Champagne for everyone! ^^

I just realized that today is my 1st blogging anniversary! *^v^*

What I learnt throughout this year of crafting:
- the second knitted sock can be quite a different size than the first one... which means I didn't pay the same amount of attention to keep the same tension of the yarn during the making of both socks!... (sic!) ^^
- but also many positive experiences, like toe-up socks, knitting cables without the cable needle, lace on very small needles, felting the knitted objects, weaving, a tiny little bit of crocheting, coming back to my roots that is embroidery! ^^,
- I learnt naalbinding and tried my hand in patchwork
- I made many different things like shawls, gloves, hats, capes, bags, wristwarmers, socks, some historical outfits and some everyday clothes,
- I published on my blog some free knitting patterns ^^
- I started to sell my things in two more on line galleries (in addition to the one I cooperated with for some time)
- I bought a loom (my big dream!)
- I initiated the crafty meetings with the girls in my historical group in an attempt to create both crafts learning zone and a kind of a women spiritual circle - I think it works fine up till now! *^v^*
- I started belly dancing classes, yikes! ^^
- but first of all, I met some incredible crafty people all around the world! *^v^*

What I would like to try:
- the following yarns are not available here in Poland and I'd love to try them someday: Rowan Kidsilk Haze, Noro Kureyon, Lorna's Lace
- I still haven't knitted a whole sweater (which is my 2007 goal)
- I would like to learn spinning and dyeing with Kool-Aid (although it's not available in Poland)
- tatting is on my list of "to learn someday" things, maybe I'll manage to try it this coming blogging year ^^
- and probably many many more things that will come to my ever busy mind! ^^

Hugs and kisses to all my readers! *^v^*

Weekend crafts
These are the projects I've been working on last weekend:
I did a bit of cross-stitching on my Burgundian tapestry (not mine, it's already Helene's! ^^), I finished the first skein and started the second one of the Morning Surf scarf for my mother's birthday and I embroidered my Wordpicture - I covered the tree with buttonhole stitches and barred chain stitches (last week's TAST stitch - just in time, because tomorrow Sharon will announce the next stitch ^^).
I've been working with many shades of brown and ecru which is not typical for my colour schemes but I like the effect. When I finished working on the tree last night my first thought was I overdid it, but the when I wathced it for a while and got used to it more, I decided that I like it. I think it's more or less all I wanted for the tree, now I'm going to concentrate on the background, which, as colourful as it is, still needs some embelishments (that's my view! ^^).
As a bonus some close shots of the barred chain stitch:

Ukrainian wise women and TAST

First, some replies to your comments:
Rho, thank you for your book suggestion, I've just got a copy of "The Secret" and will be listening to it in the near future. BTW, audiobooks are great! I can put them on and knit or embroider, or do whatever I want/need to do while listening to something interesting, yikes! ^^
Lobstah, I was also afraid that without a specific pattern I will ruin the overall picture with senseless stitches here and there but to my surprise, when I sit at the table and look at my panels I somehow know what to do next, what stitches to use, what colours, and it all composes a fairly consistent picture (at least I think so! *^v^*).
Corina, thank you for your sweet comment about my embroidery, I've been to your blog and I found many beautiful projects there, it's a shame I cannot speak Romanian...
Kendra, it's not that complicated as it sounds, I hope next time warping and weaving will be easier, maybe I just went straight into the deep water with the linnen warp, I should have started with wool instead. But I'm not discouraged at all and next weaving session is coming (I hurt my finger and could try again on Monday morning).

On Monday evening we went to watch a special movie - the document presenting old Ukrainian customs connected with several holidays: laments over the grave and feasting with the dead, Kust - the festival of Life, the holy tree, Rusalki - the festival of the dead wandering spirits, and in all of these customs the main part played beautiful songs, with traditional lyrics and melodies, sung a capella by the old women. Sad thing is that the only ones interested in preserving those customs are old women, because all the young ones leave their villages as quickly as possible and move to towns, so they change their lives completely and forget about their traditions.

But this movie was also great because I could see the traditional Ukrainian embroidered outfits - blouses, skirts and aprons, snowwhite with colourful flowers, all cross-stitched.

And because there are no such things as coincidences, this week stitch in the TAST is the very cross stitch itself! *^v^*

I've been having a love affair with this stitch for a long time now and I've done many projects in this technique, like pictures (my favourite is the Four Seasons cycle) or cushion covers with flowers on them. I also tried the traditional Ukrainian motives, like these bands on the photo, I haven't decided what to do with them yet.

I thought this stitch had no secrets for me, but I've never tried it in any free-hand embroidery, and when I looked up cross stitch family in Susan's stitch dictionary I found something interesting: namely the Rice stitch. I've achieved the similar result with Feather stitch or Cretan stitch, but it also looks interesting in this stitch and I'll give it a go soon.

My three panels are getting very crowded with motives and stitches, but I feel that this should be the case. I believe I need another week or so to finish them, and then I'll proceed to the next embroidery project (I have two in mind already, but I really want to make them one by one! ^^) .


(More photos on my Flickr).

And here are two books that I've been given be my Grandmother, showing everything she knew about embroidery (just look at them, they were used millions of times and the first one is in pieces, although not a single page is missing! ^^): the first one is about many types of embroidery, with individual stitches and some small patterns; the second one teaches a beautiful type of embroidery from the region of Poland called Kaszuby (close to the Baltic sea) - characteristics are: it's done on the grey linnen with only a few colours - black, two shades of red, blue, green and yellow, and white, and the motives are the flowers.

Creative thoughts

Yesterday, while continuing my embroidery project, I listened to the audiobook by Wayne Dyer "Creating Your Life With Your Thoughts" and something gave me a food for thought.

(apart from the fact that Mr. Dyer shouts at his listeners... I mean, not in an aggressive way, but his tone of voice is somehow disturbing, not a silky smooth voice like Sonia Choquette's voice I got to know from her audiobooks, btw, Sonia has also been a personal psychic advisor to Dr. Wayne Dyer ^^)

The general idea of Mr. Dyer's book is that our thoughts create the reality around us, and when we focus on good things - good things happen to us, and when we concentrate on bad things - we invite them into our lives. What we think about - expands. All the certainties and doubts equally.

Which I translated onto my life and my thoughts and all that has been happening to me up till now. How many times have I thought "Yes, I want to do it!", but then, in the next sentence I thought "Yeah, but... I'm maybe too old, it's inconvenient, I'm not skillful enough, it'll never be I wanted it to turn out, ect, ect...".

My biggest obstacle was the artificial idea put in my head throughout my childhood that it's not good to be openly happy and thankful for all the good things that were happening in my life, because it may cause the immediate turn of luck. If I'm too cheerful about my good relationship, my boyfriend will leave me. If I'm openly happy about the lottery winnings I'll loose the money in the near future. Don't tempt the Universe with your happiness because the Universe just waits for such silly people and changes their luck for worse.

From this idea comes the following behaviour: I say to my friend "Good luck at your exam!", and she immediately says "I'm not going to say thank you, because I don't want to jinx it!..." and runs away with a fear of being touched by the good wish which can bring ill-luck on her. Many people behave like that, and I used to do it a long time ago but then I started to fight this prejudice.

Why would the Universe (or God, or the High Spirit, however you want to call it) find the pleasure in making our lives miserable?...

I tend to favour the other concept, namely the one which says that the Universe answers our thoughts and intentions, and if we trully want to be happy, healthy and wealthy, it will come to us one day. But we have to clean our subconsciousness, getting rid of all the thoughts about the possibility of being jinxed, of not being good enough, not being able to achieve something, of being prejudiced, ect.
I'm not saying this is an easy process, it's like teaching an old dog new tricks and all, but it's definitely worth a try!

Embroidery

My TAST journey continues and I find more and more pleasure in making my pictures. ^^ They were just three blank pages last week (only with the black words on them), but as I look at them, each moment I have new ideas and add some elements here and there. I match the stitches, the colours and the whole pictures comes together. This weekend I'll be probably finishing the first panel and will be developing the second panel, of which I have a more or less clear picture in my head. The third one is still a mystery, although I started some elements on it.

I am trully amazed how easy it is for me to compose those pictures - up till now I've only embroidered drawn patterns or cross-stitch patterns, and now I let my imagination do the job! *^v^* I'll stick to pure embroidery in this first project but next time I'll try to be a bit more adventurous and add some patchwork, yikes!

As far as my sampler book, I thought about it and decided that I won't need a book binding skills for now, because I'll be doing the individual pages with stitches on them and I'll keep them in the plastic envelopes in an office binder. I want to have them in an alphabetical order so I may bind them into a book form later, when I have most of the pages with stitches ready.


Weaving

Today I spent my day painting my Ashford loom with a wood stain, and then I got carried away and sanded and painted the wooden table form IKEA and two wooden stools... *^v^*

Now I'm waiting for my loom-in-many-parts to get dry and we'll be assembling it tonight, so first weaving trials tomorrow!

Happy weekend, everyone!

TAST contd

First things first, replies to my commentators from yesterday ^^:

Rho, my hair is dark red indeed, it was a black wig! *^v^* I sometimes wear wigs just for fun, or for pictures. I believe Polish for you sounds like, for example, Hungarian of Finnish for me - I'm totally lost with these two!

Kendra, it will be some time before these pieces are finished! ^^ But I'm very excited about this new concept and I put away other things for now, so I hope it won't be long before I can show you the final result. I think I should include the audio files with pronunciation of these words, it would make the pieces complete in a way. I'll think about it! *^v^*

Okay, yesterday I managed to embroider the first panel with the word "to create". For now I used the following stitches: herringbone, buttonhole, feather and fly, and I'll be adding the other stitches from the previous TAST weeks soon, as well as other simple stitches.

I am generally very excited, I totally forgot how great it is to sit with a needle in one hand and a piece of cloth in the other and 'paint' the picture with colourful threads! ^^ And, to be honest, I've never tasted the pleasure of freehand embroidery like the one I'm making right now, I always embroidered some picture, so I had to stick to the outlines and colours, not to mention the cross-stitching, where following the scheme is all that counts! Maybe that's why I'm a bit shy with adding any new elements to my panels (like aplique, ect), but I hope to warm up and do it at some stage! *^v^*

I already have more ideas for the next pieces (three at least), but I'm holding back because I don't want to stay with many WIPs. My first tryptych is my priority now, and anyway I've run out of a transfer paper which is neccessary for the next projects ^^, so for now I'll be a good girl and continue my first idea.

Robert carefully examined my embroidery last night (he was thinking about using those stitches to decorate our medieval clothing but I believe they were invented much later, apart from a buttonhole stitch), and asked whether I was making a sampler. I thought about it and the answer was "no, it's not a sampler", because I had in mind the traditional sampler, with neat rows of different stitches one after another but then it occurred to me that it is a sampler in some way. Which led me to the idea of making my own stitch sampler book with pieces of fabric and examples of the stitches with all their possible variations. I have some sheets of handmade paper which can be good for a base notebook and all I need is to learn bookbinding! Piece of cake! *^v^*

I found this very helpful site with video instructions for many stitches: Needle'n'Thread. If you are, like myself, the person who best learns not from a description but from watching the process itself, this is the place to go for stitch instructions! ^^

Wordpictures

I invented something I'm going to call Slowobrazy (Wordpictures) - they will consist of a painted word and the decorative manfestations of my crafts all around it. Last night I was working on the bases for my first three pieces that are going to be put together as a collection (on my livingroom wall, I hope! ^^). I chose words that made a very important sentence for me: tworzyc wlasnymi rekoma (which means: create with my own hands, wow, in English I would have to create five pieces, not three! *^v^*).

I cut out the rectangles of grey linnen (because grey linnen is very symbolic for me, it reminds me of the embroidered napkins and table cloths my Grandmother used to create), transfered the words on it with a transfer pencil and an iron, and painted them with a black fabric paint.

Now I'll be adding embroidery, probably aplique, quilting, and whatever more will come to my mind. And when I decide that it's time to stop and they are finished, I'll staple them onto the wooden frames.

I'm going to practice my TAST stitches on my wordpictures, and the list so far includes:
Week 1 Herringbone, week 2 Buttonhole, week 3 Detached chain stitch , week 4 Cretan stitch , week 5 Chevron stitch , week 6 Algerian eye stitch, week 7 Feather stitch, week 8 Fly stitch
which means I'm a bit behind the schedule but I hope to catch up quickly. *^v^*

Knitting
I finished my I'm Blue... scarf and blocked it on Sunday - it's a kind of a first-Spring-chilly-morning-scarf. I love the colours of how the pattern turned out! ^^
The gauge and the needles are not that important, I've done three repeats of the pattern, it goes like that:
R1: k1, [yo, k3, ssk, k2tog, k3, yo, k1]
R2: p all

On Sunday I bought four big plastic containers and rearranged my yarn stash - now I have mohairs & co in one bin, wools in the other bin, acrylics and mixes in the third one and the tangle in the fourth one. I still have some tangled wool in the huge willow basket but at least I made some clean up and got rid of some yarn I'm never going to use. ^^

Also on Sunday I got a yarn gift from Robert's aunt: natural wool, very coarse but Robert already asked me to use it on my loom to try to make a piece of fabric out of it on a linnen warp. I love the egg-like shape of the yarn balls, they look like ostriches' eggs! ^^

Talking about the loom, I'm assembling it this Friday! Yes, I know it took me a long time to get to it but finally I have everything I need to do it and on Friday morning I'm going to paint all the parts with the beeswax paint and in the evening with Robert's help I'll be warping it for the first time, yikes! ^^

And here is how I look like when I play a model! *^v^*

On Sunday before the last we've been taking photos of some new corsets Robert sewn for Atelier Bizarre, and I and my friend Anna were the models (she didn't like how she looked at the pictures, so I'm only showing you my poses ^^).

TAST

Do you know what I've been making today? *^v^*

My yesterday's post was a bit chaotic and didn't really end with any conclusion, so maybe I will add a few words to it today.

When I left my office job life offered me a new path, a choice, a clean page to write a new story of myself. And it was totally up to me what I would choose. And, as it often happens, I didn't know what to choose so I chose first thing that came into my hands. I was confused, scared, susceptible to suggestions, felt obliged to do something, panicked and grabbed whatever came to me first. I didn't sit and think about my life properly, about my dream, my path I wanted to follow.

If it happened to me right now I would definitely think about my choices more thoroughly, but today I'm several books and meditating sessions wiser. *^v^* I'm not saying that I am fully aware of what my life should be right now, but I'm not afraid to ask my inner self questions about my choices and listen carefully to the answers. Whoever's to blame for what I did or didn't do in the past 2,5 years is only me - my poor physical and mental health, lack of creative spirit, laziness, some kilograms more... ^^ And I'm glad that this year brought me some kind of awakening and that I took some steps to repair my body and soul. ^^

I found something useful on Laurie's blog last night that seems tempting:

Just put on the outfit that you would wear if you were actually as self-confident as you wished you were, then show up every day for the life you wish you were living, and act as if you were already comfortable in your own skin. The real thing will (hopefully) follow.

The game of pretending to be somebody in order to convince our mind that's a reality and, in fact, becoming one - I like it! I really hope that the real thing will follow!

I decided to take up a challenge and join TAST - Take A Stitch Tuesday.
I learned how to embroider when I was a little girl, but I never fully practiced many decorative stitches. And the funny things is that I don't know Polish names for most of the embroidery stitches because when my Grandmother taught me them, she didn't really felt the need to put the names in my head, the technique was more important. So I can perform them, but cannot name them! *^v^*
So now I'm going to recall, practice and learn (I hope) many new stitches and I even decided what I should do with them - I will create something un-useful (or a piece of art, ha! ^^). It will involve embroidery, but also patchwork, quilting, felting maybe, or crocheting? We'll see as it goes.
For now, I'll start my project and catch upon the stitches already practiced in the past 7 weeks.
If you need help with finding stitches, here is the excellent site: Sharon b's Dictionary of Stitches for Hand Embroidery and Needlework

I haven't shared with you one news that came to us a couple of weeks ago - it seems that my naalbinding Wednesdays will remain only recreational for me, because we are not expecting to go on any historical weekends until probably September (including our planned trip to Sweden for Viking Market in June, *sigh*). Things went a bit complicated in Robert's work, his closest co-worker left the company and until there is another person fully qualified and trained, Robert will be the only person with the proper knowledge in some fields, which means he will be on full time duty for several months and he was told to say goodbye to any holidays or sick leaves for some time... This means a bit more money but on the other hand we'll be stuck in Warsaw, not even being able to go to our cottage for a barbecue night (it's about an hour travel from Warsaw and if anything happens with the servers Robert has to be able to get to a server room within 30 minutes...). It didn't fully got to me yet but I think it'll hurt more when there's some medieval market and all our friends will be preparing to go, well...

Now, let's talk about something more cheerful and let's go back to my first question: today I've been making special Polish cakes called faworki (which can be translated into favourites, and they really are one of my favourite sweets! ^^).

They are really easy to make, first you make the dough out of some egg yolks, flour, sour cream, a splash of spirit and sugar (it must be very light - if you want I can quote the exact recipe), then you spread it very thinly on the flat surface and cut a strips of it, make a slit in the middle of each strip and weave one end throught the slit (that's why they look like ribbons! ^^).

Then there is the most important part: you heat up a lot of pure lard in a pot and deepfry them piece by piece, making sure they are golden brown on each side and not burnt. They get puffed like that during the process of frying. ^^

The last step is just to put them for a moment on a kitchen towel to get rid of the excess fat and sprinkle them with sugar. Yummy! ^^

Here is a preview of my finished corsets (I hurt my hand a bit with this metal eyelet attaching thingy, auch!...)