Meredith's 2019

Here we go again. Not sure how my crafting year will go, but I'll be trying to get back to it. It's a hobby I desperately need, so a hell or high water moment.

Lovely image to begin a thread with! I very much need my studio work, too; it's been many things to me from stimulation to nonverbal therapy. I hope you can ease back into and if you do, we'll enjoy seeing what you produce.

Well after two months of nothing but designing a few things I didn't feel were good enough to stitch, I've started another project. It's doubly LT appropriate, as I'm stitching my reading from last year.

The colors won't be gorgeous, because I wanted to represent the genres I was reading specifically vs just numbers. So every orange book is foreign (excluding UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) fiction, every light blue is a memoir, etc...

I'm shooting for once month per day, just to get my stitching callous and muscles back into form. I did patterns for a few other years of my reading mostly as comparison (and boredom) but I'm unlikely to stitching more than a couple years as I don't want the house filling up with these. I have a semi-secret goal to reach 300 reads this year, and if I manage that I probably will stitch that one too.

Here's July and August of last year anyway!

And here's the full pattern. The book titles are favorites read in the year. I'm considering adding a color key to the left side of the pattern.

That's ambitious. Lots of color changes. But a great idea.

I really don't mind color changes at all when I know there are enough stitches to weave in the tails. I also just carry the thread across if there are four books or fewer in between.

Some years back I actually did a piece with all (well, almost, I took out some duplicates or near duplicates in order to have a perfect square) the DMC colors stitched in numerical order.



And then did another all DMC piece with a spiral this time, also in numerical order.



Those were definitely more frustrating, though still rewarding for me.

>4 mabith: What a great idea!

>6 mabith: I love those two pieces (particularly the second one).

Glad you are working on regaining those callouses and muscle strength!

I. Love. All. Of. These. So colorful and lovely, and they very much appeal to my put-everything-in-order nature.

Those are lovely. I've got a couple of projects in process but they aren't far enough along that anyone could tell what they are going to be.

Cute idea.

Thanks, y'all!

Posting those reminded me that I wanted to do another All-DMC piece, this time stitching according to the color card (and I think about 45 colors have been added since I did my squares).

Okay progress on my book stitch. It got slowed down quite a lot due to me getting a pneumonia shot and not being able to use my arm for a few days.

Ooo, that is progress!

Haven't had a pneumonia shot yet, thanks for the head's up.

>12 mabith: Love the books!

Love this book idea - it is awesome to see it visually, isn't it? Sometimes cross stitch is the only thing that keeps my head above water.

Thanks!

It was mostly finished for about two weeks when I remembered there was some white detail to stitch between adjacent same color books. Of course that doesn't even really show up on the picture but it's definitely there in person. The titles are some of my favorite reads from the year.

>16 mabith: That's so great! I love it!

>16 mabith: that's brilliant. What a great way to remember your "books of the year." I re-read some of your previous messages about this project and noticed you considered adding a color key. So I wondered, do the colors have any particular meaning?

>16 mabith: I just absolutely love that! I'd love to figure out a way to do this with knitting, but I don't think I could do it as book spines the way you have, which really looks great. Maybe in a style similar to one of those "temperature blankets"?

>17 scaifea: Thanks, Amber!

>18 lauralkeet: Thanks, Laura! Yes, the colors represent specific genres. So all the lightest blue books are memoirs, medium blues are hard sciences, bright reds are contemporary fiction, orange books are by authors from outside the big anglophone countries (so everything except USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand), etc...

>19 rosalita: Thanks, Julia! Yes, I think doing it like the temperature of sports score projects would work well. My friend did a scarf that represented her team's baseball scores. A blanket would be really lovely.

>20 mabith: thanks Meredith. In addition to the design and your craftsmanship, the diversity of your reading is pretty impressive.

>16 mabith: That turned out fabulous! And I do love the way the titles match in color to their corresponding book spine. So clever.

That turned out so nice! I've seen quilts with books and always thought that was a great idea, but I like this better.

>21 lauralkeet: Ah, we've all got our reading sweet spots. For me reading this month I have to read really varying types of books, and more non-fiction than new fiction (fiction re-reads largely being favorite books already).

>22 avaland: Thanks, Lois! I might tweak the colors a bit if I decide to do one for this year's reading, but I knew I needed to just START on this and not let myself lose momentum.

>23 dudes22: Thanks, Betty! This is certainly the easiest book-recording craft for me. I like the knitting versions but weaving in all those ends...

Finished this a week or so bad. It's part of the chorus of Easy's Getting Harder Every Day by Iris Dement. I really like the way it turned out with the very bold font.

It's very pretty, but the sentiment is so sad...

>25 mabith: It is so, but what a lovely piece.

Very pretty work, Meredith.

Thanks, all. It's been good for me to let the sadness show in a more concrete way. Cross-stitch (and crafting in general) just can't be a happy thing for me right now anyway, so letting it be more of a meditation on my own grief and sadness is helping me keep doing it at least.

I'm still not doing much crafting, though I did design a new pattern around a quote from the TV show The Good Place ("I am a jenga tower of sadness"). Progress has not been helped by the fact that I shut my thumb in the car door, right on the nail, and experienced some of the worst pain of my entire life. It's been a month but the nail and pad are still pretty tender.

I did use my sewing machine to make a large curtain panel for my living room, so that's something, yes? The fabric colors worked out perfectly despite ordering online. The greys match my walls and couch very closely and my living room rug has a similar yellow.





During the day I'm keeping my lace ones (bent curtain rod to be replaced soon). They were long but I sewed them up to be half the length and provide a little more screening.

I also went back to work doing the very boring green background on this book spine project:



My strange brain decided to do a Mandarin language course for no particular reason, and that takes so much more concentration than an audiobook. So the boring cross-stitch was the perfect thing to do while I listened. The course is 25 hours total.

Of course now I've hit a stumbling block and the yellow detail just isn't readable on the piece. I'm now stitching the green on a scrap piece of aida and will experiment further on that rather than the actual piece. I might have to give up having it gold(ish) at all. It's on 18 ct aida and that's just too small to stitch Kreinek metallic thread over full cross-stitches. I might still see how that looks but I don't think it will work. I'm not sure what other color would work well. Maybe a very dark rose pink? It's very frustrating since I finally got off my butt to continue working on it.

>31 mabith: Ouch! sorry about the cut, sounds painful.

The green might have been boring, but it turned out really lovely! I can see some yellow up under the word "Garden," is that it? The green kind of goes with the pictured curtains above!

I like the lace curtains, but the others certainly offer more privacy.

I like the green too. And I can see a little gold under the N and the G.

Oh dang, I'm sorry about the finger - youch! But I love the curtains, the book spine project, and especially The Good Place quote! Love that show!

>30 mabith: Did you have your thumb looked at? While it might all just be bad bruising, a break in the bone (especially if it heals badly) could cause long term pain.

The curtains and the needlework are lovely, as always. :)

Yeah, the yellow can be seen, but the design stitch with it can't be made out. I tried a number of the darker golds and none work, so I'm going with a very dark purple instead. So frustrating.

>32 avaland: I definitely prefer the lace curtains during the day (I love a bright room). I don't live on a hugely busy street, but just got tired of people being able to see straight in the minute it got dark.

>33 dudes22: It's definitely my favorite green in that shade.

>34 scaifea: Thanks! The Good Place is such an outstanding show, by far my favorite sitcom of the last ten years.

>35 lesmel: I didn't, but I think the lingering pain is largely just a consequence of my nerve disease. I'm a slow healer. If there's something fractured it would only be at the very tip of the last bit of bone there, so I don't think they'd really do anything for it (I doubt anything broke regardless). Thanks!

I've been somewhat paralyzed by issues with the decorative bits of the Secret Garden spine. I decided to go with a dark purple (which I now feel is *too* dark but at this point nothing will make me happy). Then I struggled with using one strand or floss vs two because it was still a little hard to read. I finally decided to simplify the design a bit and stick to two strands. I'll start on it tomorrow (I try to avoid stitching after dark, though I have a good lamp).

In the meantime I found a stack of 19 circular quilt blocks at an antique mall for $8, so of course I bought them.



I'm not sure what I'll do with them. Maybe put a few together for a wall hanging and maybe make some placemats with others. It was too good a deal to pass up anyway.

OH my gosh! Those are fabulous, Meredith! I can see why you couldn't pass them up. They look like they're in great shape too. Makes me want to go to the nearest antique mall and see what they've got. LOL

Great haul! (I wonder if I could have passed them up).

>38 dudes22: >39 avaland: Right? I see quilt tops pretty regularly, but they're generally outside of my budget.

Finally finished the Secret Garden spine and did my color tests for the next book (The Wizard of Oz).





I don't know it, but there wasn't much I could do, since I couldn't change the background color until I wanted to start the entire piece over from scratch.

Oh, lovely!

I'm amazed at the planning to fit it all on the spine. I forget - are you actually copying book spines into cross-stitch or making up the design? What's the thread count on the fabric that you are using?

I feel like the purple being so much darker than the text green obscures it some, but that's kind of appropriate for the book at least.

Betty, they are all taken from actual book editions. The order has changed a little, but these are the reference:



I regret putting Swiss Family Robinson in there, due to the complexity, but there are just too many green covers!

This. Is. Amazing. You're amazing. I can't wait to see how it progresses!

Your work reminds me that on a recent weekend together, MaggieO and I went up to the Sarah Orne Jewett house in South Berwick, Maine, and in the gift shop was a lovely book which she bought: The Art of American Book Covers, 1875-1930 by Richard Minsky. I was sorely tempted also. Gorgeous covers and information on the artists, many of them women.

>44 mabith: oh, this is so cool! Thanks for sharing the inspiration behind your design. I'll enjoy watching your progress.

Thanks, ladies! I do love a book project best. I've got a good start on the Wizard of Oz spine now. And Betty I forgot to say this is on 18 ct fabric. It's probably the largest project I've done.

>46 avaland: I've been coveting that book for a while myself! There are plenty of beautiful covers now, but 1875-1930 covers some of my favorite aesthetics and there's just something different about those old books. Even the lovely clothbound Penguin classics series don't live up to the old ones.

>46 avaland: - I found that there is one of those books in the library system so I will probably put in a request at some point.

More progress, and I've got started on the fourth book (The Swiss Family Robinson).

Looking good!

That's great looking!

Thanks!

My sister had to have her baby two months early (due to preeclampsia). They live an hour away but everything had to be done at the hospital in my city so I've been running around like crazy taking her around, cooking, babysitting her other two kids.

Everyone is healthy, and the NICU staff are extremely pleased with baby Nate's progress. He's a tiny thing of course, but in most ways more aware (eyes open, trying to lift his head) than my sister's oldest who was two weeks early and didn't open his eyes really for a week or more.

So of course I've been knitting some tiny hats.

Those are cute! I'll bet he gets a lot of use of them this being winter and all.

I'm glad to hear mom and baby are doing well. The hats are very cute!

Aw, teeny knitted hats are the best! And yay for Nate making great progress!

It's nice to have a very quick project! I've become so exhausted that I haven't knit any for a bit, though I started a larger hat in the dark yarn that I think will fit him when he's one. I just love that yarn so much.

My body is definitely at the end of its rope (I have two chronic pain conditions) from taking care of my sister and babysitting with the older niece and nephew are here. Fingers crossed Nate going home by the 10th so I can get back my normal reading and crafting schedule!

Congratulations to your sister, and the new auntie! Those are lovely little hats and I'm sure they were appreciated.

Please take care of yourself! You can't be there for them if you are exhausted and your pain is flaring up. I have all fingers crossed for you.

Thanks, Lois! I've been decent at carving out time for myself, I think. Plus I've forgiven myself for showing the kids a fair bit of TV, which I usually try to limit (I'm the strict aunt). Partly, if I push myself too hard I'll have a fibromyalgia flare and won't be able to do anything and partly just for my sanity!

>50 mabith: I like that one!