Monday Monday week 3 - Do All the Things!

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/
For serious, read this blog.

Okay, so uh, what all did I do this week:

Love me, love the occasional Batman Bandage

Nail polish break went poorly so I finally re-polished Sunday. My nails were getting shorter and shorter and my cuticles longer and longer so it was high time. I am at the point where I can't file any further without removing flesh on several of my fingers because of the way my nailbeds attach underneath (that is literally as short as my pointer and middle fingers can get right now).

I used this FANTASTIC "Super Juiced" colour I recently picked up from ILNP mostly because my hair was going to stain whatever colour I used blue anyway so might as well go with it. My nails are nubby and my cuticles are a mess, but hey, at least the colour is sexypants.

Cannibalized a mood ring and a crappy old needle into a fingertip laying tool with the magic of pliers and E6000 glue and so far I'm pretty jazzed. It's butt ugly and I want to blunt the needle a bit more, but it's comfortable to wear and works like a charm. Thankfully (?) with the mind numbing amount of black background in the cross stitch project I've been focusing on this week I have had PLENTY of opportunity to practice with it .

Got into a discussion of floor stands and Qsnaps (a popular style of needlework frame) on a Facebook embroidery group Saturday and decided to try out the combination on my stand. I have an Edmunds Stitch Master Floorstand which is not the sexiest thing out there but for the price (half price with a Joannes coupon, in fact) it is pretty good for my purposes. It's a bit tippy but I have zip tied it to a box which lets me wedge it under the edge of my couch.

I used a shelved Supernatural themed Work in Progress (or WIP) to test it all out and figured while I was at it I might as well get some work done on it. All I had left was stupid annoying really effective backstitching so I had at until it was done. It's all stitched so I just need to wash and mount at this point. I think I want to try out a padded mount for this as I hate how glass looks over embroidery.

As a... break? (am I crazy? I'm starting to think I'm crazy) from cross stitching I decided to try a blackwork project so I spent much of Sunday getting the fabric prepared for that. I've decided to do the astonishingly free Box of Delights by Elizabeth Almond of Blackwork Journey ( <- link is the designer's own Pinterest page, in case anyone is worried about copyright. Her own page doesn't have such a nice spread of pics, but it is here).

I had originally tripped over her also astonishingly free Save the Stitches design first but having never done much (or really any) blackwork it is WAAAAY too rich for my blood. I like how this one is worked in perfectly reasonably sized little chunks.

It's the perfect project to use a silver 32 count linen I've been hoarding and this particularly lovely aqua I've been drawn to every time I open my floss box. I'm basing my piece more on the blue and white version but with a darker outline. The aqua will be the patterned part, the darker blue will be outline, and the coppery colour will be used in place of the metallic thread her original design calls for.
I did say this was supposed to be a break and metallic thread is not a "break".

Why yes, DIY grime guards ARE on my imminent to-do list, why do you ask?

I've got my fabric all mounted and prepped but... [EDIT]
I had a whole thing about being daunted by Holbein stitch here but then I woke up this morning to find out via Facebook that it's not designed for Holbein at all and is instead entirely worked in backstitch (woo, more backstitch!). Which tells you something about how well Elizabeth Almond supports her patterns as that wasn't even eight hours and she lives on a different continent.
This is, might I add again, a FREE PATTERN.

I'm in the process of kitting up another (considerably more detailed) David Bowie cross stitch but I have to pick a fabric and set up project cards so that'll be a little bit still.

I have some family stuff coming up this week and a major apartment layout overhaul planned so I'm not sure how much interesting stuff I'll get done in the coming weeks but fingers crossed I'll get some tinkering time.

Some quick maxi musings

My winter wardrobe has been lackluster (to put it mildly) and I'm feeling the itch to change things up. I love wearing dresses but am not feeling my usual sun dresses and 60s inspired sack dresses this spring, so I think this is the year that I will tackle the maxi.

Normally I feel too short to wear maxi's but I've seen it done and done well so I know it's possible. I still remember years ago seeing a woman casually walking around a big box store in a black maxi and flat sandals with her hair thrown up in a messy bun. She was so striking it took me several minutes to realize we were the same height!

As always the idea is to draw attention upward, and with my short waist a natural waist is not going to be my best direction.  I wear empire dresses, boat necks, and v-necks well so I think these are all good places to start.

Left - V Neck maxi via Chictopia

Right - high neck black maxi dress via Poshmark

I'm still pretty gaga over that recent David's Road collection so I am seriously considering buying a few cheap maxi dresses and doing dress surgery on them. I particularly like the "pickup harness" pieces they've been pairing with flowy maxis to change the silhouette. I'm not normally into pickups so this is a really cool way to get the shape and functionality without the permanence.

I'm not a fan of sewing jersey so I don't want to make them from scratch but I am not above altering the *heck* out of something I already have. That said I ADORE working with raw silk and have some thoughts about what I could do there.

Happily in the midst of some spring apartment sprucing my husband had a suggestion for where we can move my crafting stuff so that I can actually access it. Between the year and a half of wedding prep and two and a half years of tiny apartment living my sewing has gone by the wayside and frankly I miss it!

Spindle and Rod and Tablet and Thread

I've figured out the central theme in the clothing I've been drawn to lately.

I follow a designer on Facebook called David's Road and I found I was VERY drawn to a dress they recently posted on their Facebook so I clicked through to their page to look at their s/s 2015 women's collection.

Screenshot from davidsroad.com

When I started looking through the collection it hit me:
I want to look like a figure from Greek or Roman mythology living in the modern world.

Most specifically, I want to look like one of the Fates (aka the Moirai, Parcae, Sudice or Norns, depending on where you're asking): the figures standing outside of the world who controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal and immortal from birth to death.

There's an aloofness and an understanding that these are creatures of dreadful power wielded to great purpose. I dig it. I think it'd be pretty boring if everyone had the same flavor of inner goddess.

Listen Fates, who sit nearest of gods to the throne of Zeus, and weave with shuttles of adamant, inescapable devices for councels of every kind beyond counting,  

Aisa, Clotho and Lachesis, fine-armed daughters of Night, hearken to our prayers, all-terrible goddesses, of sky and earth. 

[from Pindar's Hymn to the Fates]

I have no idea why it took so long to work out because it's something I've been talking about a lot for the last few years, but I guess much like magic eye puzzles: you see it when you see it.

I made an Arachne costume for a Gods and Goddesses party a few years ago and fell in love with the simple drape of the chiton. That costume was made of flat sheets of 45" wide raw silk that draped from my shoulders to my feet and from elbow to elbow. The design is *basically* a giant tube with a few tweaks at each hem for fit, and yet it captured every curve of my body.

Simple, regal, incredibly sexy.

My husband saw this shot over my shoulder and without any knowledge of the post context he said he remembered thinking that the costume was exceedingly hot, even though the only part of me you saw was my shoulders, and added that it'd be cool if I wore stuff like this more often.

I have noticed a lot of elongated draped clothing around and about in the fashion world lately but something always seemed to be missing for me and I couldn't put my finger on what. This David's Road collection provided the missing key. It hits the silhouettes I seek perfectly and I would buy their stuff in a second if it were available in the US or (presumably) anything in a price range I could even hope to afford.

Last summer was fairly cool and I wore jeans a lot and generally felt like a schlump. I'm hoping this summer will be hot enough to switch back to dresses. Due to my height I typically look for knee length empire style dresses but I always feel they look very cutesey.

Perhaps it's time to get the sewing machine out to play-test a few long columnar draped pieces and let out my inner incarnation of destiny and life.

[post title from "The Fates" by Jane Yolen]