1 Year of Stitches: Week 17

Bunny Foo Foo Now Has an Egg

Pattern from here.  I used a plastic egg (the kind for kids' egg hunts; there are currently a bunch floating around my living room) rather than a styrofoam one.

1 Year of Stitches: Week 16

Book Round-Up

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist: What an odd book this was.  It's Victorian steampunk, which I love, but the story is more twisted and ugly than I expected. I didn't love the novel (the first of a trilogy, natch) -- way too long, with too many repetitive and unnecessary action scenes -- but Dahlquist has some intriguing ideas and a good writing style so I will keep reading for now.

Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones: What a fun, enjoyable novel this was!  With very little exposition and traditional world-building, Jones nonetheless created a vivid story involving magic and technology, unconventional heroes, multiple worlds, a decaying empire, an a wacky sci-fi convention.  Some elements are a little dated (the portable, magical fax machine cracked me up), but I loved this novel and I was sorry when I finished it.

The Drowning Spool by Monica Ferris: The seventeenth (!) needlecraft mystery wasn't quite as good as the others.  Ferris did an admirable job detailing characters who aren't perfect or don't make great choices but nonetheless deserve justice, but I missed the regular characters, and the mystery itself was forgettable.  She also appears to have dropped the potential storylines she hinted at in the last book, which is too bad.

Hip-Hop Family Tree Book 1 by Ed Piskor: The first comic book in a series that will detail the history of hip-hop.  There's not much of a traditional narrative because Piskor opted to take a more fragmented, impressionistic approach, but that serves the thesis -- that hip-hop resulted from the confluence of many disparate trends, people, and circumstances -- well.

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen: Another lovely, comforting read from Allen, whose description of a hot, humid Southern summer practically caused my hair to frizz.  I think the characters were too blasé about a major reveal late in the book, but I especially loved her portrayal of Selma, a character that in other novels would have been a one-dimensional villain.

1 Year of Stitches: Week 15

The picture's not great, but you can see the little motifs I stitched this week -- a crown of thorns, a lamb, and an Easter egg for the holidays.  I also saw the Mummies exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, and was inspired to stitch a creepy little Chinchorro death mask.  There was some beautiful embroidery on some of the wraps that I wanted to sketch, but Beadboy1 had other ideas (mainly, to go home) and he pretty much dragged me as fast as he could through the exhibit.

Happy Easter!

Little Bunny Foo Foo

Last month I itched to start crocheting again, maybe a cute little brown bunny to sit next to Maggie Rabbit.  After searching pinterest and ravelry, I settled on this pattern by Lisa Power.

I used buttons for the eyes, and felt for the nose.  There weren't any specific directions for sewing the bunny parts together so I had to figure it out myself, with mixed results.  Originally I planned a dress for her like Maggie's, but then I was inspired to make a crown of flowers from some scraps of Liberty fabric (and they hide the messy joinder of the ears to the head!).

Here they are together:

1 Year of Stitches: Week 14

1 Year of Stitches: Week 13