Día de Muertos

 Much of my Día de Muertos handiwork was ruined last year by water and mold, so I made something new.

This was very loosely inspired by a project in Quilting Arts magazine from many years back, made using what I had on hand -- assorted milagros medals, cheap but all-wool flowers acquired from a big box store, two wool marigold flowers that I made for a craft fair booth, and, of course, lots of beads. All that's left to do is attach the panel to the backing with a blanket stitch (probably).

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Ain't that Just the Way

 Have you watched Over the Garden Wall? It's a wonderful series of cartoons telling the story of Wirt and Greg as they try to make their way through a scary forest. Gentle enough for all but the youngest kids, it's also witty and poignant enough to appeal to adults (it doesn't hurt that Wirt and Greg remind me of my youngest two sons). It's not just the story, though; the art and autumnal vibe are perfect. I liked the imagery so much I felt the need to memorialize it in thread and fabric.

I'm really proud of this. I used a mix of embroidery and wool and cotton applique I'm especially enamored of Enoch, the pumpkin guy at the top. For him I used long and short stitch which is normally too fussy for impatient me, but a messier, more impressionistic approach worked. The Beast (at the bottom center) was made with turkey stitch and was a total pain, but it was the best way to get the fringe effect. The glow of the Woodman's lantern is a mother of pearl disc bead; I bought a strand of them because I needed one to make a moon but they've turned up in other projects. Adelaide's stork scissors were intended for a cross stitch pattern I bought ages ago. I will need to hunt down another charm when I do stitch it, but that's Future Beadgirl's problem. 

Over the Garden Wall is brilliant, and that's a rock fact!

Spooky, but Make it Cute

 

Turns out, black felt is hard to photograph properly

 

This little bat was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest. The image linked to a long-gone etsy store so I can't give credit where credit is due, however.

I like the interplay of spooky images and pretty florals; I had hoped this October I could make something with Woolly Petal's Ghost Party pattern (using pink and orange scraps for the background), but alas, life intervened (as it so often does for me). Next year!

Book Round-Up: Haunted House Edition

 It's no secret that the horrors in ghost stories almost always serve as signifiers for the horrors in society. Beloved's ghost is the legacy of slavery,* and Dracula represents the evil of aristocracy or Victorian sexual repression (depending on who you ask). The following three novels each tackle society's ills by literalizing those ills in creepy ways.

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher: In Kingfisher's contemporary Southern Gothic, the haunting Sam and her mother, Edith, are dealing with represents a legacy of prejudice and sexism disguised by good manners and polite behavior (and how easy it is for victims to become perpetrators). It's a Kingfisher novel, however, so the horror is mitigated with humor and a goofy familiar (a vulture, in this case).  

Lost Among the Living by Simone St. James: Set in England, 1921, the novel's Wych Elm House (and the protagonist) is haunted by the trauma of both mental illness and WWI. That trauma was heavy to read about, but St. James is rapidly becoming a favorite writer for her ability to combine mystery, romance, and spookiness.   

Starling House by Alix Harrow: the most explicitly horror-filled of the three, this haunted house represents not only slavery and misogyny but the ability of otherwise good people to look away rather than confront evil. This was a good story, and I appreciate how nothing played out quite like one would expect, but although the novel is not YA it read like it, especially in the behavior of the main characters and in the overwrought writing style. The latter in particular distracted from my enjoyment of the story.

*Don't get me started on the long-ago English professor who interrupted a really good discussion to ask if we thought ghosts were real.

In a Hole in the Ground there lived a Hobbit

It was the summer of the hobbit.

I convinced my youngest to read The Hobbit this summer (he loved it, except for a couple of "boring" chapters). That inspired me to buy a hardcover version of the annotated edition (not for my son to read, though; he's hard on books). It's a great version -- lots of notes on the creation and publication of the novel, plus numerous illustrations from Tolkien himself and dozens of other artists.

Coincidentally, Aimee Ray of Little Dear issued for her September Patreon pattern a trio of doors to make, including a hobbit door. So of course I made it:

I've built up quite the collection of small Tolkien crafts.

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

A lot of the books I read are about the power of storytelling -- to entertain, to understand, to heal -- but stories can also lead us astray. If we aren't sufficiently aware of our own biases, if we make too many assumptions, we end up creating a story that isn't true.

The protagonist of Pessl's second novel, Night Film, is a journalist recovering from a career-ending blunder: he didn't verify an anonymous tip accusing famed-yet-reclusive film director Stanislaus Cordova of unspeakable crimes against children. Instead McGrath, who was already suspicious of Cordova, blabbed the allegations on a talk show only to have the tip proved a hoax (done, McGrath is convinced, to discredit him before he uncovered the director's secrets). Years later, McGrath has an eerie encounter with Cordova's daughter shortly before her death that causes him to reopen his investigation, determined to both show the world the true Cordova and vindicate himself.

McGrath is an unlikeable character, full of himself and full of edgy nonsense about life in general and New York City in particular. But he is a determined (if occasionally careless) journalist who follows every lead, no matter how tenuous, in his quest to understand what happened to Cordova's daughter, and what Cordova did that led to her death. The problem is that he never stops to question the truth of his initial premise -- Cordova's deeply disturbing films are necessarily the product of a deeply disturbed mind -- which leads him to misinterpret what he learns. By the end, not only McGrath but the reader must call into question everything learned. I didn't love this book the way I did Special Topics ..., but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

A Master Class in Stringing

Last year Kate Richbourg of the Beadshop ran a six-session master class in bead stringing based on the style and techniques of Helen Dietze; of course I jumped all over that.  The result:

The photo does not do it justice

This was a lot of fun to do. Kate's project centered around a large stone donut, but I did not have one in a color I liked. I did, however, have a giant brass replica of a Chinese coin, so that became the core around which everything else was built. I rooted through my stash and pulled every purple, burgundy, brass, and gold-colored bead I had and got to stringing. Some progress pictures:

This is not the first time I've done a Helen Dietze project; decades ago the late, lamented (by me at least) Bead & Button magazine featured her and a version of one of her ambassador necklaces. I made it but I never wore it -- it called for long dangles at the back to counterbalance the weight of the front. However, those strands were uncomfortable and set off my sensory issues. When I began this project, I knew I'd need to keep the front from getting too big and heavy so that I would not have to have too much hanging off the clasp. This necklace is much easier for me to wear.

The fun in a project like this is that it is completely improv; when I started, I had no idea what it would look like, just what colors I wanted and the fact that it should be a little smaller than Kate's to fit me proportionately. Playing with what was functionally a giant "bead soup" was a blast, and I'll want to do something like this again. It's a great artistic exercise.