. I wanted to start with a couple of pretty simple things, and so I got this cat planchette that Cate Anevski designed and I got back into it!

I like how it came out. I don't like how my stitches aren't as clean on this one as they used to be, but it's been over 4 years since I have embroidered so I guess that's to be expected. I also started on this one by  Hook Line Tinker on Etsy. I love how bold their stitches are.  As I was stitching it up, my sister asked if I could do one for her, and since I hadn't gotten far, I told her I would give her this one. It's in her kitchen. My stitches look much better on this one.

Covid Stitches

Welp. I done went and got mahself The Covids. It's the sickest I think I have ever been. I have been doing some cross stitching to keep me occupied. I did these for Torvald. They are from a Subversive Cross Stitch pattern. Made myself $50!

ScamGoddess Podcast

I listen to podcasts a lot. I have about a half hour or more commute to and from work, and I listen to them at work as well. I recently discovered one called ScamGoddess. I love it. Lacy Mosley is the host, and she is HILARIOUS. I’ve listened to several episodes and have already planned a few pieces from her quotes. She always has a different co-host and, of course, talks about scams. Recently, I listened to one and she said “Rules are for OTHER people! Rules are for other people so I can do what I want.” LOL perfect. So I created a pattern and stitched this up for my husband’s aunt. I posted about it on FB and she was like “OMG can you please make me one?” It was a quick finish, I think it may have taken an hour. I just need to get it wrapped up good so it doesn’t break and get it in the mail to her. I’m very happy with how it came out and will likely be making another for myself.

Scranton's WNEP 16 News Backyard Train

There’s a funny story behind this one. 

I was watching This Week With John Oliver a few years back. If you have watched the show, you know that they end the show with "And Now..."- they usually feature something that’s sort of quirky or weird or somehow just ridiculous. On this specific episode, he featured a train that was part of a Scranton, PA weather report every evening on their local news. The train ran in the background, and people either loved it or hated it. People would call in and talk about how much they liked the train, or how stupid they thought it was. One guy called in and said the trolley was in the wrong place. Another guy called in, in response to that guy, that the engineer can put the trolley anywhere he wants to and “Shut up and go do your supper dishes!”. I laughed SO hard at that, for some reason, and of course… I had to make that into a cross stitch pattern. The trains are from Makoto’s Mini Cross Stitch book. It’s hanging in our kitchen (which is no longer green). 

The trains are from another Makoto Oozu book.  
 

Here is a link if you want to watch a clip. It’s really funny. People are so weird.  The quote that I stitched happens around 58 seconds in, but the entire clip is worth watching.

https://youtu.be/nqVgNvIiPxI?si=Lc1twDBp3BiD1dsO

Rabbit Lady

I love rabbits so much. We often have several in our back yard, and they don't seem to be very afraid of us. They will come right up to the edge of the patio sometimes. They are ADORABLE. they also like to put their little babies in some of my larger plant pots. I love to watch them grow up. They do grow up fast and leave the nest after only a few weeks. They are the SWEETEST little things!! Tusk and Cardinal makes really cool cross stitch patterns, and I loved this one, so I stitched it up last month.  I dyed this aida myself.

Buttons

 Here are some buttons I made from small stitches I did both last year and this year.  I have no idea what I'll do with them...

Mind The Needle

I am obsessed with needle minders. They are the cleverest daggone thing! When I realized I could make them out of covered buttons, I made a few! This tree is from Wild Olive. Rather than a face, I did french knots to make it look more like leaves.

SSDGM

I love the podcast My Favorite Murder. Karen and Georgia say the funniest things, and often, their quotes are made into cross stitch or embroidery designs by Murderinos. I did this small one a few years ago. I found this design on Pinterest with no credit and copied it, so if I find the artist in the meantime, I will come back and give them proper credit.

The Time I Learned Needlework Isn't Just for Walls

There are so many cool things you can do with embroidery and cross stitch. One of my favorite things to do is making pins and necklaces. These are my first ones pins, and I am still trying to get the centering down. I recently came across them in a bin where I have a lot of my finished projects. This Domo-kun is one of the very first cross stitches I did about 10 years ago.

I stitched this pizza and word bubble up as well. These are Teeny Tinies from the Wild Olive Etsy store. Her patterns are SO CUTE! She usually puts little faces on everything, but I left them off and added the "XO" to the word bubble and some veggies to the pizza.

I did this one last year. Again, please ignore the crap centering...

I have a bunch of smaller cross stitches and embroideries to add to pins or pendant settings, I just need to get off my arse and do it!

Embroidered Pendants

Last year, I started doing these pendants.  I don't know what made me get them, because I always find very small and very detailed embroidery a bit daunting, but these are pretty easy to do.  I get to practice different stitches on them and they come together pretty fast.  These are from the kit patterns:

And these are from my own patterns.  I love making my own, it's really fun.  I'm working on several other designs as we speak!

Japanese embroidery patterns

I got this Japanese embroidery book FOREEEEEVERRRR ago. I have posted some of the stuff I have stitched up from the book on this blog. The designs are so cute. And since I'm trying to get back into embroidery, I thought I'd look at the book again. My problem is that I get overwhelmed. I want to start stitching, but I don't know what to stitch. I have so many patterns. So I tend to put it off until I'm no longer interested. That may happen this time too... we'll see. 

Anyway, I did this one from the Japanese embroidery book. The cool kids are no longer just doing outline embroidery but basically painting with the shit and I don't want to spend days on a project, so I won't be doing that. However, I have learned some really cool stitches and thought I'd try one of them out on this one. I forget the name of the stitch but I did it on the leaves. I already knew french knots which I know some people HATE but I love them, and satin stitch. I really love how it came out! This is not the final framing, it's just the hoop I used to stitch it, since these kind give me the tautness I crave. That sounded weird.

WIPS

I'm sitting here listening to a playlist of MTV's 120 Minutes from 1991.  That means all of these songs are at least 30 years old.  I used to watch 120 Minutes every week- it's how I discovered a lot of the music I still love today.  It's making me really sentimental...

Anyway, I have a few WIPs going. I usually only have one WIP, because I hate to start another project before finishing another. This is a rarity.

 

This Absolutely Fabulous piece may be for a friend but I may keep it (she often disappears from the face of the earth so I may not get it done before she disappears, and in that case, MINE!  It’s gone pretty quickly. Here's Pats (I need to redo some of the leg stitches), and now I just need to get started on Eddie. The pattern is from 8BitNorthStitch on Etsy.  

https://www.etsy.com/shop/8bitnorthxstitch?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=920576695

Keep Stitching Weird

I found an Etsy shop called OddAnaStitch. Her patterns are so interesting. I stitched these up last fall.  I remember doing the bat face one while I was visiting my family and my granny saying how weird it was, but that she kind of liked it.  The other one with the mushroom eyes, I think I started out at my parents' but finished when I came back home.

I just love odd and unsettling patterns... don't you?

So Hygge!

I stitched this one about a year ago. It was a cool and rainy Saturday. One of my FAVORITE things to do when it's cool and rainy out is put on a horror movie, drink some coffee, and do some stitching! Fall is my absolute favorite time of year. I think I was born to be in a cooler climate, because I just love the coziness of fall and winter! In Texas, we only get a short window of cooler weather, and while I was born and raised here, I have never liked that. This one is from an Etsy shop called ALIFERA. Her patterns are wonderfully weird and also very beautiful.

I love her patterns, and I plan to do more for sure.

Malcolm Tucker is My Life Coach

I have A LOT of cross stitching posts to catch up on. Today, I want to show you a couple of pieces inspired by Armando Iannucci's The Thick of It and In the Loop. It's a British show done in 2005 and the move (In the Loop) was done around the same time. It stars Peter Capaldi, whom I adore, Chris Addison, Rebecca Front, and Joanna Scanlan. It's a British policital comedy, and I instantly became a fan of Peter Capaldi's character Malcolm Tucker. He has THE BEST lines. One of them, which Malcolm refers to as "Tucker's Law", was sadly cut out of the show, but I saw it on some outtakes and knew I had to cross stitch it.

Here it is in action, along with my custom Malcolm Tucker Funko Pop figure!

Here are a couple more Malcolm Tucker quotes I've stitched up. Pardon the shoddy framing... I suck at most things.  This one is from StephXStitch on Etsy.  The second is from Claire Brown on Etsy.

Stick N Stitch

Hello hello! Today I bring you yet another Facebroidery by Cate Anevski. So on this one, I do like how my stitches look more even. However, I still have a problem tracing a perfect circle. I just can't do it. They make this stuff you can print patterns on that will stick onto the fabric and then it washes away, so I'm thinking of getting some so I can stop doing shit trace jobs! The only thing I worry about there is washing it off and then the fabric gets wrinkly and I have to wait for it to dry and bleehhhh but hey... it's either nice straight lines and good circles or the shit I've been cranking out so I guess I'll have to deal. I am fairly happy with this one, though.

Sublime Stitching x Naoshi

Naoshi makes the cutest art. She collaborated on some patterns with Sublime Stitching. I purchased them, but have only gotten around to doing one. I was gonna do it for a onesie for Jessica, but then I waited too long. So now it hangs in the collage I have in the bathroom! I stitched this one back in 2016.

Loooong Overdue Update and Post

It's been almost 10 years since I posted in this blog. Life happened- we did another big move, I went through a lot of mental health issues (depression and anxiety that had gone undiagnosed and unchecked for YEARS finally caught up with me), I suffered the loss of my sweet cat and of my Grandad (who, if you know me or have read this blog, means the world to me), and I fell into a dark place and I stopped crafting for a while. Well, I still did stuff but it was really sporadic, and I just stopped blogging and I don't know why. Maybe it's because it's sometimes hard to keep up with. AAAAAANYHOW, all is well with Jonesy, though I'm not longer a Jones. I married my sweet Allen and I decided to take his last name (though I kept Jones as a middle name, because afterall, I am definitely a Jones!). But he still calls me Jonesy, so I am not changing the blog name. We purchased a house in 2015 in Hutto. I never thought I'd move from Austin, but I'm glad we did, because I don't like what Austin has become, and Hutto is much more affordable. What else.. oh, I got laid off from my job at Sears in 2017, worked at this cool company called Build A Sign for a few months and then my old Sears boss begged me to come back, so I did. The pay was good but FUCK that place and fuck her. I could write a fucking Tolkein-length novel about the shit show Sears is. I got furloughed earlier this year, and not trusting Sears to bring me back like they said they would, and because I needed money, I found another job. The pay is a lot less, but it's better overall. And now you're pretty much caught up. I took some time yesterday and read back over my posts, and my life has changed so much, but one thing remains- I still love cross stitch, embroidery, and crafting in general. I basically do the same stuff, craft-wise. I also don't bake sweets any longer so the food will disappear from future posts, since I would like to just carry on with my crafty stuff. 

Practical Perlers

 I'm making a round Perler Bead thing around which to wrap my earbuds...

More Perler Bead Barrettes

 I  made a bunch of super cute barrettes this weekend!

This is a Tardis one I made from regular beads.  I think I'll keep it!

Here are a bunch more I made using mini beads. Some are barrettes and some will be barettes.

Perler Barrettes

 You can do a lot with perler art- mount on canvas, stick it on the wall, make broaches, make magnets, and make barrettes!  Probably a lot more other things but that's all I can think of.

I love making barrettes.  It's one of my favorite little crafts.  So I made these cuties this weekend!  

I found these cute little guys on Pinterest.  I don't know who they are... maybe you do?

Squee!

 I was REALLY happy with how this came out.  Yes, it's a bigger piece, but it was still manageable.  It's a scene from a Squee! comic by Jhonen Vasquez.  I'm SUPER happy with this!

Gudetama Sprite

I never knew about Gudetama until I got into Perler beads.  There are TONS of patterns.  He's an egg and he is just so cute!  I had to do a sprite of him.

Twin Peaks

 I can't remember if I have written about Twin Peaks.  It came out in 1990, when I was in the 8th grade.  It was weird and I was obsessed.  I made a rule that I was not to be disturbed when it came on, I think Thursdays nights.  I listened to the sound track until I wore the tape out.  Agent Cooper was my dream guy (okay, he still kind of is).

When it was released on streaming, I made Allen watch it.  It's one of my very favorite things.  I even have a Twin Peaks tattoo I got back in 2017!  

So if course, when I found these Perler Bead patterns, I had to make them.  I made these from mini beads.  We have a picture of Laura Palmer, a pie from the Double R Diner, "Where pies go to die", and some coffee that is, of course, black as midnight on a moonless night.  Designs are by Kyle McCoy of Pixel Art Shop.

The Twilight Zone

 Yesterday was my birthday and I spent it doing crafty things (and also eating).  

Here is a canvas I made from some Twilight Zone perler sprites.  I found the patterns online- Kyle McCoy from Pixel Art Shop created these patterns.  I am in love with how it came out!