Monday Monday - chugging along

This was a quiet week all told.

Most of the "work" I have done this week has been theoretical research for a couple of big online projects I'm hoping to start soon.

If I move forward with both they could change the face of this blog significantly, so more on that as there's more on that. If you have any suggestions for stuff you'd like to see more of/less of this is the time.

I am all ears (all eyes? You know what I mean).

I'm still in the process of a major apartment re-org so whole days are being devoured by the random belonging slide-puzzle game and bookshelf building, but stuff is finally getting unboxed and a functional office/craft space is so close I can practically taste it.

My main cross stitch project, Mini Shades of Red by Heaven and Earth Designs, is all sloooooooooooow particular stitching right now so that is crawling along at a snail's pace. I'd post a pic but it wouldn't look like much of anything.

Our new couch setup makes it very difficult to use my floor stand so that is slowing down my pace even more. I have been looking into lap stands but I work very close to my canvas and plan to work on some big pieces so anything I buy is going to be a relatively significant cash investment.

My #yearofstitch project is moving apace. Week two has been posted and week three is actually done as well. I had originally posted on Friday and then I remembered the Instagram blackout protest due to the planned format change so I took it down and reposted Saturday.

Haha No by thedisasterlife on Etsy

I've been particularly caught on Evil Eye and Ouija designs lately so I picked up a Ouija themed shirt from Amazon and an art print *points up* (click picture subtitle for link or here for her instagram @permascowl) and am in the process of stitching an evil eye themed project as a gift. I'd also really like to reproduce that "Haha No" piece in embroidery but haven't yet contacted the artist about permission yet.

I also picked up a sort of cape/sweatshirt hybrid to replace my trashed hoodies. I expect I'll have to do some surgery to it to make it look like something other than a shapeless bag but I'm tired of supposedly comfortable garments that are huge on my upper torso but somehow don't fit over my hips. 

Perhaps they are afraid of my Puerto Rican-ness, my natural heat.

I'm getting a little tired of the hyper masculine style I've been rocking all winter so hopefully this will be the Spring I finally embrace my inner Norn. I'm planning on a longer, softer haircut once the blue grows out and I've started wearing eyeliner again.

It's hard to do long, flowy, and aristocratic when you sit in an office chair eight hours a day but hopefully I'll manage. If nothing else I have decent hand sewing skills so I'll be able to mend all the skirt damage.

What was sundered and undone shall be whole

...The two made one.

By which I mean I finally merged my two main blogs. This blog and my crafting blog will now live here as a broader lifestyle type dealy, hopefully in harmony.

The posts from the craft blog have been merged here (filterable via the Craft Posts Only link on the navigation bar above) and that blog will be going away in short order.

I'm also strongly considering merging my old craft livejournal into this blog as there's a LOT of good stuff in there, but those will be backdated archived posts and will likely be a long term project.

Rebel Rebel

I've decided that not only am I doing the bat design with the stitches in different directions as previously discussed... I'm apparently now kind of obsessed with the idea of playing with texture and stitch direction in cross stitching.

While I agree doing things haphazardly in all different directions can look messy and detract from a pictorial piece that's no reason to abandon the idea of deliberately working with texture to create a desired effect.

One of the specific joys of many other types of embroidery is the play of light on directional stitching... so why is this such a taboo idea in cross stitching?

Historically, changes in texture are EXACTLY how we create visual interest in regular, single material objects. Jacquard, knitting, card weaving, pressed velvet, mosaic work, crop circles, magnetic nailpolish... texture play is everywhere!

I'm kind of obsessed with herringbone so I'll probably start there, but yeah, expect some experiments.

So, what's with the name anyway?

I am one of those multi-tasker-types.
I'm also such a true-crime buff that I got a Masters degree in Forensic Psychology. I don't do anything with my degree professionally so the practical upshot of this is basically that I watch A LOT of true crime television.
A. LOT.

image via http://jessejacobs.tv/

If I'm up and out of bed I require a minimum threshold of brain activity for sanity (bed is a magical fairy universe with different rules). Otherwise my mind comes up with its own things to poke at and that's not always fun. Pretty much the only time I don't bother with background noise is when I'm reading because I am an extremely focused, immersive reader.

I really wish this translated to being all caught up on the television I want to watch, but since I'm usually looking at the thing I'm doing and not the screen I don't feel comfortable watching shows with distracty things like drama and plot and visual interest.

I'm umpteen bajillion seasons behind in Dr Who, and have yet to even start watching Sherlock.
The single solitary show I am caught up on is Supernatural (expect Supernatural themed crafts - I already have patterns) but I have exhausted every single procedural true crime show on Netflix and Amazon Prime!

The "plot" on procedural true crime is pretty predictable so it's ideal background noise for what I'm doing:
Someone dies, they look for the killer, someone discusses nature vs nurture, and the biggest plot twist you ever get is "Other than the small animal torturing he seemed so normal!". Commercial break recaps also help catch me up if I "miss" anything.

Like a really gory game of Clue

I blew through everything on Netflix and had kind of a True Crime dry spell for a while, but luckily (?) I've now found the shady underworld of poorly ripped YouTube videos!

I barely ever look at the screen so the video quality doesn't matter much. I've seen more than enough crime scene photos for anyone's lifetime so unless it's related to an explanation of how they worked out some specific clue I don't feel the need to look at all the gory images. I think the biggest source of interest for me at the moment is comparing the way different countries conceptualize criminality.

I try to find other things to listen to while I'm crafting, but that always ends up with me just digging through Netflix for 45 minutes and settling on something true-crimey anyway.

I'm not sure how much I'll be talking about the true crime stuff here, I don't think it will be a focus but if people are interested let me know and I'll pipe up with whatever I happen to think about the stuff I'm watching.

In case you're curious: here are all of the true Crime documentary shows I half watched while cross stitching last Sunday - warning, for some reason you tube true crime channels seem obsessed with using extremely gory (and often not even related) promo shots for these shows.

Peter Tobin, Francis Michael Fahey, Steven Kummerfield and Alexander Ternowetsky, Edmund Kemper The Co Ed Butcher, Damon Bamberg and Sonya Bamberg, Otis Toole, Michael Ryan - Hungerford massacre, Douglas Thames

Improve your designs with Science! PLEASE!!!

Science! has indicated that symmetry is both more attractive and easier to process by the human brain.

With this in mind, why do pattern designers helpfully designate the center of the design and add a handy darker line for every ten stitches on the grid on to the pattern to make it easier to count but NOT LINE UP THESE GUIDELINES WITH THE CENTER OF THE PATTERN?!?!?!

I assure you it will be just as neat and satisfying IF NOT MORE SO to have even margins around the edge of the pattern as it is to start with a full ten by ten grid on the top left.

Your design could reap the benefits of sweet creamery cognitive neuroscience!

It's not even like you even start the design in square zero most of the time. If it really freaks you to not have a full grid on the edge just extend the empty part of the graph a little bit! Is it going to mess things up that much to start stitching on column six instead of column two?

I can't show you the grid for this because it is a copyrighted design from BlackBird Designs, but this is the first prep stuff I do for any new piece. I blanket stitch the edges for stability and lay out my pattern space using a counted running stitch every five stitches (aka ten threads since this is a 28ct linen and the design calls for over two stitching, like THAT won't make it more likely for me to mess up).

The white thread designates the dead center of the design while the blue thread designates the graph guidelines already laid over the design to help you count and they are WILDLY out of alignment to each other. The vertical line is off by six stitches (or four depending on your starting point, I guess) and the horizontal is off by five.

I can assure you (*cough* having done it before *cough*) that if I do not clearly mark the orientation of my fabric and separately designate both grids I WILL shift my design over at one point or another, typically early and devastatingly. Taking out an entire day or so of stitching is no fun.

I'm actually considering taking the center markers out entirely on this as soon as I get it on the stretchers to avoid any potential confusion.

Sinking cost - Iceburg straight ahead!

A fantastic post on pricing handmade items was running around Facebook today and I found myself commenting on in a few places, so I figured I'd bring it up here.

Click here for Sarah's shop

Crafty Peeps : Do not undersell yourself!

Here's a thought exercise:

Think about a price you REALLY think someone would be willing to pay for an object you can make.

Divide that price by your state's minimum wage - that number is how many hours you would have in order to complete it before you are making *less than minimum wage* at that price. Suddenly that "reasonable" price looks a bit low, doesn't it?

Now notice that you've just ignored materials cost, wear and tear on your equipment, studio fees, taxes, etc, etc, etc...

Yeah. Get the lifeboats.

There's also the whole other level of what you do to the rest of the craft industry when you undercut but that's a discussion best left to pros.

I don't do paid sewing work anymore for these reasons. 

I do occasionally enjoy a bit of barter because I have talented friends and thankfully I'm no longer an unemployed student so I'd just be using the extra money to buy neat things anyway, but nowadays my rule for free crafting for friends is they have to keep me company the whole time I'm working on it.

It's funny how peoples appreciation for "free" stuff raises exponentially when they have to schedule THEIR time around spending hour after hour (after hour) watching you work on it. 

I find people also greatly underestimate the amount of tweaking and finishing I do before I will hand something over as A THING I MADE. If my name is attached to it I want it to be as close to perfect as I can get it. Because I am human and things aren't always as perfect as I like I also generally provide whatever fixes I can over the life of the object. That's a LOT of completely invisible work, especially in today's ergonomically constructed, perfect out of the package world.

The other side of that underselling yourself coin:

There are many objects/materials I COULD make for myself that I buy instead because I recognize that my time is worth money. I ask myself if I would rather trade my time at my job or my time at my home for an item and spend accordingly.

A $20 cotton skirt a la Old Navy is not worth making myself,. The time it takes for me to SHOP for the fabric prices it out of home-made reasonableness.

A $400 carefully fitted wool skirt that's going to be a wardrobe staple for the next fifteen years however... now we're potentially talking value.

Then again I may decide that there's a neat detail on the pre-made item I have not mastered. Are the hours of work necessary to perfect that skill worth higher in value than just buying the freaking thing already? Heck, am I even going to bother or is this going to end up another "it would be nice but... busy" abandoned project?

These are the considerations that must immediately follow the knee-jerk "yeah but I could just MAKE that" dismissal.

I could certainly do a lot of things, but do I wanna AND am I gonna?

The first rule of True Crime and Craft Time is...

Okay so I'm REALLY sleep deprived and have been listening to Fight Club at work, our inaugural post is probably going to be a bit wonky.

I obsessively collect craft hobbies like other people collect creepy dolls but went on a sort of crafty hiatus for a while*. I've recently gotten back into crafting really hardcore and I wanted a place to talk in depth about whatever it is I'm doing at the moment.

The last time I had a collected grouping of my craft endeavours was on LiveJornal under the name Carapax. It's been a while but I STILL go back to check details from time to time. Now that I'm getting back into it I really want to have that same level of project reference.

Pretty psyched about this as it's already providing utility for me. I spent a good chunk of my drive to work trying to make sure I didn't forget about some ideas I had waiting at lights. I now have four separate project planning posts going (aaaaand I just thought of a fifth while typing this).


*not strictly true as I did a metric buttload of crafting for my wedding last year, but wedding crafts come from a different headspace and I couldn't share any of that until after it was done. 
I did however try to take lots of pics as I went along so that I could share in the future, so expect to see that stuff at some point.