Sparkle heart

Some weeks ago, I explained why my blog suddenly seems to be all hand embroidery (my arthritic thumb joint), but also talked about having a plan for bead embroidery.
Now I'm back with the first piece resulting from this plan, but you wouldn't even notice without my saying it because it's just a tad different from my previous pieces.

In the blog post about how my thumb influences my work at the moment, I also mentioned getting myself an embroidery set with a second stand and exchangeable hoops in different sizes.
This made me wonder why I didn't just do my bead embroidery pieces like that, too?
I glued my cabochons on like always, then I put some thinner fabric in the hoop and sewed through both the fabric and my embroidery foundation when making the bezel for the cabs.
Making pendants has always been my favorite and the smallest hoop I can use with the stand isn't that small, so the plan was to work on two pendants and then cut them off together to finish them.
You know what? That actually worked rather well and although it didn't mean my thumb joint could rest completely, I avoided at least some of the movements it hates. Now I would just have to see if the fabric would be thin enough not to mess up my edging.
Spoiler alert - it was.
I'm sure the idea isn't new, I didn't look it up before trying it out, but all that counts for me is that it works.

Here's the first pendant which I have finished now, my muse is still thinking about the other one.
I didn't use a cabochon for this one, but a marble heart. It's really smooth but not shiny and still has kind of a raw, unpolished look to it which I wanted to counterbalance with a smooth look for the bezel, with a dark sparkle for the edge as opposed to the subtle light sparkle of the marble (which doesn't show too well in the pictures).
For the bezel I chose grey seed beads with a light shimmer of gold, blue-grey Delicas for contrast, and a row of tiny silver seed beads, the edging is from black crystals, also with a shimmer of gold, in combination with real hematite rounds and matching seed beads.

This pendant is off. You might not even notice right away if you just give it a quick glance, but if you look closer, you see it.
The stone is asymmetrical and I didn't try to hide that.
So the bezel is asymmetrical as well and also the crystal edge. I had to place the bail so that the pendant would still hang right and the two beads at the top - a button bead and a faceted moonstone - only sit kind of in the center.
The back is a real surprise in its bright berry color. Turned like this, you can also see the asymmetry very clearly.

Well, aren't we all a little "off"? One eye bigger than the other one, one ear a bit higher, one foot larger, or what else there can be, and sometimes there's a surprise on the back ;-)
I hadn't planned it that way from the start, by the way, it just happened by following the stone with the beads, but the more I worked on it, the more I thought that I finally seemed to be embracing assymetry, something I have always been struggling with very much, but haven't given up on. I find it's easier going completely wild with freeform.
Does it still make me a little nervous? It sure does, but I like the idea of someone wondering what is different about this piece and finding out step by step and maybe embracing it, too.

Now I need to find the next step for the other "hoop" piece, so I can finish it.
There's a nagging feeling that I have painted myself into a corner with that one, but miracles happen, so I'm not going to give up hope just yet.

Comfy, Cozy Cinema 2024 - Dracula

Comfy, Cozy Cinema is a collaboration of Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
They have a list of movies to watch for September and October. I was late to the game and not having subscribed to any streaming platforms, I probably wouldn't have been able to watch everything, anyway - but even though they have chosen "Practical Magic" for their own Halloween which I don't have, they left the choice open to others participating on that day.
So my personal choice for today is an all-time favorite of mine and - surpriiiiise - its "sibling". I'm talking about "Dracula" and "Drácula", both of them from 1931.
Are you confused?

Illustrator unknown; Distributed by Universal Pictures.
Scan via Heritage Auctions. Cropped from the original image, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86980777

Quite a few years ago, I decided to add some horror genre classics to my DVD collection, for example "Nosferatu", "Phantom of the Opera", "The Wolf Man", "Frankenstein", and of course my beloved "Dracula" which I had watched on TV before when it was on, but for some weird reason didn't own yet.
I had already bought the "Tombstone Edition", so called after the tombstone shaped box with four movies including "Dracula" when I spotted another edition with - huh, two movies?
Maybe you know - I hadn't - that talkies were not always dubbed for the international market in the early days, but instead there were multiple-language versions made often using the same set, crew, and costumes, but different actors who spoke the desired language fluently. Most common were versions in English, French, German, and Spanish (since after the war, Germany has had a huge dubbing industry which I found is often unusual to American friends of mine, but that's a different story).

Many of the export versions got lost, but one of those that still exist is the Spanish "Drácula" version.
I couldn't resist checking it out and got that box as well.

Distributed by Universal Pictures.
Scan via brandonsiddall.wixsite.com., Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89223507

I don't think I really need to say a lot about the plot of "Dracula".
Renfield, a real estate agent, travels to a castle in Transylvania to close the lease of an abbey in England to Count Dracula. Unfortunately for him, Dracula is a vampire who makes Renfield his minion, travels to England with him, makes his home in the abbey and does what vampires do best, enchanting his victims and sucking their blood, until being stopped by Professor Van Helsing.

So let's talk a bit about the differences between the English and Spanish versions. There are documentaries, interviews, and articles about that, so the following will just reflect my personal opinion which I'm aware not everyone would agree with.

The movies are based on a successful stage play which is of course based on Bram Stoker's book. I have tried to read the book once, but I didn't make it through. That was a long time ago, maybe I should give it another try, but from what I read I'm not alone in having my problems with the style.
Of course the play had to cut out a lot and the same obviously goes for this movie, even more so for the English version which is only 75 minutes long compared to the 104 minutes of the Spanish version (the extra 29 minutes fill some gaps in the story)!
Apart from that the scripts are mostly very similar from what I can tell as I don't speak Spanish and rely on subtitles.

The English version was filmed during the day, the Spanish version on the same set (but not with the same crew) during nights with a smaller budget and a tighter shooting schedule. It is said, however, that the Spanish movie benefited from the crew being able to see the results of day filming and therefore refine their own work in regards to lighting, blocking, and some of the effects.

I'm by no means a film expert and therefore couldn't tell you exactly the reason why, but I agree that the Spanish version looks more polished, has more flow, and is more dramatic in some of the scenes than the English one which is said to look very stagey, much talk, very slow, and not much action. I wonder what half an hour more would have done to it. Not that you could call the Spanish one an action movie, mind you, some of the dialogue was also very slow.
That didn't seem unusual to me at all, though. This was 1931 and movies were not made the same way as today. I'm okay with a bit of overacting, extreme emphasizing of single words (for example Renfield in the Spanish movie), and dramatic pauses in sentences. I don't understand why anyone would even want to compare this movie with the ones that followed.

The actors and actresses didn't make much difference for me. Both Renfields were amazing in their insanity (although the Spanish one got more time to show it off), the English Mina was not as interesting as the Spanish Eva (who also got to wear more revealing costumes), but the others didn't even get much of a chance to shine, not even the professor (except Martin, the ward, he's fun).

Why do I still prefer the English version, though?
One name - Bela Lugosi. Carlos Villarías was alright when others didn't know yet that he was a vampire and he engaged in polite dialogue, but while Lugosi had this ominous yet threatening look throughout, Villarías just looked deranged in his vampire moments, with his eyes wide open and a weird grin on his face which looked more silly than scary to me.
Lugosi, who had also been Dracula in the stage play and had been so desperate for the movie role that he accepted a very low pay offer (originally Lon Chaney was intended for the lead role, but he died in 1930), set the standard for what Dracula still looks like in the mind of most people today, the hair, the cape, the stare, even the accent which had nothing to do with Dracula himself, but was Lugosi's own accent because he only spoke little English at the time.

There would be so much more to say, about the set for example whose elements also became part of the vampire lore, long staircases, coffins, crumbling castles, bats, wolves, and spiders (and their webs).
I have no idea, however, why the oppossums and armadillos in the catacombs of the Transylvanian castle didn't catch on ;-)
Or I could talk about the ending which is rather abrupt and quite anticlimactic.

Maybe you will want to watch the movies yourself sometime to find out more yourself.
If you do, let me know what you think!
I wonder what a German version would have been like.

P.S. Of course Bela Lugosi is staring down on my bed from my fan wall of bead loomed portraits ...

Nessie sighting!

When my brother was still small, he had three books he absolutely loved. I can't even say how often we had to look at them. They were about UFOs, ghosts, and monsters - and the last one was his #1 favorite.
That was fine by me because I have been just as fascinated myself since childhood.

My favorite cryptid is Nessie. I love the thought of her swimming and hiding in that beautiful loch and I wanted to see Loch Ness so badly for so long.
In 2009, I finally got the chance. The ex and I went to Edinburgh and it was clear one day would be reserved for a day trip to Loch Ness. It was gorgeous and it still makes me smile to think of that day, but also a little sad because I'm pretty sure I won't be able to get back there again. If you want to read a little about the day and see pictures, you are welcome to check out "Edinburgh Day 2".

I'm sure we would have seen Nessie that day if there hadn't been so many people! ;-)

Well, if Nessie didn't want to come to me then, I just had to make her come to me now. Embroidery to the rescue! :-D
See, she does exist!

P.S. Never embroider if you are upset, though. Here in Germany we also say "einen dicken Hals kriegen" (get a fat neck) if we are upset and I think that has translated to Nessie just a tad ;-)

Comfy, Cozy Cinema 2024 - Rear Window

Comfy, Cozy Cinema is a collaboration of Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
They have a list of movies to watch for September and October. I was late to the game and not having subscribed to any streaming platforms, I probably wouldn't have been able to watch everything, anyway - but of course "Rear Window" is one of the Hitchcock movies in my old-fashioned DVD collection.

Copyrighted by Paramount International. Artists(s) not known. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Get ready for a few spoilers, so if you have actually managed to miss the movie until now, you may not want to read any further, I'm not going to give the end away this time, though.

What would you do if you were in a cast that makes it really hard for you to get around at all, so you spend most of your recovery time in a wheelchair in your apartment?
(Overthinking segment: Would they even use a cast like that today? I had to do some quick googling and from what it looks like that's very rare. Overthinking finished.)
If you were a successful and high energy photographer, you would probably not be happy beading or stitching or whatever one of us may do for distraction. L.B. "Jeff" Jefferies is such a photographer, and being stuck in his hot apartment like that and bored, he is spending his time on watching the little world he can see through his window - meaning he is spying on his neighbors, the pretty young dancer, the composer working on a new piece of music, the newlyweds, the childless couple with the little dog, the lonely woman, the sculptor, and then there are the man and his ill wife who hardly ever gets out of bed.

Lisa is Jeff's girlfriend, a beautiful model who regularly comes to visit, and then there is Stella, the nurse.
At first both of them disapprove of Jeff's spying very much, but then they too get drawn in more and more, especially when the ill wife suddenly disappears.
Jeff is convinced that her husband has murdered and dismembered her, and the more they see, so are Lisa and Stella. He asks an old friend for help who is working for the police now, but whose enquiries don't turn anything up except that Mr. Thorwald has taken his wife to the train and that she has already sent a postcard.
So they decide to find out as much as possible by themselves, provoking Thorwald hoping he will make a mistake, and Lisa even goes to search his apartment which puts her in danger while Jeff and Stella watch it in horror, not being able to help.
Lisa gets away, but unfortunately that way Thorwald finds out he's being watched and from where and he has to act ...

"Rear Window" is based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich, "It Had To Be Murder" from 1942 which I hadn't known before, but now read for this post. Not necessarily a good idea, but in this case I'm fine with it. Although there are differences, I get why there had to be in order to pad the story for a feature film, in a good way, too.
Neither Lisa nor Stella are there in the story, instead there's the day houseman Sam, but actually the ladies being there tells us a lot about Jeff which you don't have in the story
For example, Jeff is afraid of being tied down by marriage thinking that his lifestyle of a travelling photographer and that of socialite Lisa won't go together. Lisa, on the other hand, does everything now to prove to him that there is more to her than just being beautiful. Stella in her practical way doesn't hold back saying things out loud that the others may just hint at, be it about marriage or possible details of the murder.

All of the neighbors actually don't play a role in the short story. They are mentioned at the beginning, but the focus is on Jeff and on Thorwald which I felt gives the story an even more isolated feel.
In the movie Jeff is a part of this neighborhood which he can only see through his window for the moment, watching all those small stories develop, however individually as there is no neighborly interaction at the time.
That is also most of what we see (except for one scene that shows the yard from all sides and has all the neighbors coming to the windows), we become voyeurs through Jeff's eyes, then we see his reaction to what happens out there. The movie never moves away from this yard.
In a making-of about the movie, the assistent director said they had one scene in the office of Jeff's editor, but that he told Hitchcock he thought they shouldn't use it, and so in the end they didn't.

I asked family what they had to say about the movie without thinking for too long and I got "suspense, great shots, a beautiful woman, great clothes".
I can only agree and think Edith Head's designs do deserve mentioning. The clothes she put on Grace Kelly were absolutely gorgeous and I swoon over the one she is wearing when you see her for the first time.

I do have one small complaint, though.
In the short story Mrs. Thorwald is chronically ill (probably, after all Jeff never meets her), but she is neither bickering nor laughing at her husband. Showing her doing that in the movie seems to be hinting at him just having enough of that, Jeff even mentions the fighting to his detective friend. The unconfirmed theory in the short story is that Thorwald probably got insurance for her and killed her when she caught him out trying to slowly poison her hoping to get a new life with his mistress. Nothing points at her having provoked anything.

I won't be there next time when (the real ;-)) Lisa and Erin will be watching another Hitchcock movie with Grace Kelly, "Dial M For Murder", because I don't own that movie and I don't like to talk about it just from memory, but I will definitely be heading over to their blogs.

A beak shining bright

Seems the invisible beak of the last one was traumatic for me and I just couldn't get over it ... I had to make another chicken, but as a pendant this time.
I still underestimate every time how long a piece like that will be taking me, especially since I only use one or two strands of floss and make quite tiny stitches. That may be something I will have to work on eventually.

Why this feathered lady would want to have a nest in the middle of a meadow, you want to know? I have no idea.
First came the hen sitting in the grass and then it somehow felt right to give her a nest. Maybe my subconscious wanted to avoid having to stitch legs?
Or maybe this little scene is a flashback to childhood memories? There is a one particular wild meadow that comes up in my mind when I see or make something like this.

The bees are obviously after the flowers. They were flies at first, but then that looked a bit annoying to me, so I added the stripes.
Those flowers must be delicious or there wouldn't be as many of them!

And of course the lady has a beak shining as bright as the sun. Not invisible at all! ;-)

Comfy, Cozy Cinema 2024 - Blithe Spirit

Comfy, Cozy Cinema is a collaboration of Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
They have a list of movies to watch for September and October. I was late to the game and not having subscribed to any streaming platforms, I probably wouldn't have been able to watch everything, anyway.

I do know "Blithe Spirit", though, which is the choice for this week.
I'm talking about the 1945 movie made after Noël Coward's play from 1941 which he wrote in six days with the intent to give the British people "a distraction from the war, a celebration of British life, and a reason to continue to fight for this life", and which was really popular both in the London West End and on Broadway although some critics did not think ghosts and death were an appropriate topic at the time.
There have been numerous performances of the play over many years.
Also, there is a 2020 movie remake, but it doesn't seem to be very popular. I didn't see it myself.

So, what is "Blithe Spirit" about (major spoilers ahead, so you maybe shouldn't read on if you haven't watched it, but would like to!)?

Enter Charles and Ruth Condomine.
Charles is a writer, Ruth is his second wife, his first wife Elvira died some years ago.
As research for a new novel, they invite a local medium, Madame Arcati, and Dr. and Mrs. Bradman to hold a séance. None of them really believe in séances and they are prepared to be amused rather than convinced that there is a spirit world.
After dinner, Madame Arcati starts contacting her guiding spirit Daphne, a little girl, and the small table is moving violently (as if we don't know the usual tricks how that is done, right?). It becomes even worse, however, after Daphne's voice is speaking through Madame Arcati who then passes out and falls to the floor.
And then Charles is hearing a voice that no one else can hear, so he claims it was just a joke. The dinner is over, the guests are gone, but one "guest" has just arrived - it's Elvira who has come back as a ghost saying Charles has called her.
Now the problems really begin. Only he can see Elvira and Ruth is by no means amused thinking he has just drunk too much until Elvira starts moving things around to prove she is really there.
Ruth calls on Madame Arcati telling her that she needs to get rid of Elvira again who keeps taunting her. Meanwhile, Elvira is trying to take Charles into the other world with her, but her plan goes wrong and instead Ruth dies leaving Charles being caught between two dead wives who are fighting all the time.
Madame Arcati does everything to send them both back into the other world, but all attempts fail - until she finds out that it was actually the maid Edith who had summoned them inadvertently and puts her in trance to send the spirits away which seems to have worked, but soon it becomes clear they are still very much there.
So Charles follows Madame Arcati's advice to go away on a long vacation, but has a fatal accident and ends up as a spirit himself, united with both of his wives.

That ending, which Coward was not happy about, is different from that of the play in which Charles is leaving.
Honestly, though, I think he deserves to be stuck with Ruth and Elvira, and I also think they all deserve to be stuck with one another because I don't really like any of them.
And actually that is what Coward intended, to make a story about death and ghosts that wouldn't upset people even in wartime, simply because none of them is nice.

Charles is best described by the title. He is a "blithe spirit" and seems to get used to the thought of Elvira hanging around quite quickly, even despite her behavior towards Ruth, he really just cares about himself not getting annoyed by it.
I wonder if I like him even less because I never liked Rex Harrison.
Ruth is effective and trying to hold things together, but seems rather dispassionate to me even when worried and upset. It has a bit of British stiff upper lip, you have a problem, you don't show how much it gets to you, you deal with it.
It makes me wonder what ever made them get together in the first place.
Well, and Charles and Elvira together - they weren't such a wonderful couple either which you learn quickly when they are trying to outdo the other by telling them with whom they cheated them during their marriage, constantly provoking each other.

So why do I love this movie, anyway?
It's Madame Arcati of course.
A while ago I read on a page something like "Margaret Rutherford may not be familiar to you from movies" and my first thought was that they can't live in Germany where her Miss Marple movies are still on TV regularly.
I love Margaret Rutherford and she was simply perfect for this role which she also had in the play, by the way.
Many people say she absolutely stole the show and she did.
While it's a pity that she was typecast for the eccentric old lady (not speaking about the story of her life which is sad and quite strange at the same time) as I'm sure she would have been capable of much more , it's how I got to know her as a child and I just love it how she filled those roles.

Madame Arcati is not what you may immediately think of when you hear "medium". Yes, she is a bit crazy, but instead of the turban you see so often there is a slightly messy hairdo, instead of an embroidered kaftan or dramatically flowing garments there are comfy granny dresses, and there's none of the stereotype drama at all.
Actually, she's rather down-to-earth for someone who deals with the supernatural.

So she mentions that little Daphne has just had a cold, poor child (spirits can catch a cold?), she loves bicycling (as did Rutherford herself) wearing one of the wonderful "Miss Marple capes" (I'd love to have one of those), she has a cozy little cottage instead welcoming her guests in a dark room with long curtains, and she's genuinely interested in solving the problem with the ghosts instead of dropping mysterious hints.
Thinking about it, she reminds me of a Swabian grandmother in the olden days, setting out to get things done, only that things are not a garden, dirty floor or making a substantial meal, but to deal with spirits. She doesn't give up to the end and she does it with so much expression and physical input and neverending optimism that she will be working this out.
I'd hire her for a séance in a second just to see that in person!

Now comes the big overthinking that I can't stop.
I wish they had explained the part with Edith, the maid. How did she summon those two ladies? Did she remember what happened? Did she avoid Madame Arcati from now on? Did she find a job with nicer people? What happened to the house? Did Madame Arcati keep trying to send all three of them back now? Did she tell anyone about what happened? Did she ever talk to the Bradmans about it?
I could keep going ;-)

Seriously now, though. Witty dialogue yes or no, without Margaret Rutherford I'm sure I would have dropped out after ten minutes.
Maybe I'll try to watch the German remake from the 60s sometime to see if or how that changes my feeling towards the whole plot and the people.

The hen and the egg

A few weeks ago, we visited the local pottery "Töpferei auf dem Jackenhof" where I also got my happy yellow mugs last year (and yes, I still love them so much and use them all the time). Although I was just the company this time, I couldn't resist to get at least a little something, in this case a small vase in a beautiful blue and shaped like an egg with a broken off top.
I showed a picture because I have friends who also love pottery and one of them said she wondered what hatched from it.
Now I found out! It's a little surprising, though, I had expected something bigger ...

Whenever I'm learning a new technique, my goal is to try and combine it with my previous techniques.
Obviously bead embroidery is the easiest one to mix with hand embroidery. Just throw some extra beads on there, right?
Like so many of my pieces, this tiny hen was completely unplanned. I had a small piece of linen and wondered I would like working without a frame. The inspiration to make a hen came from a cartoon I had seen shortly before.

Of course there are things I would do differently now. I would have planned in to pad the hen, so the silver edging wouldn't sit on the top even if they are size 15 beads. I would not have used the thicker felt to stabilize the linen and my hen would have got a beak that's more visible. My only excuse for making it ecru is that it was late at night and I just grabbed something without thinking.
After all this was just meant as a small experimental piece originally, I hadn't even thought it would come this far.

I definitely learned something from it. Maybe I'll find a pin small enough to put on the back and pin my hen to the collar of my denim jacket. Or maybe you have an idea?