Suchet on a broad bean

There are two images in my head when I think of Hercule Poirot - David Suchet and this.

The explanation is that in episode 1 of series 4 of my favorite British game show "Taskmaster" the prize task at the start of the show was for the comedians "to bring in the most interesting autograph on the most interesting vegetable" and this is the one that won - "Suchet on a broad bean. Bang. That's what this competition is all about."
I have no idea why those words are so funny to me, but there you are. It's probably the fact such a distinguished actor would even do this.

Okay, let's get to David Suchet as Hercule Poirot.
Suchet was Poirot for almost 25 years, in 70 episodes from January 1989 to June 2013. And when I say "was" instead of "played", that's exactly what it felt like.
He studied him, made a list of "Poirot character notes", and worked on the role until he became the ultimate Poirot in the eyes of many devoted fans (me obviously included).

If you have missed it before, I'm not a fan of Christie's style and I'm not even a fan of all the adaptations with Suchet.
There are some I find painfully slow - my brother and I always argue about 45 or 90 minute episodes for crime shows in general and in Poirot's case I often prefer the shorter ones ... BUT I will also slog through the slowest ones for Suchet and the amazing sets.
As I love Art Deco, I didn't mind that they got stuck in the 30s for most of the episodes even if it wasn't true to the novel or story. I can absolutely entertain myself not paying any attention to the case - having seen all episodes multiple times, I don't really need to - and look at buildings, cars, furniture or decoration instead.

In the stories I have read I always found Poirot a tad annoying, but while Suchet's Poirot is definitely full of himself, I can forgive him much more easily because he has that gentleness and I love the little smile, how he walks and talks (in English, I hate the German dubbing).

It has been almost exactly two years since I made my last portrait and I've had this pattern lined up even longer than that, but finally I can welcome David Suchet/Hercule Poirot to my fan wall (you can find all of my bead loomed portraits here).

So it begins ... Lego Art WIP

Ten days ago, I told you about my Lego "collection" whose pieces so far all have been gifts (so far because I found out about a minor, but really dumb mistake which required immediate retail therapy, so I bought Lego for myself for the first time). 

In that post, I mentioned my Lego Art set of "The Beatles" and how I've had it around for a few years because I couldn't even decide which Beatle to make. Well, on the day the post went live, I chose George because I just liked his picture best.

What even is Lego Art?
According to Wikipedia which has a load of quotes for articles on the topic, the theme was introduced in 2020 (which I think was also the year my friend gave me my set in order to make self-isolating easier, but being used to working on Lego projects together with him, I didn't see the appeal at the time).
The product line started with four mosaics, one of them "The Beatles", and didn't use 3D bricks, but 2D 1x1 studs. Later items also featured bigger tiles.

The sets depict iconic personalities or art, for example Warhol's Marilyn Monroe or Hokusai's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.
During our Crafternoon - a Zoom meeting of bloggers coming together to chat and craft - I started working on the first square.
There are nine squares and fifteen different colors of studs and also tiles for the "frame".
The squares get attached to each other to form the whole picture.

Now I had to make another decision about how to work on the squares. Should I do one color after the other which means I would have to concentrate on counting or should I lay out all the colors I need for a square and do it spot by spot either horizontally or vertically?

As most of the first square was just black and dark grey, I went for the counting. I did the grey first, then filled up the gaps with black and did the few colors in the end.
I don't know yet if that will be a good idea once there are more colors on a square. If I had enough empty bead cups, I could set them all up like beads for beading or bead looming. Or I could use a bead tray if I had one, but that's not how I bead. We'll see.

Usually, when I started something like this, I kept going until I had finished. My pal and I spent hours chatting, laughing, and bricking, but these days I simply can't sit for that long anymore.
Ponder and later Gundel loved to help out.

Just checking if you left some of the bricks in
the shipping box.

Let me sort this out for you, Mom,
before I lose any interest at all forever.

During Crafternoon, I found out that der Dekan does NOT make a good Lego helper. The studs were too tempting and I'm too old to crawl around on the floor and look for little colored dots everywhere. Not only did he go for the ones I had taken out of the bags - very few at a time because I had expected that - but he also tried to rip out the studs on the plate, both with claws and teeth!
Possibly it would have helped to have my pal around because der Dekan is strictly a family guy meaning he usually retreats to the top of the wardrobe if non-family comes around.
My goal was to make one square a day, at least on the weekend. Yeah, that didn't happen. I finished the first one during Crafternoon on a Saturday and the next one on the Thursday after that.

Well, and now it's Tuesday and this is as far as I have come until Sunday afternoon (of course I'll have to take the one square off again because I have to finish the whole row so I can attach it).
And der Dekan helped after all. We found a way. The next time we didn't. Then we did again, but in the end he fell off the table because he had rolled around in the open lid of the box too wildly. We'll keep working on it.

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.

The cat

Happy New Year!
This is not a bad day for showing something fresh off the hoop.

The other day I was hanging out on my bed like so often - it's big and the perfect space for the cats and me, tools and supply boxes, books and remote controls.
Der Dekan is one clingy cat, so I usually have some kind of blanket on my legs, thin or thick, summer or winter, so the master can choose to sleep on my legs or on my feet or under the blanket snuggled up against my legs (which can be rather nice if it's cold because he's a veritable little hot-water bottle, just filled with kibbles instead of water, if it's too hot, he luckily stays next to me instead).
In this case, he was on the blanket sleeping like only he can, meaning his weight mysteriously tripled from one second to the next, so I was completely paralyzed. Yes, I know he's a spoilt brat, but I don't make the rules, I just work here.
I have never been a girl scout, but my motto for such situations is "Be prepared" which means that my embroidery box was next to me. I hadn't planned anything in particular, but seeing his cute little face, I grabbed my smallest embroidery hoop, one of my water-soluble pens, and whipped up a quick sketch, as well as I could, I'm not an artist.

That didn't mean I planned to make my kitty look like der Dekan, I'm definitely not there yet with my embroidery skills and don't know if I ever will be, but that doesn't really matter as I just enjoy the process.
Also I'm completely overwhelmed by all the colors cats have even if they are "just" black or tabby cats. Sometimes I find myself staring at my cats in wonder trying to determine which colors I'm seeing at the moment, depending on the light. Der Dekan mostly doesn't mind me poking each color I can see in his fur, going "boop, boop, boop" (if you think that is silly, be glad you don't know more).
I still don't know what base color he is exactly. Sometimes he looks brown, sometimes it's more of a grey.

One of the things I like to do when I start on something without a clear plan is to pick a bunch of colors from what I have around at that moment.
That doesn't mean my whole stash, but what I find in my current project box which is just a nice way to speak of the box I throw beads into because I'm too lazy to put them back right away. To justify that, I take it as a challenge to create with what I have.
Now my embroidery box is organized, but only because I don't have enough stash yet to start a second box, and that means I have a limited amount of colors, more brown than grey which settled the color of my cat.

Whenever der Dekan was sleeping on me again, I took a good look at him for inspiration and went to work on the piece on and off over a week.
As usual I see the flaws and shortcuts very clearly, but this is a journey of which I don't know where it's going to take me to, and at the moment I still embrace my flaws and allow myself shortcuts consciously. My experience is that if I want too much too quickly and fail with that, it can lead to WIPs (works in process) turning into forever UFOs (unfinished objects) - that's my definition - and I didn't want this one to become one of those.
Der Dekan, however, wants you to know that he has a much cuter nose, and I have to agree on that.

What really annoyed me that one spot of the yellow pen stubbornly refused to come out. The last time I used it, I had covered it completely and there was no need to wash it out, but not this time.
The only idea I could come up with was to add a bit of sparkle to the background which I had wanted to do anyway, only not in that particular spot. Don't tell anyone ;-)

I had ordered a few round frames, wooden ones - I used one for my "Guardian of the Woods" - and vintage brass ones. They have a little hole and hook at the bottom which confused me at first, but of course they are meant to be hung up in a row, with family pictures for example. That took me back in time 45 years, to my violin teacher's living room. I can't remember every detail of it, but I remember it feeling cozy and comfortable - even if I had never practiced enough - and a bit old-fashioned and plushy, with elegant wallpaper and miniature portraits. I always wondered if they were ancestors of hers, but never dared to ask.

I don't know if I will make something eventually that will work with the tabby for such a row of portraits.
For now I will have to think of something to make that hole a bit less noticeable. One idea is to paint the linen golden in that spot or glue on a bead or to put a hook in - the original one or a smaller one - and hang a charm on it, not that I would know at the moment what kind of charm could work. What do you think?

Nevermore - again

That may make no sense at first, but with the backstory it will, believe me.
It's actually rather simple.
Eight years ago I bead loomed an Edgar Allan Poe portrait pendant after my own design and made a small polymer clay raven for it. I called the pendant "Nevermore" and was immensely proud of how my raven had turned out.

I always wanted to make another pendant, but my polymer clay days were over. So I looked for raven charms online every, now, and then, but never found what I wanted or needed.
This year, however, I stumbled upon the cutest lampwork beads by Christiane Imkamp, tiny crows sitting on a pumpkin or a cactus. I asked Christiane if I could have just crows and much to my delight she said those had already been on her list. A few days later she had listed them in her shop.
Of course to me they were not crows, but ravens, and they looked just perfect.

After der Dekan moved in, I decided to give my bead loom a break because I didn't trust the little beast around open bead cups. I still don't and if you had just seen him tear down my clamp rod and curtain from one window and knock over a storage box to get to my lacrosse ball, not for a massage, but to roll it around the wooden floor - great noise in the middle of the night - you would well understand why.
The little master "has spring" as I call it which makes him even crazier than he usually is. And it being night, he can't even watch birds now.

I had underestimated him completely, I have to admit, and now it has been two years that none of my looms has been touched, except for putting them back in their spots on the Stairs to Nowhere after der Dekan has knocked one down once again (no worries, my beloved JaLa is locked away safely).
But once my ravens had arrived, I couldn't ignore the itch in my fingers any longer. So I gave dem Dekan - and of course Gundel - something to eat because that is the best way to get him out of the room and then locked myself in with my loom.

Can you believe that I was nervous at first? It showed in my mistakes on the first few increases and decreases when I went through the wrong warp gap, but I quickly got back into the flow of counting and looming.
Then the pendant was finished and I could get to re-weaving each thread back into the loomwork. It was just as meditative as ever.
At first you have a whole bunch of threads (72 in this case, to be exact) getting in one another's way, and then there are fewer and fewer, the piece looks cleaner and cleaner, so satisfying ... it's hard to explain, but you probably have your own things that make you feel this way.

Finally he was in my hand, Mister Edgar Allan Poe, and it felt so good.
All he needed now was his little Nevermore - again.

He came from outer space to save the human race

You know what's best about living alone?
I can do whatever I want. Whenever I want. Okay, of course there are always limitations. I try not to disturb my neighbors with loud music or the TV. I don't run up and down the stairs in the middle of the night. I don't fuss around in my kitchen at 3 am (which is something I have done before when I was much younger) or turn on the vacuum cleaner at all hours of the day (which is something my former neighbor has done before when I was much younger).
I can listen to what I want, though. I can watch what I like. I can plaster my walls with animal pictures, painted, drawn or photographed. I can keep my beloved Stairs to Nowhere and decorate them with hats. I can even keep my little artificial Christmas tree standing as long as I want to (because I still want to take pictures of my handmade baubles).

This post is not about single life, however. It's about my fan wall, something I know would have been frowned upon in the old days of not being single.
On my page I said that it's a gut decision who will end up on the wall, just as much as I let my gut decide what I like and what I don't like.
Guess what ... I'm not a Harry Potter fan and I would never watch Game of Thrones (these are just random examples that came to my mind first). I like (some) Bollywood movies and the music, and the next moment I may listen to Queen, The Beatles, or Mozart. My comic hero is not Batman or Superman, but still Donald Duck. I like some fashion on others, but can't be bothered to look beyond my t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers myself.
I don't like someone or something just because it's popular, but it also doesn't mean I dislike something just because it's popular - although I do tend to be stubborn at first about things that get pushed into my face, by people, commercials, or trailers. I don't have to see a movie just because "everyone" loves it. I am not a fan of most action movies and even though I enjoy weird movies, there are weird movies I think are, well, too weird for me, and that's okay.
I listen to others' opinions and maybe I let them convince me and maybe not.
I could go on and on like that, but I think you got the idea ;-)

A few years ago I happened to stumble upon The Nomi Song on TV, a documentary about countertenor Klaus Nomi. I do love documentaries of all kinds and recorded the re-run because I had missed part of it the first time. Watching it I remembered having seen him once on German TV and the song he performed was actually quite familiar to me even though I can't say why.
I got interested and started browsing a little more.
Nomi was Avantgarde, New Wave, unusual and outlandish and not everyone's cup of tea, but when a friend suggested  him as one of the portraits, my gut told me to go with it.
And now he's #25 on my wall :-)

So much universe, and so little time

I was early for the morning train and headed into the small book and newspaper store inside the train station. There was a time when this was a regular routine for me to check out new books and pick up something for the commute. Now there's a different store there. It's bigger, has more magazines, beverages, snacks and you can actually walk without knocking each other over, but it has lost its charm for me and I hardly ever go there.
Back to that one time about 20 years ago, though. I browsed through the books and came across one called Witches Abroad. I didn't know why, but Discworld sounded vaguely familiar to me, and I definitely knew I  had seen the books before, but never read one of them. I liked the cover and got the book.
On the train I couldn't keep from giggling from page one. I didn't know it yet, but I had just become a Terry Pratchett fan, and I was more than ready to infect others, too. I remember coming to work, pulling one of my co-workers aside and showing him the first page to read.

My ex didn't take reading advice from me often (to be fair, I refused quite a few of his suggestions as well), but he did when it came to Pterry's books. When he was going through my (not so small) library, he often ended up on the Discworld once again at last.
We tried to decide which characters we loved most and what was going to be the next book. At first I bought German pocket books as there were quite a few available already, but when I already owned all novels that were published, it became harder and harder to wait for new ones until I finally starting pre-ordering the hardbacks in English.
And let's not forget that three of my cats are named after Discworld characters and who knows, maybe they will not be the last ones who are.

After hearing that Sir Terry had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I started worrying very selfishly about what that meant for a book series I had grown so fond of.
I don't want to speak about the feelings I had when I heard of his death last year, but about the feelings when I started reading his last Discworld novel The Shepherd's Crown. A part of me was pulling on its chain as always when a new book from the series had arrived. "Read it, you know you want to." Another part, however, made me put the book aside and staring at it whenever I walked by it. This would be it and I didn't want it to be it. I wanted it to go on and it couldn't.
I seriously can't remember a book ever making me feel like this before. Finally I decided that I just had to read it. Not doing it wouldn't change anything, doing it wouldn't change anything. How naive of me. I don't want to spoil it for you, but tears were flowing in abundance.
I have no idea if I will ever be able to read it a second time or even more often like I did with the other books.

I don't want to end this post on a sad note. I'm glad I got to discover this magic world. I'm glad I can visit it anytime and meet my favorite characters there.
Although my first book wasn't the first in the series, I kind of closed the circle as the witches appear in both Witches Abroad and The Shepherd's Crown.
I'm glad I went into the book store that day.

P.S. The title of this post is of course a Terry Pratchett quote.
P.P.S. I could still bite myself for getting sick when I could have had the chance to see him live.
P.P.P.S. Was there any doubt that he had to go on my fan wall?

What a mouse and a bead loomed portrait have to do with each other

It all started with a mouse, a "Pieps" mouse to be exact. It was a Saturday at the big fleamarket on the university's parking lots many years ago where we saw "Pieps" first.

Of course we were familiar with Steiff animals although we both (my ex and I) hadn't had any when we had been children. If you live only 35 miles from where they come, however, you are bound to know about them. Well, not to mention that they are world famous of course. We had never really thought about vintage Steiff, though, and what they looked like.
We fell in love with "Pieps". "Pieps" mice had been made for twenty years, in the colors grey and white. I don't remember if we paid too much - we probably did - but we couldn't resist. The seller told us a little about vintage Steiffs and that people collected them. I guess it must have hit us like a lightning, but at the same fleamarket we also got a rabbit and a guinea pig and learned about mohair and dralon.
When we came home, we didn't know that a door had been opened, a door to more fleamarkets, auctions, new friends, visits to the Steiff museum (still the old one back then), and of course Steiff animals.
We never forgot that "Pieps" started it all. Whenever we saw one we liked, it came home with us which is why I doubt the one in the picture is the ONE.
To this day they are sitting on giraffe necks, in teddy laps, they are riding on foxes and are guarded by cats and dogs.

We didn't have internet then. We had printed price guides and we did everything to get our hands on old Steiff catalogs for more information, too. We were excited to learn about all the things that Steiff made beside the animals, kites, toy aeroplanes, wooden toys, building blocks, and of course there was the stuff with Steiff animals printed on them, from egg cups to card games, from waxed cloth to plastic dishes.
Just today I put away the little Christmas tree that is part of my hallway decorations every year.

The other day I watched a documentary about Steiff. That's when I decided that Margarete Steiff who started the company in the late 19th century had to go on my fan wall of bead loomed portraits.
At the moment she looks a little out of place among all the actresses and actors there, with her earnest look which is not unusual for photos in those times. As you can imagine, there were not many pictures of her to choose from. Don't let it fool you, she was an amazing woman.
You will find a short biography of Margarete Steiff on my fan wall page.

Tackle that stash - Nevermore

It has been years that I worked in polymer clay. The other day I made an attempt, but either was the clay too old or the toaster oven too weird, well, let's say it was pathetic, strange and eww. That's a story for a different post, though.

Today is about a portrait, my fondness for "shaped" bead loomed pendants, and a polymer clay charm.
The title may have given it away already or have you recognized him right away?

It's Edgar Allan Poe of course, accompanied by a polymer clay raven sitting on a black crystal.

The pendant is not in my shop yet.