Month: April 2014

A Brief List of Every Project

Open projects

  • London Underground Needlepoint
  • Sexology: current and historical reading
  • Love letters
  • Current fan fic story
  • Essay on writing fan fic
  • Baby clothes quilts
  • Making folk jewelry
  • Assembling photo albums

Running activities

  • Beta reading
  • Craft inspiration scrapbooks
  • Pleasure reading
  • Kids’ crafts
  • Pinterest boards
  • All additional web surfing

Projected projects

  • Surface embroidery
  • 12 Dancing Princesses embroidery
  • Tin work

Completed: one crochet throw. The complete is dwarfed by the current. Why do I get myself into these situations? The silliest part: the expectations are entirely my own. And they are high, my friend.

Grow Your Own Infrastructure Geeks

Brian Hayes’ “Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape” is a god among books. It is the purest most wonderful eye candy.

I hadn’t picked it up in years, but today my daughter, 4, started asking about utility poles on the way home from the park. So when we got home I pulled out “Infrastructure” and away we went. The writing is so fun and lively, and the kids loved relating what we were reading about to what we’d just seen. They had to assure me multiple times that they weren’t bored! It made my heart soar.
“Infrastructure” is out of print: a true tragedy.

The Needlewoman

Diego Velazquez, The Needlewoman
Diego Velazquez, The Needlewoman

I’ve always liked the term “needlewoman.” I fancy myself one, and I like to imagine all my female ancestors before me being ones, too. I considered naming this blog The Needlewoman, so I did a quick Google search to see if anyone else had a Needlewoman blog or website. That’s how I discovered this painting, which I can’t recall having seen before on any of my visits to the National Gallery. My husband claims she looks like me, but I’m not too sure about that. I certainly admire her cleavage, but probably our greatest similarity is that quiet attentiveness to the cloth in front of us. This painting definitely captures the essence of being a needlewoman.