Happy Halloween! Click on images to enlarge.


Here's a treat (click to play), and then.... a treat for me, maybe a trick for you?






Soundtrack:"Rhiannon-Midnight Special '76", Fleetwood Mac, and "Slow Dancing", Lindsey Buckingham

My new secret passion is embroidering on canvas. There's something so exciting about ready preped canvases and I've been buying them in every teenie size possible-as small as 3"x5"-though the surface available for stitching is much smaller in these sizes. To make use of the rest of the space, I've started drawing the rest of the image as a continuation of the embroidery (usually a combination of split stitches, french knots, and other stitches used in crewel work) since it is confined to the interior (rectangle or square) space created by the frame. It's a neat effect because you don't see the embroidered section as a specific rectangle at first.


I've also been embroidering whole pictures as sortof seen below. The work looks so crisp and clean against the white canvases and I love them unframed-the lines are severe compared to the stitching, but the stapled canvas rounds the edges and makes for a sorta cozy minimalism. There's a new term for you. BTW: I know all of these photos are kind of yellowed. Please imagine them otherwise.


If you want to try this too I do have a top tip: oh my goodness use a strong needle and a thimble. I've been thinking a lot about thimbles lately (!) I've always thought they were pretty silly and cumbersome (and then the whole collectable thing is just plain weird) and I have made do without. The one thing i hadn't considered was just how charming sillyness can be. An ex-student came into the store last month looking for a thimble. She had met a lad who was going away forever later that afternoon. She wanted to do something about it but they had only just met and everything she thought of seemed overthetop and presuming. But his name was Peter. She wanted to give him a thimble. Can you stand it? Thank goodness I don't know any Peters anymore.

No, the only Peter I really know of is my great great something Sir Peter Parker, who was a patron of Lord Nelson and whose pants had an unfortunate run in with a cannon (as sung by Burl Ives?!)

"Now Clinton by land
Did quietly stand
While my guns made a terrible rumpus,
But my pride took a fall when a well-aimed ball
Propelled me along on my bumpus!
Ri tu den dio, ri tu den di ay
Propelled me along on my bumpus!"

Soundrack: "Sir Peter Parker", Leslie Nelson Burns. Click HERE to hear the song and read the rest of the lyrics. You'll also find the catty thing the Constitutional Gazetteer wrote about the incident. Clearly the Fug Girls of their day.

Gentle Readers, Wont You Help me Pick a Halloween Costume?

1. Little Bo Peep
2. Erica Kane
3. Mary Pickford
4. Lizzie Borden
5. Clara Bow
6. Frida Kalho

I am also open to write-in candidates. Oh, and please tell me what you're being too?

Is there anything more lovely than an English Sweater Boy? My Rupert Bear thinks not (nor will he dare speak the name of his love for Aloysius, pictured above). Rupert is helping me work on a new sweater vest (sized for slim gents, but ultimately for me) inspired by Brideshead Revisited and what I hope resembles a subversive, non-traditional argyle. Thanks go out to Kaffe Fassett for pattern repeat and, well, general inspiration.



It's been on the needles for a little while now, because I've complicated things for myself. Although I love the vest so far, and I like the way the 3D effect is coming across, if the repeat were more of a "tumbling blocks" pattern the illusion would be stronger. Now I'm thinking I might try and switch to this kind of patterning (right now-mid sweater) and am hoping for a sort of M.C. Escher sophistication....and now I think it will just look crazy. Lord Sebastian Flyte would not wear a crazy vest. I would though.




Soundtrack: "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise", Rufus Wainwright

I was awful at tag in school too... KOL was group tagged with this meme and I want to attend this week so....
*EDIT* speaking of kol meetings, steph's barista is now working Sunday mornings. (Just saw him.)

Four jobs I'’ve had:

* Crochet Mistress
* Costume Designer (for theatre)
* Tutor (in many subjects)
* Editor (a.p.a. style)
have also consulted on stalking missions (usually paid in Guinnesss or marzipan)





Four movies I can watch over and over:

* Gone With The Wind
* Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
* The Thin Man Series
* South Park (the movie....in bed with Yee's Chinese)






Four places I have lived:

* Halifax, NS
* Kingston, ON
* Peterborough, ON
* Prince Edward County, ON
also:denial, fantasy, and the past

Four television shows I love to watch:

* Are You Being Served?
* Arthur
* Soaps-AMC,OLTL,Corrie & Emmerdale
* Wonderfalls
(and of course the singing and the dancing)




Four places I have been on vacation:

* UK, all over, many times over
* New York, New York
* Arden, and other points north of 7, Ontario
* Bar Harbor, ME
morgan trivia: first made my presence known outside Monte Carlo, making my mum pregnancybarf on the side of the road all along the Riviera. Clearly an Omen.

Four of my favorite dishes:

* My Homemade Soup
* Denny's Value Breakfast (i love you Kingston Denny's servers!)
* Full English Breakfast w/ Scotch Eggs, Black Pudding and Clotted Cream for Cakes after.
* Yam Tempura (not yam rolls!)


Four websites I visit daily:

* My mail
* Google
* thats it....


Four places I would rather be right now:

* KOL (of course)
* Dreamland
* Villa Stevie Nicks
* Hogwarts
(kept 2 of yarn geeks)

Soundtrack: CBC2; I have officialy made the switch from CBC1. I just couldn't take it anymore. Not even tales of Dave and Morley could lure me back now.

Here is a shot of the shawl for scale



More importantly....who is the "phantom hacker"? I'll find you.....



Soundtrack "Deborah", T.Rex

What's she been up to now? Anti-antimacassars. The original pattern for this penultimate form of useless cozy dates from 1944, and was worked in 30 Crochet Cotton. I've used butterfly cotton and a 3.5mm hook and ended up with a massive pineapple motif shawl. I think pineapple motifs may be the savior of crochet (in the eyes of knitters anyway). Even though I'm not going to take the Canadian Spool Cotton Company's advice -despite their claim that "A favorite design adds charm to your choicest chair." (choicest?) .
I think I might be on to something. Some of the most beautiful crochet work ends up in the much maligned doily. Not only does the art then suffer from doily stigma, (horrors!) but the gauge is so impossibly small that it's graphic quality is all but lost. My next crack at guageswitching is going to be to enlarge one of my favorite doily styles: the 3D swan. Of course I'm v.inspired by Hildur Bjarnadóttir's "Swanhildur" here, **bwa ha! Morgan ran off and left her blog unattened. Silly girl! Who is this phantom hacker? I do not know, she sure is cute tho! **but I'm thinking of something more faithful to the original patterns and less statuesque (which is probably inevitable).


What else is going on? Taking a class on acid dyes...making dolls....vacuuming (thanks to Ninja!) and fair bawling and greeting after too short visit from Scottish Cousins

Soundtrack: "Show You How", Lindsey Buckingham
"Everybody Get Ready", The Zit Remedy
....is it just me or are these two songs eerily similar?