It’s finally starting to look like my favorite season!! And I’m thrilled to death! Mostly because this is the season that makes the most sense for all the spooky weird things I’ve been gleefully making, all year long. My Halloween decorating has already started, and now I have new bats, to go with all the other bats I have, as well as a new skull or two. And I have so many, many things to offer you all in the gift shop! Staring eyes, and strange jewelry, and interesting paintings and prints galore! Plus I’ll be making new things all the time, like this fun teapot I just finished. It was such a cutie, I think I need to make a few more in different shapes and colors, just for the fun of it. Autumn gives me unlimited inspiration, and I’m more than happy to share it all with you…
I hope you’re doing well, you’re enjoying cooler weather and that the Pumpkin Spice flows freely wherever you are…
Hello, my lovelies! It’s been a busy time here at the House of Maus, and I’ve been stitching my little fingers off. But it’s been so rewarding! I’ve made large things, little things, itty bitty things, and loads and loads of Guardian Eyes. And this fancy, bold fellow…
These are his pretties and not yours,nope, nope…
I plan to be making more like him very soon, all a touch different, but all based on Canuck the Crow and his bold and sassy ways.
Also, I’m working on a couple of little Mystery boxes to offer soon for the holiday season. What’s in a Mystery box, I hear you ask? Well, sparkly things. A sculpture or two. Tiny paintings. Tiny embroideries. A knitted something or other. All in a handpainted box for you to treasure! I should have a couple out in the shop soon for you to salivate over, once I’m done making the happy innards…
And this week? I’ll be carving pumpkins and decorating the porch and getting ready for another Samhain. I’ve been waiting for Halloween so very, very long, and I’m so happy that it’s finally here! And while I’ll still be making things, I’ll also be taking it easy and enjoying the autumn before it disappears. I hope you all get to do the same!! And thank you, thank you so very much for all of your kindness and support…
This week has a lot of anniversaries. Heartbreaking ones, good ones, strange ones. We’ve got a candle burning at my house today for September 11. And it’s also the first anniversary of my leaving my job at the museum and expanding my humble little business. i have to say, it’s been astounding how kind and supportive people have been about my work. And I’m so happy to have gotten a chance to make a lot of it, as well as experimenting with lots of skills that were in deep storage all this time…things like beadwork, and sculpting, and combining it with embroidery and other fiber arts…
I have some really fun ideas for Halloween, because of course I do. I have been working on offering a couple of patterns in a pretty little kit for sale, in a fun little box. It’s humble, because it’s very much a new thing for me, and I’m excited to see how it all goes. And I have a few larger pieces I’m planning on making, and there’s yarn to spin, and things to knit up. How would I have gotten all this done if I still had my day job? The one thing I’ve learned in spades from this experience is that when I’ve time, I’m a complete menace to my stash of art supplies. I’m just glad you’ve all come with me for this increasingly fun and weird journey!!
Ah, summer, and the living is slightly spooky around the edges…Who else craves Halloween in the hottest part of summer? I suspect it’s a lot of you!
This last month I’ve been gratifyingly busy with all my happy stitchery! I went a little viral on a couple of Facebook groups, and requests have been flooding in for my Guardian Eyes, so I’ve been stabbing away, making as many as my little stabby hands can. Even with all that fun goings-on, I did manage to finish a few other pieces as well, and they’ve all found new homes…
(I will always, always love making Baba Yaga huts. )
Down the road, I’d like to release embroidery kits, so that people can have some fun with my designs. I’ve been drawing up patterns when I’m not stitching away on other things, and it’s great fun. I’d like to stuff a little box full of floss and a pattern, a hoop and some predrawn fabric, some directions and maybe a little surprise. I do love adding little surprises to things I send out. I’m also working on some Fall and Halloween stationary to put in the Redbubble shop, because Autumn is wonderful and so is sending out sweet cards to friends. This part of summer is the part where I’m really starting to crave October, so very much…
At any rate, fall is shaping up to be busy and interesting, with a few extra treats in the shop. And I’ve got some fun requests to play with. But in between all of this, I’m still trying out different kinds of Guardian Eyes, in different colors, shapes and mediums, as well as other embroideries that are demanding my attention. I have a boatload of Delicate Swears I want to stitch up, as well as offended mice, curious bunnies and sardonic ghosts. And if you’d like something special, leave me a note in the comments, or email me, or say hello on Facebook. (I’ve got kind of a longish list now, though, so commissions will definitely take some time.)
Stay well out there, be careful, and thank you all, so very much for your kind, kind love of my art. You all bring me a lot of happiness…
It all started years ago, at a local surplus store. They had a wide variety of things for sale, and it was always a mix of the practical, the interesting and the completely insane. I loved going in and seeing what I could stumble on for art projects, and you never really knew what would be available. And one day…they had eyes. Not just a few, but huge bins full of shiny glass taxidermy eyes of all colors, shapes and sizes! Some taxidermy business had decided to dump off it’s whole collection of them, and artists like me scooped them up by the handfuls and carted away as much as we could carry. I used them in polymer clay dolls, in pendants, in strange jars with eyes in the lids, on rocks that I mailed off to friends for no reason at all. I gave some to friends to play with. They were a bonanza, a complete wonderland of possibility…
it took years for me to whittle that pile of glass eyes down. But I finally did, And I was down to just a tiny handful, augmented by a few pretty glass and acrylic human-style eyes given to me by a friend, as a thank you for the handful of glass animal eyes I gave her. And as I was poking around in my embroidery stash, I found my small bag of leftover eyes, and thought to myself, “Hey, wouldnt’ this be really pretty surrounded by needlework? ” So I started to play around with the concept, with felt and leftover bits of old leather and beads and floss. And it turned out…pretty damn great!
When you look at my art, sometimes it looks back at you…
So I needed to make more! And that meant I had to dig around online, since those magical bins at the surplus store were long gone, now filled with wooden beads or auto parts or Baby Yoda heads. So I dug. And like most things on Teh Interwebs, the quality and pricing were all over the map. I learned I could get handfuls of cheap eyes, or a pair of antique German porcelain eyes for eyewatering amounts of cash. With some assiduous hunting, I found some lovely dolls eyes in various sizes, just right for my projects. I also had to refresh my memory on things like peyote beading, and assesed my embarrassingly large stash of beads. And I started to stitch…
I called them Guardian Eyes, since I felt like I wanted them to be (mostly) benevolent watchers over a space, with possibly a good side-eye to energies and presences that were unwanted. You know how a stern look from a parent or older loved one could make you stop in your tracks? That’s pretty much the idea…only magical, with an extra dose of love and sparkling thread and beautiful beadwork…
And it’s been such a gratifying thing, to see how much people seem to appreciate what I’m trying for and eagerly giving them homes, where they can look out over their new domains and keep a gentle watch. I plan to keep them coming, along with all the other interesting things I like making. And now that the Pandemic is starting to slow a little, maybe sometime soon I can go back to that surplus store and see what else those magical bins are holding, now that all those wonderful eyes have gone…
It’s funny, really. I taught myself some embroidery basics out of a library book when I was a tween, ages ago, and only really started up again a little over a year ago. I consider myself still to be a raw, rank amateur. But with lots of practice and a mindset that says, “Well, lets experiment with a thing and see if it actually works” it’s been a wonderful journey so far, And recently other people have been asking me for advice. Me?! I mean, I’m still new myself. I make mistakes all the time. And yet, those mistakes have been schooling me in The Art of Stubborn Problem Solving…
Okay, so maybe I’m not a rank amateur anymore…
So after all those mistakes, I have a handful of helpful embroidery tips I can share which are actually helpful to other people. How about that?
First off: Sourcing supplies. I started getting my supplies in thrift stores before the Pandemic, and they”re still not bad places to stumble on treasure troves of floss and sewing bits and bobs, or even fabric if you have a good eye and a little luck. One of my favorite finds was a scrap of eggplant-colored silk, which made an astoundingly good backing for various pieces. Of course you can hit online sources for a lot of your starting up supplies, and online marketplaces can be useful if you keep your wits about you, but it can be nice to save a few bucks and run across colors and tools you never would have bought otherwise. Estate sales can be goldmines for embroidery and beadwork as well, and a good haul can last you for years. Obviously if you’re going to thrift stores and estate sales be mindful, wash your hands, wear a mask. These days I do most of my shopping as online as possible due to the Pandemic.
What kind of supplies? I’m glad you asked…
Fabric: I’m a bit lucky here; since I don’t really crossstitch, I dont’ have to rely on Aida cloth for my stitching. I prefer tighter fabric as a background, and neutral or dark colors. Usually a good cotton will work just fine, and I really like linen–a little of it can go a long way for me, though it can be expensive. Fat quarters for quilting can be your best friend, but if someone you know has leftovers from making clothing or something it’s worth having a gawk at the scraps.
Floss: I’m mostly a DMC girl, though I’ve been learning over time that sewing threads of all kinds can be adapted to hand embroidery with a little patience and experimentation. I prefer the sewing metallics to the embroidery ones, since they’re smaller and a bit easier to use. Keep an eye out for spools of machine embroidery thread on sale; they can be used by hand if you double or triple them up, and they’re often durable and shiny. The cheaper flosses seem to work just fine too, but for darker colors like reds and blues and purples you want to wash a quick sample on a swatch of fabric to see if they bleed, and how much. The nice thing about DMC is I’ve had zero problems with bleeds, and they also ship extra needles when you order floss packets from their company, which is always a delight. There’s silk floss out in the market of various qualities, and again, watch carefully for bleeds when your fabric is washed. Also? Floss conditioner can be super useful, especially if, like me, you often run into snags and knots from your floss while you’re working.
Hoops: I like looking everywhere for hoops to work with. Wooden ones are my favorite for framing, since I can paint them or wrap them with ribbon. Plastic hoops are everywhere, and they’re cheap, but they’re ugly and I find them a little frustrating. Often you’ll see “wooden” hoops that are actually rubber that squeeze into a frame, and they’re surprisingly good for projects, so snap them up when you see them. Be careful online; while there’s a huge upswing in what’s available since embroidery has become more popular, sometimes the quality can be disappointing. Often a good hoop can be a little spendier, but here quality can make or break your mounted piece. You can see I’ve got a weakness for the small frames, and they’re all over the map for quality, but if you keep an eye out for the things you like soon you’ll have a feel for the hoops that work best for you.
Patterns: My best recommendation is to start hunting down Facebook groups and Instagram creators that you like that offer patterns. it’s way more fun to have a pattern from somebody whose work you already really like, and to give your money to small creators that work hard to give you something special.
But what if you don’t like patterns? What if you want to make up something cool of your own? Well then, you will need some of my very bestest friends when it comes to designing an embroidery pattern: A small light box, copy paper, the humble graphite pencil, and a handful of water-soluble pens, which will often come free with a wide assortment of online embroidery supplies. Copy paper is useful because it’s so thin; and you can work out your proportions and design without worrying too much about the paper. once you have something you like, you can trace it onto your fabric with the light box and the pens, and if you don’t have a light box you can easily use a window and a bit of tape instead.
So, now that you have your happy compilation of stuff, a design you want to stitch and some free time, what other things are good to keep in mind? Some of the things I’ve found useful for my projects are short floss lengths so they don’t tangle as much, sharp needles, a pincushion you really enjoy, and some catnip to distract any overly-helpful cats you may happen to have around. A tasty beverage is always welcome, and maybe a podcast or two to keep you company. (I really like “On a cold Dark Night” for a lot of my stitching time…)
Once you’re finished, there’s the fun of washing and mounting your new lovely thing. Washing veeeeeeerry gently in cool water and a touch of gentle soap will extend the life of your piece, so it’s a good habit to get into. Ironing it afterward can be helpful for creases, but watch the heat. When it goes back into your hoop, tighten it up as much as you can to take out any wobbles. I like to do a running stitch around the backside of my pieces, tighten it up, adjust it until I like the way it looks, then stitch a felt backing to the back to keep things neat. (It’s also a nice place to put a signature for your piece.) A ribbon for the top, and voila! Ready for hanging…
I know this list is hopelessly plain, and there’s loads of things I haven’t covered, but I think this a decent overview for someone starting out. I hope it’s helpful, and feel free to ask questions in the comment section. Happy stabbing, my dears!!
It’s March. Again. Just like last year, except as different as it’s possible for anything to be…
Last March was a completely different world from the one I live in now. It was when all those whispered concerns about a new virus flowing through our communities became a fact; a fact you couldn’t ignore or get away from, no matter how hard some people tried. We were all sizing up how disruptive this new situation was going to be, how dangerous Covid would be for us, and what we could do to protect ourselves. How bad could it be? It’ll just be a couple of weeks of weirdness, and then everything will be okay again, right? *Insert horrified laughter from the future right here.*
There were a lot of things I thought were possible, and I tried to plan for whatever came our way here at home. I stocked up on food, learned to stitch masks, washed everything I could think of washing. I stayed away from people as best I could. I figured if I was careful, I could keep plugging away at my job and stay as safe as I could until everything blew over and some kind of normality could come back. But there were a few things that happened that weren’t on my 2020 Bingo card. Civil unrest and a bad family emergency changed my strategy drastically, and for about 6 months so far I’m…here, at home. It was just the safest thing I could do to help my small family unit get to better days. I’m grateful I get the opportunity to do this, to be home and make whatever art I can and to help my husband regain his health. He’s recovering well, which makes me happy beyond belief, but there’s still a bit of a road to walk through still. As things get safer, then I can think about what comes next for us. It was and remains a strange feeling, not to haul myself up out of bed and hustle off to work, full of people and tasks and noise.
If it weren’t for the still-terrifying crisis we’re still in…this life is wonderful. I wake up early, have breakfast with Matt and start setting up in the corner of the dining room I’ve occupied most of the winter. It’s sunny there, with lots of plants, and it’s a soothing place to be when it’s cold and blustery outside. There’s embroideries to work on; commissions or just odd things out of my head, strange little cloth and thread experiments. There’s painting up in my “office”, and up in the guest room/studio I keep my acrylic painting projects. I take breaks when I need to, I make tea, I eat lunch, I go back to stabbing for spinning or knitting or saying, “Hey, those beads would look really cool if I added them to the mushroom embroidery!” People have been so great about their love for the embroideries, and for yarns, paintings, and and for whatever my strange little head comes up with. I want to keep doing this for a while more. I want to keep giving people something to make them smile. I want to keep imagining things and stitching them down on cloth so they can’t get away. I want to keep doing that strange alchemy from fluffy fleece to warm, knitted object. I want to hold up a watercolor and yell, “Ya wanna stick this on your fridge, don’tcha?” And I plan to keep exploring new ways to keep the goodness coming. I’ve always produced artwork and projects while I was working full time, but I am just honestly astounded at the difference being at home makes for my output. Not just having more time to work on things, but because I’m not as physically and mentally tired, my brain can tackle things that before would have made me groan and go, “Nope, not doing that, at all,” It’s more of a surprise than it should be, I think.
There’s an old saying, “Even the worst storm washes up some wood on the beach.” Before the Pandemic started, there were so many things I hadn’t tried artistically, or had neglected for years. Now I feel like I have so much more to share with you all, weird and funny visions and stories and how-to’s. I’ll tackle as many of them as I can this year, as we inch closer to a safer life for everybody. I don’t know what the future will look like, but for now it’ll be nice to keep making interesting things until then…
And thank you, kind friends, for being such supportive people. You’ve made a strange, lonely time much more bearable, and I hope I’ve done that for you too…
When new people come to my page and look over the shop and especially the gallery, they will see cute flowers, spooky cobwebs, knitted cosyness, and lots and lots of yarn. But they also see…the swearings. What I like to call, “The Delicate Swears”. They’re often tiny, but not always; sometimes they fill a large frame with flowers and sweetness and a big fat “What the Fuck” in the center. They can be a little jarring if you’re not expecting them. I’ve gotten a little criticism here and there about “Do you really have to make these vulgar things, Madam?” My answer, is, “Oh yes. I most certainly do. I will make twice as many of them now, and you can see yourself out. Asshole…”
It all started innocently enough. When the Pandemic started, I had just begun playing around with embroidery. I was admiring so many beautiful things in frames that other people had done. Whimsical things, picture perfect things, shimmering translucent things…and saucy, saucy things. I knew in the abstract that embroidery had come a very long way indeed, but I was delighted by all of it. And then I tried my hand at a few myself. Small things. Tiny frames full of little flowers, with something extra expressive in the middle. Large, swooping lines of beautiful vines, with “This is Bullshit” or “Fuck This Shit” in the middle. Roses, lavender, clover, tansy, all with something scathing in there somewhere. And my friends kept asking for more, and more…
Why is it so satisfying to have a good, sweary embroidery? Why is it so satisfying to make them? Because it is, it really is. Every time I make something with a lot of cussedness in it, I’m delighted with myself. And honestly, it’s cathartic as hell to stab something ear-searing into some linen. It’s been such a long, hard year, and people are so very, very, burned out, frustrated and just over all of it. And yet, it still goes, chugging along. The Pandemic, the unrest, the weather, trying to have a normal life in the face of the most un-normal year we’ve had in our lifetimes. It’s sometimes nice to have a small piece of something pretty that agrees with your frustration, that validates it. That little circle with “Goddammit All Anyway” is now your very bestest friend.
Also…we’re home more. So very, very, very much more. We’ve been looking at the walls of wherever we’re living for a very long time indeed. Here in The House of Maus, we’re both high risk for bad Covid outcomes, so we’ve been living a lockdown kind of life since last March. There’s been bouts of decorating mayhem here and there, to have something new to see every day. I remember when I was a museum guard, that feeling when somebody brought in a new piece of art to display. It was like your birthday; something new to see and appreciate! Something you haven’t already been staring at for months and months! And loads of people have wanted something new to see, something pretty and crassly cheerful. I know I have.
And I think the best part is, people want something made for them by somebody they like. Something that the megasites online can’t give them, something that isn’t a prefab piece of plastic that gets the heave-ho once it stops being fun anymore. It’s more comforting to know that maybe somebody was thinking of you, personally, when they were stabbing in that “Try Not To Murder Anyone Today”embroidery. That embroidery knows you. How you’re feeling. What you need to hear to get through the day. How much swearing you secretly do during a Zoom meeting. That embroidery gets you.
It’s really hard for me to keep the swears in the shop, they tend to fly out the door pretty quickly. But I feel like I need to keep up the stabbing. We all still have a long, hard road ahead of us, and only a pocketful of really good swears will get us out of our personal funks for a while. I promise, I will do my part…
My dear friends, I gotta say, I’m grateful beyond words that I have so many requests for embroidered fun! Quite a few people have gone into the shop lately and messaged me with things like, ‘Hey, where are all those delicate swears you keep making? I don’t see any!” That’s because they seem to fly out the door as soon as I can make them! (If you *are* craving something you’ve seen me doing and don’t see it in the shop anymore, drop me a line! I’m happy to make something, just for you!)
Honestly, I need all of those flying F’s I can make. And apparently others do too.
It’s a comfort to me, besides all the swearing and stabbing. I am the luckiest duck that I can stay home right now and do this, After saying that, though, I will admit that there it’s still a bit spooky for me. My proper “working life” was so regimented, and I’m still adapting to this new life, even months later. I have a fair amount of anxiety anyway, so sailing in these uncharted waters is such a departure from the life of a uniformed Guardian of Culture. I still have dreams about going back to work at the museum. I miss the art, and my coworkers. But the payoffs are better than I expected. I’m up to my eyebrows in commissions, Redbubble sends me a check every now and then, and my sweet fellow’s health improves every day. I have a lot to be grateful for.
And all of you sweet people are part of this strange new life. I’m grateful beyond words for you. Because of you I get to experiment, and play with new art forms. And every day I learn a little bit more, and can bring that knowledge with me into some new idea that probably never would have happened otherwise.
Acorns? Acorns! Alas, this pretty thing already has a home. But I’m definitely making more!
Anyway, thank you. Thank you so much for your love, your anticipation of whatever strange idea I come up with, and your company. It’s always better to travel an unfamiliar road with friends…
So. These last few weeks I find my dear friends have a lot more swearing to do than the usual. There’s a lot of burn out, a lot of stress and fatigue and worry about an uncertain future. Personally I’ve been channeling a lot of my worries and stress through stabbing and swearing at things. Sometimes with pretty, pretty flowers, to soften the blow of all the cussing. and yet, the cussing remains…
Flying Fucks, catching the sweet breezes…
A tiny little thing, about the size of a dollar coin…
The demand has been huge, and gratifying. I’m now booked up for a while, happily stitching my unladylike profanities into whatever I can. I’ve even bought more supplies to keep the obscenity-train chugging right along.
That said, there are other things I’ve made too. There was definitely swearing involved for both these projects, but they weren’t nearly as overtly involved as the other pieces. A tiny teacup, a tiny glowing fairy. Some drawings that are going into the shop later. They’re also gratifying, in their own way…
A tiny teacup! With flowers!
A tiny fairy, in with my teacup collection.
These days, I think it’s important to vent. To get things out. To have some tiny, delicate thing that agrees with you about how you feel. Something pretty, and crass, and expressive in a way only the needle arts can express. I’m just grateful people want to share their cusses with me, and delight in my stabbing them into linen.
The next few months will be even more stressful for everybody. I suspect I’m going to have a lot of stitch-swearing to work on…
