Found some thread that sparked joy in th darkest corner of the yarn store today. So now I can make some green and peach patches too. And that green is a pretty perfect shade for lichen.

Spring? What's that??

Mushroom patch done. Turned out pretty good, but there are some adjustments to be made on the next one. Trickier shape than the leaves.

Idk. I just like taking pictures of crochet being blocked...

A couple new additions to my perfume collection.

Mushroom-shaped patch being blocked.

According to my Facebook memories it's been four years now since I started working on my first real embroidery project. Four years since I got irretrievably hooked on embroidery! So in honor of that, here is a repost of the project that started it all.

Side note, if you look close you can literally see the learning process in this piece. I think so at least. I can tell which of the big flowers was the first one stitched, and which was the last, simply by the quality of the satin stitch. And I can tell which bullion knots are less practiced. Etc.

Why have fairy godmothers when you can have fairy yarnmothers?

Was just gifted this pile of weird and wonderful yarn. The dark brown is a standard size ball of crochet yarn. The small yellow ball is a softer cotton yarn, but also fairly standard. The big orange skeins are like really thin crochet yarn or something. Will be a drag to wind but it's a thickness and quality of yarn that I don't already have, which is nice. The big cones are nice and shiny thin 2 ply yarn with some texture and thickness variation. Must be many hundreds of meters on each cone! Excited to make some crochet ferns with the greenish shade! Otherwise no idea what I'm gonna do with it all, but the more odd yarn I have the less restricted I feel. And the colors are really nice too, very 70s. Love those warm and usually more muted yellow/orange/green/brown shades! I often feel like I can't find the shades I want in yarn stores now, so gotta love vintage yarn.

Three leaf-shaped patches! You can see where with the second one I made (top) I got a bit of hubris because the first one (right) went so well. Freehanding this sort of stuff while watching something interesting is not recommended lol. So it's a bit wonky. Third one (left) turned out pretty nice though. Now working on a mushroom shaped one.

Made a knee patch for a pair of jeans. I think that's where it'll end up anyway. Freehanded.

Bullion stitch project done!

Finished my bullion stitch project tonight. Will take photos of the front of it tomorrow, but just wanted to show how I did the back. I don't generally cover the back, because I like being able to look at the chaos that is the reverse side of a project. This time I had really limited fabric in the back though so couldn't finish it as I usually would. Hence I got creative. First I did running stitch around the edge, then I crocheted trough this running stitch and continued for a couple of rows around the whole thing. Was rather fiddly, but I think it turned out pretty neat.

An ace pride mushroom in honor of International Asexuality Day. Happy Ace Day to my fellow aces!

As I was working on this I also spent some time reflecting. I've been out as ace for over 15 years now, known I was ace for over 20 years, and in that time I have definitely seen a change towards more acceptance and awareness of asexuality. 20 years ago it was pretty much a miracle that I stumbled onto a description of asexuality on a web forum. It was a very invisible and seldom talked about sexuality. In many of the years since it felt like all we ever got was invalidation an ridicule.

Even in more recent years a simple mention of asexuality by an lgbtq+ organisation or advocate would usually result in a storm of laugh reacts and general heckling. Plus the usual statement that aces don't belong in the lgbtq+ community... Don't see that as often now. So that's something to be happy about at least. It's slow but it is happening. Looking back I'm also really happy about the language that has developed for talking about asexuality. When I came out there wasn't as much nuance and it was hard to even explain to people what asexuality was, because I just didn't have the words to describe stuff like split attraction, or the differences between attraction and libido, etc...

allo~ newbie question for ya, if u don't mind: on your amatonormativity project with all those fishies, how do you get them so thicc? Is the core a different material, a base, or did you really wrap a pound of thread on each side of the canvas?

P.S. the way you mix techniques (crochet & embroidery & beading etc) is very cool https://www.tumblr.com/theenbyroiderer/742927691538448384/just-a-reminder-from-the-archives-in-honor-of-aro?source=share

No problem, always happy to answer questions! And thank you! Those thicc fishies are made by first filling the outline with bullion stitch, then satin stitching over that.

A cluster of pointy little white mushrooms. And another not so pointy and ringed variation that I'll also be making a cluster of.

Noped on the rainbow in the light of day. Going to go via brown back to green instead.

To complete or not to complete the rainbow that is the question.

I think I'll have to consider the shades of purple and blue I have in the light of day tomorrow. Not quite sure all of them are muted and/or warm enough. Or that I really want to go there.

Also, fuck my camera for being so terrible at taking pics of blues and purples. All of them are warmer than they look in this pic, while the pinks pictured are cooler irl.