some crafting thoughts

All of the current pillowcase-work is sort of slowly working up to doing Moomin pillowcases. I want to finish at least the pony ones before I undertake yet another set. I bought a bunch of the Moomin iron-on transfers from Sublime Stitching and want to use them. (I plan to do mostly backstitch for those; it's my favorite embroidery stitch and I can make things look good with it).

I'm also kind of playing with the idea of getting either a plain denim or chambray button-front shirt and doing embroidery - maybe even a Moomin! - on either the front or back yoke. When I was a little kid I had a few Western-style shirts that had embroidery on them. (My dad did a lot of his research work in Wyoming and New Mexico, and he used to go shopping at the trading posts or Western stores for presents for us. I also have a certain amount of turquoise jewelry - some of it signed by the artist who designed and made it - from "out West.").

(T-shirts, because of the stretch, are not as good for doing embroidery on)

(I also confess I'm thinking of maybe doing a little Pony embroidery - I could probably find line-drawings of characters somewhere and just trace them, or even get a transfer pencil and do it that way. I have a couple sets of plain pillowcases I got on a good sale at the craft store)

I also need to think about traveling projects. I am on the fence about taking the Hagrid sweater - I've dragged it along once and never worked on it. (Maybe after I get the progressives and it's not so hard to read charts). I have a couple pairs of socks on the needles, and the never-did-finish-it pangolin stuffie. And I finally decided on the Rickenbacker shawl - I'm going to use the "desert sunrise" colored yarn , peaches and pinks. So that might go along.

I also have a couple of dress patterns I bought. One is a "vintage 60s" one that has an ever-so-slightly Mad Men feel to it (yeah, I know - just in time for the show to end. But I never really watched it anyway; the few episodes I saw were kind of downers, though maybe that was the point of the show). It's actually easier to do "big sewing" (dresses and such) with my mom to help me fit them, and her machine is better for dressmaking (mine is very basic, it mostly does straight stitch for piecework).

There's a quilt show in town today and tomorrow. If I can push and finish my last sample of stuff in short order, I might go today (they are open until 6). That leaves tomorrow totally open for cartoon-watching and other things.

My Little Pony is "bringing Smooze back" in the upcoming episode. Smooze was a villain in the old MLP movie. I have never really seen more than clips of the old movie - it was made in 1986, and I was a terribly sophisticated high school junior then, so I wouldn't have watched it. And anyway - the earlier generation Pony stuff does tend to be a wee bit saccharine, though I admit I've been reading a tumblr called Heck Yeah, Pony Scans! that delves into a lot of the earlier history of MLP. The author either lives in or grew up in the UK, so things are slightly different from the US. And apparently there was an entire comic book with rather fairy-tailish stories. And apparently in some of the stories there was a bit of fairytalish violence and even implied death (or extinction) of characters. That's interesting, given how sweet and cute and childish the earlier generations seemed to be....and yet, in the current generation, the only implied death is a pony we don't know....we see Mr. Waddle, who has kind of an undertaker/minister role officiating at what must be a funeral (it's not at all clear what, if any, religion exists in Equestria. I confess, I kind of want it to be like Narnia in a way, but we've never seen any actual evidence of that). But other than that, no villain has actually been extinguished - Tirek is sent back to his prison (in Tartarus), Nightmare Moon is reformed, Discord is allegedly reformed, Sombra may or may not have been wiped out, the Changelings did the "team Rocket blasting off again!" thing and presumably were sent to a far end of Equestria.....there's really no death.

I suppose most children's shows now - heck, most even when I was a kid - avoided the topic as "too sad" or "too scary." (I wonder though: will we ever learn the fate of Applejack's parents? Fan consensus is they are dead, therefore AJ, Big Mac, and Apple Bloom are orphans, and that's why they live with Granny, but it's never been more than barely hinted at on the show)

(There are a few fanfictions dealing with death of characters - one of the ones I read recently, linked at Equestria Daily, explored the death of Diamond Tiara, a much-disliked bully character, through the eyes of her three main victims. While not the most polishedly-written fanfic I've ever read, it was interesting in the different perspectives - Apple Bloom felt guilty because she wished ill on Diamond Tiara (but more in the form of "I hope she finds a bug in her lunch!" than any real harm), Scootaloo is angry and can't bring herself to forgive Diamond Tiara (apparently, in the world of the fanfic, Scootaloo got it the worst - being the filly of a broken home, being from a lower SES than the other ponies, and not being able to fly). And Sweetie Belle can't bring herself to think about it, but has nightmares about it, and begins to worry about death. (Sweetie Belle has become my favorite of the CMC, and even in this fan fiction, her character is closest to mine)

I don't know. Some people dismiss the "sad" fanfiction but in a way I think it does play a role, if for no one other than the writer - I know I wrote sad stories myself, as a kid, as a way of trying to explore and work out my feelings about sad stuff. Heck, I still do, to a certain amount.. I think a lot of the fanfiction probably plays some kind of - is it patronizing to say "therapeutic"? - role for the writer. Allowing people to explore their feelings, allowing them to maybe exorcise some of their demons.)


But anyway. Smooze tomorrow morning! Though I admit some of the little clips I've seen as teasers contain a pony (named, apparently Treehugger) who is like, the most stereotypical hippie ever, and who will probably annoy the daylights out of me. (And as I said over on Twitter, it's probably too much to hope that Smooze eats her, given the no-deaths rule)

I confess, sometimes I wonder at how much I have 'regressed' in some ways from my teen years. I will say when I was a late tween/early teen I tried desperately to hold on to things of childhood - I still own one of the first-generation Strawberry Shortcake dolls and I think I was at least 12 when those came out - but once I hit a certain age, I think I gave up a little. Oh, I still had stuffed animals, and I "collected" dolls (thinking that making it seem like I was researching the history made it seem less childish). But as an adult, and as an adult who has a lot of private time, I find it's kind of a relief to go ahead and read pony fan fiction, or watch silly cartoons, or do stuff like read about the early-generation Ponies and people's memories of them. (These would be (mostly) women who are maybe 5 to 10 years my junior). A lot of it is that it's kind of a safe fantasy world or something - it's more fun to spend time looking at the different variant color schemes of some toy, or reading the cutesy stories that were put out in the magazines advertising them  than it is to pay attention to the "hard" news. (And there's been a lot of fairly hard "hard" news in recent days....)

I dunno. Maybe this is not that different from people who get really, really into baseball stats, or who follow every doing of whatever celebrity - it's just a little different, maybe a little nerdier and more childish. (Then again: have you SEEN how some celebrities behave? Even Rarity at her most drama-queenish would never dream of some of those things.)


Edited to add: slightly unrelated, but after seeing this fan drawing, it occurs to me that an excellent "other species" to include in Equestria (along with mules and zebras) would be okapis.

A Friendship is Magic okapi would be a wonderful thing, I think.