Another thing about the windows: They took out the old ones, and put in the new ones, from the outside: the person working indoors helped orient and level the window, and then put in the insulation around the frame, and then nail-gunned in place the new trim, and caulked them - but the windows themselves never had to be carried through the house (I thought that's how it would work, and had cleared big paths. And prayed that my floors didn't get too scraped up). It was actually less involved than I thought it would be - I thought they would have to remove the trim you see (around the window, and the sill) in order to put it in, but they actually worked from the other side.

The installers also hauled off the old windows as part of the installation cost. If I weren't concerned about the possibility of lead paint as one of the "base" layers of paint on them, I might have asked to keep one - to build a cold frame with. (When I was a kid, my mom had a cold frame for starting plants early in the spring that was made out of a window that the husband of a friend (who was in construction) salvaged for her).

***

I pulled out yet another "stalled" project: a pair of embroidered pillowcases I was working on a while back. The first one is very nearly done, the second one I still have a lot of "outlining" to do on.

I've said before I find this sort of thing soothing. In a way, it's like handquilting: your focus needs to narrow down to doing the next stitch, to making it the right size and going in the right direction. I think for me embroidery and hand quilting are more attention-consuming than most knitting (even lace knitting) is. And sometimes that's a good thing.

I said about a week ago (in the "lumper vs. splitter" post) that I sometimes get overwhelmed by the "bigger picture" of life. If I have too many things to be working on or thinking about I kind of tend to run in circles from thing to thing, not getting anything done and making myself even more frantic. (What I usually have to do, when I have lots of stuff to deal with, as I did on Tuesday, is to prioritize: sit down and figure out the most urgent thing, or, figure out what I can accomplish with the least effort, and do that first). But it does help, at the end of the day, to be able to sit down and work on something where the ONLY focus is on making the next stitch, and making it the same size as the other stitches next to it, and making sure it's the right color in the right place, and making sure that it's covering the printed line on the pillowcase. It's actually kind of a relief: "the only thing I have to concentrate on now is this fairly low-stakes thing, AND it is a thing over which I have control."

Remember how ages ago, I said I wanted to do pillowcases with embroidered Moomins on the side? And because Moomin transfers apparently did not exist, I'd have to get out my books, and probably use the enlarging-photocopier, and trace, and all of that?

Well, the other day, blogsurfing, I hit upon this post. See that "mosaic"? See Little My in the teapot?

Moomin patterns exist!

But then I thought - no, it's a Japanese book, I haven't a prayer of even FINDING it, let alone being able to negotiate some website written entirely in katakana to order it.

Superbuzzy to the rescue! It occurred to me to look there - the source of many good things that are crafty and Japanese. It's called "Little Nordic Embroidery." No link to the site because apparently I got the last copy they have at this time. (But Superbuzzy does have all kinds of other wonderful things). I've ordered from them before and am quite happy with the customer service.

When the book was up on the site, I was able to verify that it had pictures of the entire Moomin family, plus Little My and the Snorkmaiden. Not sure if there are fillyjonks (I really hope there are fillyjonks) or the Hemulen, but even if there aren't, these designs give me a starting place and an idea of how big I'd need to enlarge a tracing out of one of my books to be.

And I have a couple sets of blank pillowcases just waiting. (I think one set is going to get garden gnomes, owls, mushrooms, and hedgehogs; I feel the need for something just CUTE and I have the Sublime Stitching patterns for those. And yet another set will get those quotations that I talked about stitching way back months ago - the Mother Theresa and the Therese of Lisieux quotes).

I've been hired to review a chapter of a textbook (for $150) and I tend to count this type of money as "found money" - therefore fine to blow on whatever craft supplies make me happy. And the thought of being able to easily make Moomin pillowcases makes me very happy indeed.

I mentioned the pillowcases that I was embroidering (well, mostly NOT embroidering; I have a lot of projects and some get pushed aside).

I decided to pull them out and do a bit more work on them.



On this one at least (they're an identical pair), I'm almost done with the cross-stitching. Of course, there's most of the outline work (which takes a while but which is what really makes it look good) still left to do.

I enjoy doing this - it doesn't take a huge amount of concentration but there's something satisfying about watching the cross stitches march across the fabric as you make them.

Awesome, in a horrible sort of way:

Unicorn barfing a rainbow.

Now you know what that saying would actually look like. (And several commenters speculated on what would come out the, um, other end. I think most people voted for "roses and glitter")

What? Don't you ever experience someone who is SO upbeat and SO cheerful on a day when you're feeling not-so that you didn't feel kind of like this?

(Eglantine hastens to add that she does NOT do that. Very unladylike, not to mention messy)

I can has cheezburger embroidery?

Yes. Yes, you can has:



Yay! it's done! The Happycat pillow, featuring THE iconic LOLcats phrase.

I'm very happy with it. (That photo is without flash, and may be a little dark. Here is a brighter one:)



You can see the colors a bit better in that one.

Some specs: the cat head was a vintage embroidery pattern from "Rectangel's" photostream. (No idea if it's still there or if it was one of the ones purged because of copyright concerns). Script is my own handwriting, done with considerably more care than I usually do. Standard DMC floss in a couple shades of dark grey, black, a mustard color for the eyes, a greyish-pink for the ear, nose, and mouth, and a bright pink for the writing.

The fabric (here is a better shot from the back):



is a 1930s reproduction in colors that went well with the design. (The flower-centers are mustard yellow like the cat's eyes, and one of the pinks in the design is close to the color of the writing).

I'm really pleased with it. It makes me laugh, and yet at the same time it does have that odd frisson that some "vintage" items have. It's like some kind of time portal opened up and the LOLcats of today got mashed-up with the cartoon characters of yesteryear.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that at least some of the inspiration for this came from the wonderful Laugh Out Loud Cats comic strip, which is a similar idea (1930s mashed up with LOLcats) in a different style.

I do have plans for a companion piece. However, as there are no vintage embroidery transfers of walruses (walrii?) with buckets out there, I'm going to have to draft up my own. I do need to search to see if there's some kind of comic-book-like image of a walrus I can modify. (I do want to 1930s-ize it, by, at the very least, giving the walrus those "pie wedge eyes," like the old Mickey Mouse cartoons had).

That's the next project. (And the last. I think two of these are enough). But I think that as I have a pillow with a cat asking if it can "has" a "cheezburger," I need another pillow with a walrus that is happy because it has its "bukkit."

Yeah, the migraine got better. Going home and eating a nutritious lunch helped. They also got the air conditioning back on, so hopefully I'll be able to work in my office tomorrow. (I have a little research to do and also want to complete a couple more chapters of the "new" prep for the gen bio class - we have a new textbook so it's essentially like doing a new prep).

Apparently it was more than a thrown switch; there was a guy over there rooting around in the mechanical room where the controls were, and he had one of those testers hooked up to the circuit breaker for the A/C.

Part of the research I'm working on is breaking down the germination experiment I'm doing, recording the times to germination and percent germination, and measuring the radicle and coleoptile/shoot lengths.

A couple species did nothing at all. (And are now in cold storage to see if a few weeks of cold treatment causes anything to happen).

The Scarlet Winecup was one. (I don't know if it needs a cold treatment - the seed seller claimed the seeds were not "dormant.")

But I actually wound up writing in my data notebook:

"Winecup: 'They tried to make me do germination; I said no, no, no.'"

Sometimes you have to do stuff like that to make it through the day, research-wise.

I also graded the first half (the in-class portion) of the Biostats test tonight after my evening class. I didn't WANT to, but the way my week's shaping up, I figured it would be better if I DID.

But I still found time to do this:



"I Can Has Eyes?"

Yeah, I'm still working on the pillow front. Only the nose, mouth, whiskers, and inside of an ear is left at this point. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do for the eyes - on the original, they are just sort of outlined, and I didn't know if I wanted to just outline, or to do an iris plus pupil, or just an iris, or what. I finally decided on satin stitch in the iris color, with a simple backstitch outline.

(At first I was afraid the just-the-iris would look kind of zombified and creepy, but it doesn't - I think it works really well given the 1930s-esque nature of the design, kind of like some of the old cartoons where the characters had the "pie wedge" eyes, like the really early Mickey Mouse cartoons).

You can't tell with the lighting, but the eyes are a gold color, like the original inspiration.

A little "treat" I bought myself also came today:



(I promise, that's my hand. It just doesn't look much like it to me. I guess it's time to start using moisturizing lotion again and make an effort to drink more water).

There's an online merchant called the Weekend Store that features these: jewelry made from old typewriter keys. The semicolon is my favorite punctuation mark (if it's not too odd to have a favorite punctuation mark), so I bought myself a ring of it.

I like the idea of old, unused manual typewriters being recycled into jewelry. My parents have an old one - in fact, the typewriter I tried to learn to type on - that belonged to my grandfather. I told my dad (after I bought the ring) never to throw that typewriter out without first checking to see if someone might want it for the keys. (Or heck, to check to see if one of the local museums might want it; I think it's probably twenties vintage. It's a nice old typewriter but I have no room for it and frankly it takes more wrist-strength to type on than I care to exert these days.)

They're telling us 1 pm as the hour to expect the remnants of Ike. At this point, it looks like where I live is going to be the "lower left quadrant" (if such a thing still applies), also known as the "clean" side of the storm. We still could get 2" of rain an hour and possibly 40 mph winds.

I'm staying put today. Might run out to the post office (I have some kind of a package waiting for me. I don't know what. I can't think of anything I've ordered that's not come yet aside from a couple books from Folio Press that I thought weren't supposed to be printed until next month).

I picked up the Noro Kureyon sock and am making an effort to finish the pair. I'm really not in love with this yarn - it's hard on the hands, not slidy, not easy to manipulate, every stitch is kind of a fight. That might be because I'm knitting it at 11 sts per inch or so in an attempt to stave off the eventual breakdown of the too-softly-spun wool. (Seriously, Noro: why? Why market this as a sock yarn? It is demonstrably lovely for shawls like the Pi shawl, but it's not got the oomph, I think, that a sock yarn requires).

I'm also back working on the "I Can Has?" embroidered pillow top; might even finish that this weekend. I think I'm going to do the "companion piece" I alluded to, except I will have to either draw it myself, or find a coloring book with a picture of a walrus in it (OK, there, I gave it away) to trace, because even before the Vogart transfers were taken down off Flickr, there were no walrus among them.

It's funny...I've talked before about the "activation energy" that fights against starting (or re-starting) something, and then how much fun it is once I've got it going. Embroidery is that way. I look at it sitting in the bag and I'm all, "Meh, it's slow, it takes a long time to get anywhere. I have to find my scissors and have them close at hand, and then there are orts left everywhere"

(An "ort" is the little leftover of thread when you've used up most of the length of it. I think it comes from an Old German word meaning a "morsel." Some embroiderers save their orts (scroll down) in jars or stuff them into those clear glass tree ornaments. I tend to just let them pile up on the arm of the chair until they start to bug me, and then I throw them away.)

But then I start embroidering and I'm all, "This is actually really fun and I'm making good progress on it." And there is something pleasing - as Jane Brocket says in one of her essays - about the nice tight drum-head of fabric, and the sound the needle makes as it plicks through the fabric, making stitches. It's kind of like hand-quilting in that it requires (for me at least) a greater degree of control and attention to what I'm doing - making the stitches all even and equal sized, following the lines....it's more of a challenge to make it "perfect" than knitting is.

I almost posted this as a comment over on Doe-C-Doe's (based on her comment about how copyright had helped her but she was still concerned about the Vogart issue) but I decided that perhaps she had moved past this, and it might be seen as churlish to post it there, in her comments, but:

I wonder what the original designers for Vogart got paid? I'd bet it wasn't much. I bet it was a lot less than some of the "small businesswomen" selling their own designs on Etsy make - because those folks make money off of every pattern they sell. I bet Vogart didn't do royalties.

And Vogart enforcing copyright on OOP patterns most likely won't get the original designers (or more likely, their heirs) any more money now.

Perhaps I take a jaundiced view of this because of My Experience In Writing Journal Articles. I know I've harped on this before but it is a sore point: you spend maybe six months to a year writing a research article (sometimes more). You send it off to a journal. IF it is accepted (usually requiring revisions, maybe a few more weeks' worth of time), there's a little form you sign.

Which assigns your copyright to the journal. You give up any ownership of the paper.

To the point of which, if you want to make a coursepack with a paper YOU wrote in it, you have to pay copyright fees to the journal.

And if you wish to subscribe to the journal? $100+ dollars a year (and it can be three times that for an academic library to subscribe). (And in some cases in order to publish you have to BELONG to the society publishing the journal, perhaps another $50 annually.)

And some journals have page charges where you (or, more likely, your institution) pays $50 (that's what it was last time I had something in a journal with page charges) a page for the privilege of you assigning your copyright to them.

Oh - and also, if you want to read an article in a journal your library does not get, or does not have an electronic subscription to? In some cases, you need to be prepared to shell out $30 or so.

So the advantage is very much with the journals. I know it's expensive to do those small print runs of things, but it irks me because production of journal articles is something you MUST do (at least in the sciences) if you want tenure and promotion. And it feels to me kind of like a big racket where the people actually generating the knowledge - the researchers - are treated like the servants of the journal.

I think in some branches of the "craft" industry it's kind of similar - you get paid a flat fee (often not much) and then the magazine or publisher or whomever owns your design forever and can reprint it at will. And you can't even teach a class using your own previously-published design unless you pay a fee to the company.

True, "big name" designers like Mary Engelbreit probably can negotiate better packages, but I suspect the majority of people writing greeting cards or doing the drawings that go on stickers or writing patterns for those little Coats and Clark's booklets get a small check and a letter of thanks and that's it.

I think I would be more vigorous in my defense of the company-that-owns-Vogart's copyright enforcement if I felt that it was truly a move to help designers - either those who originally designed the patterns (or, as I said, their heirs...some of these patterns were first published in the 40s) or the ones designing now. But I kind of think that's not it.

And if the ladies who posted patterns online were SELLING them, that would be a very different matter. But no one was actually making money off of the exchange of designs. In a way, I suppose, it could be viewed as a situation similar to that of a neighbor loaning you a book she had finished reading so you could read it...

If money had actually been changing hands that would have been different.

I mean - there are lots of folks on Etsy who design, who sell their designs in a small way through that website. They deserve protection from people who take their designs and sell pirated copies. But there's a difference between a pattern currently in print and available, and one that was last widely available 60 years ago.

If the company that owns Vogart wanted to do the right thing? They could make their catalog of patterns for sale as a print-on-demand sort of thing, like .pdf files. You pay your $3 or whatever through PayPal, and they send you a .pdf copy of the design you want. (Or maybe make a "subscription" to the whole catalog available, which would be fantastic - you could pay an annual fee and then be allowed to print whichever designs you want). And use the proceeds to either help the families of the original designers, or to help sponsor new designers.

I don't know. I'm really NOT one of those "information wants to be free" types. But I also feel sometimes that the way some of the big publishers handle information is a bit greedy.

The lovely "Atlantis Blue" Sitcom Chic (the photograph really doesn't do the color justice) is progressing:



Over the weekend, I finished the body up to the point where the sleeves will get hooked on, and then did a little simple redrafting of the sleeve pattern to make them full-length rather than 3/4 length, because full length sleeves look a lot better on me. (3/4 length, I think they always make me look like I borrowed a younger smaller sister's clothes). It was not hard at all.

That little piece up at the top is the start of the first sleeve. I'm pleased because not only is my redraft making them longer, it makes the cuff a lot more fitted.

I also pulled out the buttons I bought a while back for this one. I saw two kinds I liked, and since it costs about $16 to drive to the fabric store and back these days (not to mention the time), I figured it was better to spend the $2 or whatever each and get both cards. (And at any rate - the unused buttons will find a home somewhere else someday).



I'm strongly leaning toward the ones on the right - the sort of pseudo-Celtic design. I think it fits a bit more with the style of the sweater. But I might always change my mind later.

I also started a silly little thing I talked about some last week.



That's just a preview. I decided it would be more 30s-esque to use a handwritten font (MY handwriting, in fact, considerably prettied up from what it usually looks like) rather than the Impact Bold or whatever it is those things usually have. You can't see all of the completed writing because some of it's currently caught up in the hoop. Needless to say, this project amuses me more and more the more I work on it. I'm even thinking of doing a companion piece using another famous joke from that same site. (Except I'd probably have to hand-draft the whole thing as I think patterns of the animal I have in mind would be very hard to find on the vintage embroidery sites. But I still might do it because it makes me smile every time I think of the concept.)

A third thing I've been picking away at - since I seem to have more free time, and especially more free time when I feel too enervated to do much other than read (it's been VERY hot here), is I've pulled out my copy of "German, Quickly" and re-started re-acquainting myself with the language. I've decided my ultimate goal is to be able to more-or-less read German. And maybe understand sung German, like in "die Fledermaus" and some of the lieder. Speaking, I'm not so sure, unless I can find some kind of good CD or dvd based program to remind me of the correct pronunciation.

My brain likes the different kind of stimulation. My brain gets bored if it's not doing enough different stuff. And my brain is unhappy when it's bored. (And, ironically enough, I've been sleeping better on the nights when I take time to work at the German before bed. Maybe it de-tracks my mind from worrying about things like journal article acceptances and such).

And more embroidery stuff.

There's a website dedicated to offering scans of (I presume expired-copyright) vintage transfers: Vintage Transfer Love. Note they are offered for non-commercial use only.

There are some...interesting...things on there. Tastes used to be different, I guess. I find this one of half-dressed humanized animals by turns hilarious and a bit frightening. (I guess it must be cold in the room where Kitty is.)

Another embroidery thought (I may just need to get some more pillowcase blanks!):

How lovely would it be to have your favorite (short) quotations stitched onto the hem of a pillowcase? And making the patterns could be super-simple - either if you have nice handwriting (or can force yourself to have nice handwriting), write it out. If you don't (like me), find a nice font on the computer, type it in, pick the size that fits the case best, print out. (If you wanted to be REALLY fancy, you could use one of those programs that flips everything - like a transfer - and use the iron-on-transfer paper to make it).

I'm considering getting two more pillowcase blanks (or using the ones I have while I contemplate doing the Moomins...and I do have to get Little My in one of the sets, maybe with the Moomin family) and doing one with:

"Every loving act adds to the balance of love in the universe" - St. Therese of Lisieux

And the other with:

"We can do no great things; we can only do small things with great love" - Mother Teresa.

I can see those done in a nice simple script, or perhaps one of the plainer fonts like "Copperplate Gothic." (I do so love all of the different fonts available on the computer and it makes me kind of sad that for 95% of the work I do, only two or three fonts - like Times New Roman or Bookman Old Style - are actually appropriate. And yes, I do agree that Comic Sans and other "casual" fonts can be terribly overused, and used for the wrong thing - but there are a lot of lovely, simple, not-dumb fonts out there that would be nice embroidered up into something.)


Also someday I want to make the time to do a set of those old-style redwork shams that say "Good Morning" and "Good Night.".

This is an unusual week, summer-wise. I have something every evening until Thursday.

So all I did yesterday afternoon was work a bit on the "clandestine knitting" (Hi TChem!) and get out my big copy of "Amphigorey" and trace off some of the pictures of the Doubtful Guest.

My idea for the tea-towel is this: in one corner, a largish picture of him as he first appeared - standing outside the French doors with his scarf (only I'm not going to embroider in the French doors or the staircase or anything like that). And then the three other corners will show him "doing his thing" - dancing with the gramophone horn, ripping pages from books, and, finally, dropping things of which he is "inordinately fond" into the pond for safekeeping.

The only problem is the drawings as traced are a small bit too small. So I think I'm going to need to enlarge-photocopy them (probably enlarging the first drawing a bit more) and then mark them on the towel. Not sure yet whether I'm going to use a soft pencil and try to trace the drawings onto the towel (I don't have a light box but I do have sunny windows) or if I'm going to do what I used to do for self-designed embroidery and draw the patterns on thin tracing paper, and then fasten the paper to the cloth, either by basting it on or by depending on the hoop to hold it in place. And then you embroider, and then tear away the paper. Kind of like a cheap version of that dissolvable stabiliser stuff they sell for machine embroidery.

The only drawback is if you don't make your stitches fairly tight to begin with, and if you don't remove the paper carefully, the stitches loosen up and look sloppy. So I don't know which method I am going to use yet.

(Or I could go and buy some of that carbon-paper type transfer paper, and one of those little dressmaker wheels. Except I kind of don't want to buy MORE impedimentia right now, and I have tissue paper on hand already).

Also - thanks, Kucki! I had not seen that site before. Some of the figures on it are almost the right size to be line-drawings for embroidery! (Now I just have to see if I can do screen-grabs and print them). I do wish Moomin stuff were more widely available in the U.S. - I've seen the mugs for sale at a few online shops but they're more pricey than what I'd want to pay for a mug. The books are pretty easily found but there are other things available in EU markets (or sometimes in Japan; I understand they're popular in Japan as well) that don't make it here.

One of the things I picked up when I was out doing some necessary marketing yesterday were a pair of pillowcase blanks. You know, the plain white cotton kind you can embroider on.

Originally I was going to iron on one of the Sublime Stitching transfers I bought a while back, but then I had another idea...why not try to find some good, large-ish (or enlarge on the photocopier if necessary - I'm thinking maybe 3 inch tall or so figures) line drawings of the Moomin characters, and embroider them? So I could have one pillowcase with Moominmamma, Moominpappa, Moomintroll, the Snork Maiden (and maybe the Ancestor as well), and the other with a fillyjonk, a Hemulen, Snufkin, Sniffy, maybe Too-Ticky...

Kind of a silly idea for a nearly 40-year-old woman but I have to admit I kind of like the idea of Moomin pillowcases.

The minister of my parents' church underwent 4 1/2 hours of surgery yesterday to rebuild his broken nose. My dad forwarded a message to me from the associate pastor with several cringey details of things he had to undergo in the surgery. (I had a broken nose that had to be surgically set at 13, but it was nowhere near as bad as what this man experienced.)

However: his optic nerve, which was thought to be in danger, is no longer a worry. And there's no evidence of a brain aneurysm, which was an early fear.

So mostly, he has a long unpleasant recovery (and more surgery to rebuild a sinus at a later date), but the worst things that could happen didn't.

And it's one of those "strange and mysterious ways" stories: normally he drives a van (or maybe minivan) but he had been loaned a small car for this trip - presumably because he wanted his wife to have the van available to drive in town.

The police who investigated the crash said he probably would not have survived had he been in a car that was higher off the ground - it was a chain reaction crash and he wound up apparently being shoved (in the car) UNDER a tractor-trailer that had jackknifed. The fact that he was in a small car probably saved his life in this case.

*****

I'm still thinking on the Bacteriophage socks. I do want to do them eventually. I also got to thinking last night that I could alter a lace pattern (there are some vaguely honeycomb-outline patterns) so the bacteriophage could be done in lace.

Or I thought perhaps I could do a BIG bacteriophage - just one, on the front of the sock, kind of a la Barbara Walker's spider (which is another thing I want to put onto socks sometime) using cable and twisted stitches.

But somehow, a lace bacteriophage seems wrong to me. (I suppose some of you are shaking your heads and thinking, "Any bacteriophage representation on socks seems wrong to ME."). I think I prefer the fair-isle idea, or, if I can play around with the charting, a cabled 'phage.

I spent most of the evening working up a backing for the zipper quilt. I did a pieced backing (or "Frankenbacking"). I had bought about 2 3/4 yard of the main backing fabric and found that wasn't quite enough. So I thought for a long time about the back - did I buy YET ANOTHER fabric (either ordering from eQuilter or waiting until I could get to a semi-local quilt shop), did I try to find something else in my stash that would work, did I just stick on an extra piece of something else to make it big enough?

I balked at buying more fabric, and especially balked at the wait - I want to get the quilt in for quilting, if I can, this weekend.

I looked in my stash and found two candidates where I had enough - one was an Asian style print showing those Japanese paper parasols, but the colors were wrong. The other was one of those "National Park Prints" - but it was a very directional print and was going the wrong direction for how I'd have to sew it together for the back.

So I decided to do a pieced back with the original fabric and two of the fabrics used on the top.



I just pieced in random bars of one of the browns and one of the blues (the only two I still had 44" wide yardage of; many of the others were fat quarters and still others I had cut from the selvedge so they were no longer that wide).

I did it - even though it was more time consuming than just sticking on a chunk of the blue at one end (my original idea) because I wanted the back to look "intentional" rather than "aw, crud, I don't have enough backing fabric."

I've also been picking up a little bit more embroidery. About a year ago, I bought a bunch of stuff from Sublime Stitching and had never done anything with it. So I printed off some of the patterns onto tea towels and started working

This is my first attempt. It's been a while since I did embroidery so it looks a little funky:



I also think I'm better when I'm working with less than the full 6 strands but I wanted to try out the "suggested way" a la Sublime Stitching - doing "split stitch" with all six strands.

I wound up doing the "stars" (or maybe they are fireworks) in backstitch and I think I like that better. I'm going to do the other Eiffel Tower (I printed a second one on another corner) the same way as this, but I think future line-type embroidery, I'm going to do with backstitch; it's easier for me to control the stitch length and evenness.

I'm thinking if I get good at embroidery again, I might do up a set of these for my mom for her birthday (with some other pattern on it) and maybe a set for my sis-in-law. (I'd be tempted, if I knew what chemicals she had studied for her dissertation, to look up the structural formulae and do THEM...right now she mostly analyzes drug evidence and I'm not sure how cool she'd think it was to get a towel with the molecule of, say, THC, stitched into it. Of course, I could always fall back on cats or hot peppers as the theme....)