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?

Comfy, Cozy Cinema 2024 - Kiki's Delivery Service

I'm not a huge anime fan. My first experience with anime was "Heidi, Girl of the Alps" (Original: "Arupusu no shôjo Haiji), the 1974 series about the adventures of little Heidi after Johanna Spyri's books which first aired in German TV from 1977 to 1978. We were not used to this style of animation, especially the extreme display of emotions shown in the eyes and often huge mouths, and yet we were also kind of fascinated by it.
Somehow the style tends to overwhelm me at times and sometimes not at all. I didn't have a problem with Heidi which I'm quite sure I watched with my little brother, but I never got into Dragon Ball for example.
Only years later I watched a documentary about the worldwide Heidi phenomenon and learned from it, among other things, how much research the studio had put into this series. Included was, by the way, also Hayao Miyazaki, one of the Studio Ghibli founders ...

... which makes a nice bridge to the movie I want to talk about. Comfy Cozy Cinema 2024 is a collaboration of Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. They watch movies and talk about them and this week they chose "Kiki's Delivery Service" by Studio Ghibli.
Why don't you visit them to see what they think about it?

I know two versions, the anime movie from 1989 (Original: Majo no takkyûbin) and the live action movie from 2014. Actually, I had never seen all of the anime, but caught the live action version one sleepless night (which was the reason I watched it at all, I'm usually not a fan of live action remakes, either) which made me finally get the original.

I don't want to talk about production, direction, critiques, you can read up on that yourself. Here's just how I feel about the movie.
"Kiki's Delivery Service" is about independence, about finding your way in life, finding out about yourself and your skills, trying to overcome self-doubt and obstacles, and to adapt to new surroundings and new people, those that you click with right away, those you have to get to know closer before you like them, and those who don't like you or whom you don't like - sometimes for no reason at all.

Kiki is a young witch who follows the tradition of witches having to leave their home once they turn 13 and live independently in a town for one year.
The only magic power that Kiki has is being able to fly on a broom and she's not even perfect at it.
Nevertheless she's ready to fly into the unknown on her mother's broom, accompanied by her black cat Jiji, and ends up in the metropolis Koriko (which is a mixture of different cities in a 50s flair, actually Miyazaki travelled to Sweden for research and used a lot of it for Koriko).

Koriko doesn't necessarily receive Kiki with arms wide open, but there are people who welcome her, one of them being Osono who runs a bakery together with her husband and offers her the spare room to stay after Kiki helps bringing a customer something she forgot at the bakery.
This also gives her the idea to open a delivery service.

From there on, the movie is about Kiki meeting more new people who influence her life in some way or the other, Tombo, the neighbor, who is fascinated by all things flying including her, an old lady called Madame who is very nice to her, Ursula who lives in the woods and is an artist, but also the old lady's granddaughter who seems very rude and ungrateful to Kiki after she delivers a pie for her birthday which her grandmother and Kiki had put a lot of work into.

In fact, Kiki is quite easily annoyed with people which I think is absolutely normal for a teenager. She learns that you have to give people a chance before judging them and for example becomes friends with Tombo after she had rejected him at first, but it's not easy for her to do and causes such self-doubt in her that it even makes her lose her power.
Not only can't she understand Jiji anymore who has been like her alter ego, who has been just as easily annoyed as she - for example at the neighbor cat Lili - and has been the perfect conversation partner for her to bounce her thoughts, ideas, and doubts off, but she also loses her ability to fly which makes her doubt herself even more.

Kiki's spirits lift a little when Ursula invites her to her cabin for a sleepover and tells her there was a time when she had self-doubts as well, but that you can overcome them if you try hard and then the magic can happen again.
For Kiki, that moment comes when she sees the accident of an airship on TV which puts Tombo in mortal danger. She wants to help him so much that her flying power comes back, not easily, but just in time.

In the end, you see how Kiki has become a part of Koriko, flying with Tombo who perfected the "air bicycle" he built. She writes a letter home to tell her parents that the year will not be a problem for her because she's really happy in her town.

The most important question, however, is if she can understand Jiji again (you know, me and cats), but alas, she can't. It made me think of the Mary Poppins book in which the youngest babies understand the language of the animals and even of the sun, but then they grow older and suddenly it's gone because they have entered a new phase in life.
Kiki doesn't need Jiji anymore to talk to him and Jiji has made a life with Lili, but that doesn't mean they are not friends anymore.

The movie may seem a bit slow, maybe that was why I enjoyed it very much. There is no big action except for the rescue mission at the end, but in each scene something important happens, each one is a small step in the journey of Kiki growing up.
I also love the little details, like the way Kiki's dress is shoved up a bit and her shoes are off when she's cleaning Ursula's floor as exchange for Ursula helping her with an item from her first delivery or the way Kiki put clothespins on her wide sleeves, so they are not getting in the way when she helps Madame with preparing the old wood oven for the pie because the electric oven was broken (only one example for the mix of tradition and modern life, by the way, just like Kiki's traditional black witch dress combined with a big red hair bow).

I want to mention the live action movie as well, but much shorter as the message itself is the same.
I had the feeling they tried to make it a bit more modern, showing how Kiki interacts with some of the other girls or how she has to face more intolerance from some of the people because she's a witch.
For example, she's getting suspected of having hexed the beloved baby hippo in the zoo which made it lose its tail and get very sick. The rescue mission in this movie is taking the hippo to a professor living on an island despite a storm, so he can heal it (balancing the missing tail out with a watch ... what?). That story was really strange to me, not mentioning that the CGI hippo didn't look good.
There's no Ursula, but a singer, that part kind of worked, but wasn't really exciting, either.
Kiki herself was not as bad as some people seem to think, but for me she missed the sweetness of the anime Kiki and at first reminded me more of a young wannabe goth witch brat of modern times.
Tombo and his friends were a bit too slapstick for my taste, but they didn't take up that much of the movie.
Nevertheless, it was quite a fun movie for one sleepless night viewing and I think the message came still across.

Splints

It's a bit weird that I strain my thumb joint working on something that is supposed to be helping my thumb joint, I know. Actually, however, it started to feel a bit better most of the time and I took enough breaks to not make it any worse. Maybe I'm learning after all, who knows?

I'm talking about the splints I got. I don't like wearing them, but if I have to wear them at night, they might as well look nice ... because who's asleep at night. Maybe it's just the feeling they are different.
It's funny, I chose black ones because they are the least flashy and then I suddenly decide they need some color, a lot of it.

I just learned fly stitch, but you can't see much of it here as I had so many shorter floss leftovers and couldn't stop myself. I wish I could grow flowers like that for real 😉
At the time I hadn't planned to embroider the strap as well or I would have tried to make it match a bit better.
The length of the strap obviously asked for some kind of vines or rambling roses, though, (even if they are rambling sideways), and still being obsessed with French knots and having acquainted myself with the feather stitch as well, the roses sounded perfect.
These actually used up all the colorful leftovers I had so far - you have to keep in mind I only just began this journey quite recently - and thus my Swabian heart was very happy 😂

I definitely wanted something different for the second splint, though, and since the splints are not specifically for the right and left hand, the strap on the right hand is mostly on my palm, so I had to come up with something that would work with the other side. Of course I can still embroider the second side of each splint if I should ever feel the urge for it.

Are you surprised that my mind went to cats right away? It's possible that des Dekan's funny little bunny feet were an additional inspiration.

What do we love about cat feet? Beans!

It was a good thing that I gave the one on the left a few black spots because that way it wasn't a problem to give it two more - after poking my finger with the needle for the third time without noticing before I had already bled on the paw!
Can you believe I actually wondered why there were two different pinks (the red had lightened to a dark pink on the floss) on the paw? 😂

Then I needed something for the part of the strap that's showing - another cat of course!
That one was really tough to do, especially the parts where I stitched over stitches over difficult background, so she's by no means perfect, but it was good practice and I think she's still rather cute.
If you wonder why the eyes are a bit shifty, sigh, what can I say - more blood I had to hide, but this time I pretty much ran out of the dark grey floss of which I only had half the usual length. I like to think kitty is winking at me.

I'll let you know if I ever do something to the other sides, but I have to admit that it was tough as this isn't exactly an easy surface to embroider onto, so I don't see myself doing it very soon if at all. There were all the little black bits sticking up, some parts were padded too thickly to even get through at all, some were a bit hard to get to or I could only get through using pliers.
Also there are so many other things to do!

The thumb and I

More embroidery?
You may wonder if that is a new craft/hobby frenzy. It wouldn't be unusual to go wild with a new technique that you have just discovered for yourself. I'm no exception although I have always tried to keep it mixed up, but it's hard not to succumb the excitement and adventure of new experiments ;-)

There is another reason for this flood of embroidery, however.
I have rhizarthrosis in both thumb joints, not that bad yet in the right one, but the left one has really been acting up for a while now. I'm right handed, but my left hand has to do a lot of the grabbing, holding and keeping tension which seems to be the harder part.
That meant more breaks, much shorter crafting sessions, days completely without crafting, and some things are right out at the moment, wire for example, and even beading makes my thumb move in the wrong way. It's frustrating and my friends are probably sick of my whining by now.
I haven't tried out yet how well bead looming will be working for me right now, but I have a plan for bead embroidery - well, and then there's the hand embroidery.

I quickly found out that holding my hoop is a bad idea, actually that's what started my thumb being angry at me. I know I should have taken more breaks a long time ago, but it's really hard for me to stop myself once I'm going.
When I purchased my course for the silk shading flower, though, it said I needed a stand for being able to use both hands freely, and that made a big difference.

It doesn't mean that I can have as long sessions as I used to, it also doesn't mean there isn't any pain at all, but there's no doubt, hand embroidery is the easiest technique for me to do at the moment.
So I got myself a second stand with different sizes of exchangeable hoops and used the smallest of them to make several pendants which couldn't be more different from one another.

1. At my jewelry forum, the Jewelry Artisans Community, we currently have a challenge with the topic "Music" going and I made a happy little musical pendant for it. Don't try to sing the tune ;-)

2. This was an experiment that came from a different idea that is still lingering in the back of my head.
I'm getting abstract 60s vibes from it which is helped by the shape, and I have to say it was fun making it as I could just let loose.

3. Yeah, not a big surprise here. We all knew there would be at least one cat pretty quickly during my embroidery journey, I just didn't know it would become kind of a caricature until I couldn't resist making really big eyes.

4. The last pendant has a backstory.
I have mentioned before that I live in Göppingen which is situated at the bottom of the Hohenstaufen, one of the "Drei Kaiserberge" (literally translating to "Three Emperor Mountains"), together with the Rechberg and Stuifen.
They get their name from the Hohenstaufen dynasty - the "Staufer" - of which Frederick Barbarossa is probably the most famous. They had a castle on the Hohenstaufen, but there is only very little of the foundation walls left (it is said that the city castle of Göppingen was partially built from stones from the castle ruins).
This is my hommage to our mountains and their long history.
Of course they don't lie that close together in reality (pictures under the link above) as in our city logo ...

... or in my pendant.

So yeah, I guess you will have to put up with more embroidery in the near future.
I will not drop the wire and the beads, though, and hope ice packs, splints, and more rest will be able to help me with that!

The mysterious decorator

I wonder who decorated this tree in the winter forest? We might find out if we followed the footprints in the snow, but sometimes a mystery is quite nice, isn't it?

Yes, I know it's early, but I got my metallic threads and just had to try them out on something!

Organizing

I'm not a natural organizer. I have storage boxes, but items tend to mysteriously move to temporary boxes, to drawers, to my nightstand - it is normal to have wire spools on your nightstand, isn't it? - my "working box" and to several parallel universes, no doubt.

When I started embroidery, I kept my newly acquired stash in the envelopes and/or boxes it arrived in because I had no idea yet what to put where and how.
Luckily the Royal School of Needlework sends their kits in big boxes with compartments!

So after I had finished my first kit, the box was empty and ready to get filled up with all my stash.
I really hadn't expected that the floss lot I had bought would take up that much space, I just managed to fit it in and this is about three or four layers high.
For now, there's not much left that there wasn't space for, and once I will have finished my second kit, another box will be waiting to get filled up.

Can someone help me do the same with my wires now? ;-)

Lavender

Of course jewelry had been on my list since I tried my hand at hand embroidery for the first time. I was aware that it would be different from working on a larger project because the space is really limited, but when I got my first bezels, I found it was even more difficult to come up with a design of my own that fit the space.

I began with a small silk shading flower, but too many petals meant too much width.
Next I started a little fern, but I'm not sure about that one yet, it's a bit boring and I won't be able to fit in much more, so it's still in the stars if it's going to be finished.

Then I stumbled upon a picture of lavender. Long stalks with loads of small blossoms sounded perfect and there were at least three kinds of purple in my floss stash (which I only organized today asking myself why on Earth I thought I needed that floss lot, but I sure have a lot of green now - ferns for everyone! ;-)).

I really had fun and got wild with French knots (which I already love) and bullion knots (which I don't love that much yet, but think that's a matter of practice), added some brown specks here and there, and then it just needed a bit of a color pop on this neutral background - a bee, what else?

I think it's cute for a first own little design and am definitely looking forward to play some more.

Silk shading flower

Silk shading, thread painting, needle painting - these are all different names for one embroidery technique.
I had seen it more than once before and thought it was really beautiful, but it had never been on my want list.
When I decided I really wanted to give embroidery a try, it was because I had totally been hooked by gorgeous goldwork which is probably not too surprising for a jewelry maker.
I had no high expectations about my own skills, so it took me very long to jump into the cold water, but I finally ordered my favorite kit by Becky Hogg - the little fox (if you haven't seen the blog post, it's here). It sure challenged me and even more my hands, but much to my own surprise it didn't put me off embroidering.
Actually I had just ordered the kit and already knew I would treat myself to the self-paced online course "Introduction to Goldwork" offered by the Royal School of Needlework eventually and bookmarked it, but when I was ready to purchase it, it was not available due to supply shortage and I had to pick another course.
There are 16 courses and I really had a hard time choosing one that I felt confident enough about. In the end I chose silk shading, which I wasn't confident about at all, because I liked the design best (although I was aware I might non like the look of mine that much).

Next I got myself a free-hand embroidery stand and some bias band to bind my hoop.
When the RSN parcel arrived, however, I was very reluctant about starting the kit. I had watched the first video a few times already and had even started to do some sampling for practice. The kit looked so much more intidimating to me, though. What had I been thinking?

It took me two months to complete this project. Seven weeks were dedicated to three petals and the leaf - I needed a lot of long breaks - and in the last week I had become more comfortable with the process and finished the last five petals, the stem and center.

I learned a few things during it, not all of them embroidery technique related.

1. While Gundel is usually fine to watch from afar, der Dekan is determined to get to the embroidery floss and he would gladly try to grab the thread I'm working with at the moment and pull (don't ask how I know). Thankfully he calmed down eventually and after discussing his wishes and mine whenever I started a session ("No! No! You can't have it, Dekan. Don't even think about ... Dekan, go away, I'm holding a needle! Stop that! You don't want to go the vet, do you?"), he usually was distracted by a snack and then went to wreak havoc elsewhere or take a nap.

2. I have absolutely no mind for directions and although I absolutely understood the stitch and color diagrams in theory, I had problems to translate that to my stitching. To be honest, I think it has a lot to do with my being so used to working without a plan (except in bead looming) and follow my guts rather than my head. Which wasn't bad for most of it, but I didn't like my second petal much, and to save the look I made the last petal bigger than designed before then ripping out the unloved petal after all.
Actually I'm fine with that, but it's also typical for me - drawing outside the lines ;-)

3. I like finishing embroidery, but I still haven't put up my fox and I'm completely clueless how to frame the flower.

4. I'm as hard on my embroidery needles as on my beading needles.

5. "You're gonna need a bigger boat ... erm, embroidery hoop." Actually I'm going to need more hoop sizes, I think, but I'm trying not to go nuts now and buy supplies like crazy, as tempting as that thought is, also ...

5.1. ... I hate Brexit because so many of the supplies are much more readily available in the UK, but custom fees and taxes add up quite quickly. Yes, it is a very selfish reason.

6. Bullion knots and I are not good friends yet, but I love French knots, both seeing and stitching them, in fact that was one of the first stitches I consciously noticed when seeing embroidery pieces.

6. I really loved the self-paced course. I watched the videos in full more than once and sometimes I just went to a spot to remind me of something. Kate Barlow is a wonderful tutor who explains and shows everything very clearly.
I often say I'm not good with tutorials as I'm too impatient and that's true, so it was a bit of a surprise for me that I pulled this through and I also credit Kate's tutoring for that.

There is probably more, but you have suffered enough already, so I'm finally going to show you my flower and not point out the flaws because I'm really happy with it!

Labradorite and amethyst

About two months ago I blogged about my "jewelry burnout" and what I did instead. So far things haven't changed much. I am struggling my way through my second embroidery kit, but only touched beads once during the last month to loom a custom bracelet.

Are there sounds you like in crafting? I love the tiny pop in bead looming when pushing the beads into the space between the warps (not just the sound, but also the way it feels) and I love the sound of a needle and thread going through bead embroidery foundation - so much that I started missing them more than actually making jewelry. They have something deeply satisfying to me.
I know, it's really weird, isn't it?
However, that is what finally did the trick and made me grab a labradorite cabochon from my stash without any plan whatsoever. Just glueing the cab onto the foundation felt like a good start, even if der Dekan tried to steal the cap of the glue tube once again.

I picked some bead colors for the bezel that I thought would work well with the colors of the labradorite, a grey shimmering kind of golden, metallic silver, and - maybe a bit surprising - a kind of green-golden metallic.
After doing the bezel, which was the easy part, I was completely lost.
I would have wanted to make some unusual, playful, but all I could think of was quite classic and, to me, not very imaginative and a bit boring.
In the end, I just succumbed to the idea of a classic bead embroidery pendant. I still have some lovely frosted amethyst in my stash from years ago which actually was another color working beautifully with the stone, but this edging looked a little bland to me, so I added another layer to it with tiny silver "rays".

This pendant developed over a few days which is pretty slow for me, but the heat and a hurting thumb joint didn't help and there were quite a few breaks.
So I'm still not sure if it has been enough to give me a good kick in the butt, so I will finally be tackling my list of ideas again (without forgetting about my embroidery which came to a stop due to heat and a mistake which means there will have to be some ripping out, argh). We will see, I guess ;-)

The first nest

There are some things you can't learn early enough and among those is how to choose a comfortable spot for hanging out - literally in this case.

Melisande and Schwabhild, the new arrivals in the farmyard, were lucky to have a mother and aunts who are experienced in that sort of thing and found the perfect nests for the girls from where they don't just have a great view, but in which they can also swing!
You can tell from their wide eyes that there is truly a lot to see there.
So many new experiences for a pair of little chicks 💕

10 on the 10th - Summer memories

This is not something I usually do because I'm just not very good at it, but when I read that Marsha from Marsha in the Middle chose the topic "Special Summer Memories" for "10 on the 10th", I figured I would be able to do a bit of nostalgia.

Sooo, let's try this. There won't be any particular order, I'll just put the memories down as they come to mind.

1. The first one coming to mind is the birthday of my best friend when we were kids. Our birthdays are about a week apart, mine end of June, hers beginning of July. She used to have around ten or so kids at her birthday parties and one of our favorite games was "vampire" which was basically a variation of hide and seek, but the "victims" were put into time out for a certain period of time in a small storage room on the first floor. That wasn't as bad as it may sound because they had a little basket on a string which they let down through the window to have it filled with cherries from the garden by those who hadn't been caught yet (they were so good!). We were very proud of that game idea ;-)

2. This one also has to do with birthdays and fruit - my birthday and strawberries. When I was a kid, there were a few times (probably not as many as I seem to remember because that's how those things go) when my grandfather would go buy strawberries with me and my grandmother made a strawberry pie with them for my birthday.
This year a family member brought me some strawberry pie for my birthday and the memory popped up once again.

3. While we are at birthday memories, here's another one. I have been a fan of Jane Goodall ever since I got one of her books as a gift when I was about 12. She's absolutely amazing and of course her portrait is on my fan wall.
Some years ago, there was an evening with her in Munich which is about 125 miles from here. A friend, knowing how much I admire her, but also that it would have been hard for me to organize this by myself, turned up with tickets and an overnight room reservation.
It was truly an experience to remember, hearing Jane Goodall talk, then spending the rest of the evening in the small self-service bar at the hotel talking to some other guests and driving home the next day not via "Autobahn", but through little towns and villages, stopping here and there like at a field full of poppies.

4. There's nothing like a sponteanous field trip, don't you think?
There is one I remember especially well. A friend called me very early in the morning asking if I wanted to come on a quick trip to the source of the small river Lauter to hang our feet into the water. It was a very hot August that year, the night had been very humid, and the idea sounded great.
The Lauter source is a small spring surrounded by nature. You walk there from the church, through the woods, birds singing. There are only a few houses and a historical inn and except for a couple taking a quick peek, we were all alone, talking, laughing, enjoying the water.
Then all hell broke loose, just rain luckily, no thunderstorm. We are both no runners, but it really didn't make a difference because we were soaked through to the skin within seconds, anyway. We laughed all the way back to the car (and luckily my friend had extra tees in the car which was better than nothing).

5. This memory is as stereotypical as it can be. When I was 13, I was invited to stay with an aunt (actually she was probably more some kind of distant cousin) for a few weeks during summer vacation. As luck would have it, a cousin of mine (we had the same great-grandparents on one side) lived in the same little town. He was my age and so were his friends. My aunt said I could use her old bike, and from then on, we were out there all day and came home in the evening very hungry and full of stories what we had done. As the only girl I even got an honorary nickname and for a while we even sent one another letters after the vacations were over.
Had we been looking for a body instead of mushrooms, it would very much have been "Stand By Me".

No pictures exist of our adventures, so my needle felt/embroidery mushroom will have to do.

6. My last trip in 2011 was to Cambridge in the UK. I loved it. I loved the town, the museums, the atmosphere, I didn't even mind the other tourists. The weather was a perfect mix of sun and rain. In the afternoon we just sat in the lounge for a while and had a cup of tea while reading.
The special memory has to do with breakfast, though. We tourists love our breakfast and this one had so many choices, we could have eaten all day. What was the biggest fun about it, however, was that they didn't have an ordinary toaster back then, but what I called - for lack of a better word - a "toaster tunnel". You put your toast on the conveyor belt which ran it through the tunnel, and at the end - voilà, nice browned toast. I was actually amazed how well it worked and could have just made toast all day. I know, I'm such a child.
The hotel got a complete makeover in 2018, though, so that huge breakfast room has changed a lot, it seems, and the toast tunnel is gone :-(
Now I wish I had taken a picture of it.

7. Although I'm not a summer person, I have to admit that sitting outside somewhere quiet in a warm summer night can be wonderful. Being next to a body of water is not the worst thing if it's hot. For me, that was the only reason to join the ex and family members for night fishing although I am a vegetarian and don't fish (not that chances of catching fish were very high where we went, anyway).
A comfy chair, a cooler bag full of goodies, and a book for the evening when there was still light - and once it got dark, just listening to the rustling in the bushes and trees behind us (joking that it was bears when it was probably hedgehogs and other small animals), the waves in front of us and the muffled curses of the men when there was another missed bite, and relaxing until it was time to get ourselves home again.

Sorry, we never took pictures, so you have to make do with one of my handmade fishes ;-)

8. July 27, 2018 was the day of the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century, and a lot of people were really excited to see that one, including my friend and I.
We drove around for a while to look for a good spot and finally ended up on the "Aasrücken" (literally "carrion back", I have no idea why the vantage point near our local mountain, the Hohenstaufen, has that name) in a farmer's almost harvested field (he was still working on it at the far end) with hundreds of other people. Some had huge telescopes and loads of photo equipment, others set up rich picknicks for the whole family. Although it got rather cool eventually, my friend and I were among the last few who sat it out until the very end and didn't regret it. It was rather magical.
Again, no pictures, but here's a time lapse video (not from our area, though).



9. Fleamarkets are not restricted to summer, I know, but this memory is about a very special June fleamarket. One reason it was special was that my American friend was there for a visit. We had met her via Steiff and no matter which country, a fleamarket had always been a favorite activity of us. This particular one was a city fleamarket that only took place once a year and it spread out all over city center.
We usually did one round and then sat down somewhere for a drink and some food, then did another round.
I was always slow at fleamarkets and usually relied on the "hunting master" to find the good stuff, but this time it was my friend who called me to tell me she had found a Barbie case with contents and she thought it was old.
One glance at the case and the two dolls in wedding outfits and I asked for the price without even knowing what else was in it. The price was so incredible that I almost fell over. All I could say "Sold, just let me get to the bank." as I had very little money on me. I was very glad the bank was nearby and the lady put the case under the table because others had shown visible interest when I had looked at it.
Only when we took our usual break, I allowed myself to take a closer look. While I had been looking through children's books, my friend had found a real little treasure for me. I still feel as excited now when I look at those finds in my collection, for example this sweet pink and black outfit called "Atelierfest".

10. This isn't really just one special memory, but more of a mix of all the summers my best friend and I hung out in the woods and had "adventures" - I think making them up ourselves doesn't take away from us having a lot of fun being out there with the bikes, picking wild flowers, pretending to be in a jungle, solving cases or re-enacting our favorite books.
I'm not saying these were better times in general, but we had some great times which I'm looking back on fondly.

If you really made it down to here, all I can say is thank you and you definitely deserve to get yourself a stiff drink and/or some chocolate now ;-)
My summer memories may not have been what you expected, but I sure had fun remembering all of them.
Happy Summer everyone!

I made an octopus!

You may want to say that you already know that I made an octopus ... or two or five or ten ... after all I had shown a collage of them in 2019 in this long post. Of course I didn't stop making them after this, but the wire had been on the back burner for a while now because new techniques had to be explored which also happened to be easier on my hands than the wire most of the time.

That doesn't mean the wire has stopped calling me, though, so when I was asked to make a custom octopus pendant, I couldn't say no.
I love that none of them comes out the same. Tentacles with one or two wires, with beads or without beads, the head with a cab or without, and best of all - I never know myself what they will look like in the end. Making the tentacles go wild is really the most fun about this. It may seem they are random, but they are not.
The first one starts out randomly, but the next ones are based on it, and often I go back to fiddling on the first again, too.
I like to think the octopus head is telling me what to do ;-)

For this one, a cab was required and the choice was a lovely moss agate cab.
I used moss agate on a custom order before, only in that case the stone was large and dark green and not just the size requirements for the pendant were very specific, I also had to use exactly 23 moss agate beads in the two-wired tentacles which weren't supposed to spread out, all of which made the job a bit of a puzzle.

This time, I was allowed to go wild as long as I added enough moss agate beads to the tentacles and achieved a certain length, and I enjoyed it immensely.
So this is the latest addition to my little octopus family (and I'm already hatching new ideas in my head ;-)).

Beaded butterfly bowler

I mentioned this in my last blog post. If you follow me anywhere, you have already seen a picture of this hat, but I said I wanted to take some detail pictures.

I have been fascinated by bowlers since I was a child. Although I did watch Laurel and Hardy, I think I really noticed them when I first saw The Avengers. I loved Emma Peel's incredible outfits, but loved Mr. Steed's classy and elegant suits, complemented by his bowlers, brollies, and shoes, just as much.

In 1999, on a visit to California, we went to a huge fleamarket. It's amazing how just thinking about it brings back memories of individual stands and the layout and even individual pieces (I still miss the fantastic tie-dye shirt I bought there and wore until it fell apart).
I can even see the table before my inner eye on which I saw the vintage bowler. It was love at first sight, I just had to have it and didn't even try to haggle. A few stands down, a seller admired it and asked me where I got it. I was so proud of it.
Granted, I haven't worn it often because it's a bit hard with my long hair, my hats tend to ride up in the back where the hair is caught between collars and the hat rims, but it makes me smile just to look at it. Shortly afterwards I got myself a ladies' bowler at an antique shop. I have pictures of both hats here if you want to have a look.

Beaded hat rims hadn't been new to me for a while, there were friends who made them and who also made bead loomed hatbands and beaded embellishments for hats, but although it had always been on my list, I was always too lazy to get a hat and work out a pattern (my bowler is taboo for such shenanigans ;-)).
Then one fine day I spontaneously ordered a bowler off eBay that was a good price, not top quality at the price of course, but also no fancy dress party hat, was quite big (planning to put the hair underneath, but haven't quite worked it out yet, also because I'm growing my bangs out which have been at a very awkward length for months) and had no lining which was perfect for me as I wanted to put embellishments on it although at the time I wasn't sure yet what.

I started on the bowler just as spontaneously (two years after I bought it, lol), putting my seed bead boxes next to me and (quite) randomly choosing from my colors to make a very colorful, very happy looking rim. I wish I could say how much fun it was doing that, but to be honest, as much as I love the result, it pretty much bored me to tears. I doubt it's something I want to repeat anytime soon.
Next I took a break in order to decide what to put on the hat. That's when I made the butterfly pendant with my friend Michelle's fabric design and immediately I thought of the bowler. Make it even happier and more colorful and put butterflies on it!

My first plan was to bead embroider butterflies and make them fly around the hat in a spiral, but then I decided to bead the wings seperately - although I know that wing patterns are different on the front and back, and this would mean, patterns are the same front and back - because I wanted them to look light while for the pendant I had wanted something sturdier. Then I would bead the bodies, sew on the wings, stiffen them in different positions, but not too much, and sew the butterflies to the hat.
As you can see, there's no spiral. I just couldn't stop myself and kept making new patterns, a few after real butterflies, but most with fantasy patterns. I seem to have a problem with empty space (which is confirmed by my walls)? There was even a short moment I thought of adding flowers, but it was really just a moment.

After working on it a few weeks and making 13 butterflies in very different colors, I told myself it was enough. Yes, even if there are two spaces that to me scream for more wings, but enough is enough.
Another long post, sorry, but it was a long project.
Now where are the detail pictures?
I don't have any. I tried it in the garden, in the light tent, inside in daylight, but the variety of beads I used either puts a glare on one wing or one wing is blurry. I gave up for now, but if I ever manage, I'll make a page for it.

What I do have are some pictures in the garden, so you can at least see more than one side.