This is the first in what I hope will be a nice long series of cross stitch. I collect children's books and I display my favorites, but that's just the covers! There are so many amazing illustrations and designs inside that no one ever gets to see. So I set out to turn some of my favorite pages into cross stitches. I scanned some of my favorite pages and used MacStitch to turn them into cross stitch patterns. Here's the first, part of a page from Books! by Murry McCain and John Alcorn. I wanted to start with something nice and small and simple. I finished it in a few leisurely evenings in front of the t.v.

This is the page I used:

And here's the final product:

this year my best friend and i went as those creepy twins from the famous diane arbus photo.  i made the dresses by using a pattern for a really ugly dress to figure out how to do the shoulders and sleeves and improvised the collar, cuffs, and the rest of the dress from the boobs-down.  i was pretty damn proud of myself.  they actually fit.



too bad everyone thought we were nuns and that's the only picture.

Wow. I actually really love these. I adore small, strange tattoos. I should post some pictures of mine to illustrate.

thanks!  i love small, strange tattoos, too.  i have plans in the next couple of weeks to add to the collection and get the ampersand from ellen raskin's "figgs and phantoms" on my wrist:



my rule is only children's book tattoos and right now i think i'm going to keep it to only black to maintain the "small, strange" aesthetic i've got going with the wrinkle in time ones.

finally a picture of my progess.  i've knitted the body up to where you attach the sleeves and i just started one sleeve cuff.  hopefully i'll have the sleeves done in a couple days.


(the picture is actually upside down, which explains the weird perspective)

holy crap i love this sweater!

all of my tattoos are illustrations from children's books.  i'm an elementary school teacher and, obviously, a little obsessive about my children's literature.

the first is from roald dahl's matilda.  i got it about a year and a half ago.  (all of these pictures were taken within a day of getting the tattoo, especially in the matilda one my skin is still all red.)


my other two are on the inside of my arms and are from madeline l'engle's a wrinkle in time.  the illustrations together show a demonstartion of a tesseract, which is the "wrinkle" in time.  (i am always eager to discuss it in person but it seems a little silly to go through the whole thing in typed form).  getting tattooed on the inside of my arm hurt way less than everyone said it would.  i was prepared to scream, but then it totally wasn't that bad.  not that much worse than my shoulder tattoo, even.

sorry, the first is totally blurry, but the second picture turned out well.

regular time:


"wrinkled" time:

i've ordered my yarn (having found a store that sold both rowan kid and reynolds lopi, so i can finish skully!: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=23609.0) and picked a less-candy-like oatmeal color for the MC and a light blue for the CC.  i'm psyched.  hopefully i'll get knitting by next weekend.

here i am, just 6 inches of sleeve away from finishing my first sweater.  i've been working on it off-and-on for probably 8 months, going through spurts where i knit a lot and months where i didn't knit more than a few inches.  i knit half of the first sleeve and all that i have of the second sleeve in the last few days, excited about my steady, "real knitter" progress, and then I RAN OUT OF YARN!



now i'm looking around the internet for a store where i can buy the yarn and where i can buy yarn for my next project (join the knitalong!: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=23594.0;topicseen) so that i don't have to pay $4 to ship ONE SKEIN.  GRRRRRRRR.

if anyone has 6-inches-worth of reynolds lopi wool yarn in dark charcoal (color 0005) that they want to purge from their stash i'll happily trade you something for it!

i guess i'll spend the down time weaving in the 18,000,000 ends from the intarsia (damn you skully!)

i love the skully sweater, and i'm planning on doing it for my next big project, but i'm new to intarsia, so i practiced with the wrist band and it was really pretty easy!:


i was filled with confidence, but i don't have the yarn for a proper sweater project, nor do i have the money for yarn right now (or even gas for the trip to the yarn store), so i took some old yarn i'd picked up at a thirft store and made a skully pillow.  instead of doing proper intarsia, i followed the pattern and did a seed stitch wherever the pattern said to use a contrasting color, and when i was knitting in the pattern, i held a thinner pink yarn together with the blue yarn to make it stand out a little more.  then i sewed the knitted square to some old t-shirt fabric (one piece of fabric on either side of the knitted square, sewed around the edge, leaving a small hole, and turned it inside out so that on one side was the knitted square backed by a t-shirt sqaure--so no stuff would come out between the knit--and the back of the pillow was just the other piece of t-shirt fabric) the result:


it was so easy and cute, i'm going to make a ton of these with different pictures.  right now i'm working on a smaller pillow with a little bird on it (i drew the bird on graph paper).  i'm hooked!