I have been having trouble sleeping lately, a side-effect of this strange quarantine life. My usual strategies haven’t had much success in ameliorating the problem, but my failure has had one benefit: more time to craft. At night, long after the kids are in bed, my husband, who is also having trouble sleeping, works on his car project; I work on my embroidery projects. In some ways, those dark, quiet hours are quite lovely – a nice way to self-care, per millennial parlance. But, of course, I can feel my sleep deficit growing by the day. Ah well, we take the good with the bad.

What have I been making? A little bit of everything.

I’ve been trying a few different motifs for embroidery hoops.

Flowers:

Symbols of protection:

I have also gone back to making jewelry, using embroidery, beading, and upcycled bits of old costume jewelry. I started with a bit of a rainbow theme (one of my favourite things):

Then branched out into some other designs:

I have also started to sell some of my pieces on Instagram, which has been both gratifying and nerve-wracking. I always worry about whether my pieces will live up to expectations, but on the other hand, there is nothing cooler than knowing someone else is wearing or looking at something I made. I’ve had some requests on IG to write about how I make some of my jewelry pieces, so I’ll be working on a post for next week.

Graphic Summer

I decided to pull out one of my sadly neglected, non-elastic waisted skirts and give it a whirl this past weekend when the weather warmed up to glorious degrees. It felt nice even if it was only for a quick half hour walk around our neighbourhood. Maybe I should start calling it a “promenade” like in the old days. This skirt is certainly promenade-ready, even if it’s just a little old cotton number. I love the exuberant print, which makes the whole outfit look like I tried harder than, in fact, I did.

Once More, With Feeling

For anyone who was suddenly missing this sweatshirt, hah – here it is again. You’re welcome … or should I say, apologies? But, but, but! It’s so easy to throw over everything and anything, especially when in doubt. (This skirt is fun but difficult to style, I find, so the doubt is there.) The black is, well, black and does what black does, which is go with everything. The graphic part adds some contrast – does it clash with the stripes? does it go? who knows? – which at this point in time feels like “advanced style” to my quarantine-exhausted brain.

Jump To It

The last time I wore this jumpsuit was in Mexico and … actually, let’s not go there, it’s too depressing right now. I’m hoping to make some fun, new memories this summer with it even if that involves simply some neighbourhood bird-watching with the kids. [This weekend I learned the difference between loons and mallards … or at least I learned that there IS a difference and that people on the internet are quite passionate about it.] Linen is one of my favourite fabrics at the moment – and linen cut in loose, breezy shapes is linen at its best – so I am slowly embracing it, wrinkles and all, for my everyday life.

One of the nice side-effects of my painting hobby is that I can redecorate my walls whenever the mood strikes. Put it differently, I am my own best customer. Every so often, I want to change up my wall art which serves as a good outlet for my painting studio production. Recently, I decided it was time to switch out the art above our bed:

Some of you may remember that this quartet of paintings was made by yours truly last fall. I liked them at the time, but more recently felt like I wanted something different. Luckily, my husband had no objections (to the old art or my ideas for the new). I wanted something more colourful, inspired by my Major Arcana mixed media work. To save materials, I decided to re-use the same canvas boards from before, and paint over the original pictures.

The first piece I made was inspired by The Magician:

Here it is with the mat:

After a couple of false starts, I added the Hermit to the line-up:

That blue blob on the bottom right hides the original logo on the image of the bookcases – it used to be a Moncler ad, of all things.

Here it is with the mat:

I then took a detour to the Minor Arcana – to the Three of Cups – because I was really drawn to these figures:

I kinda prefer this piece without a mat, but I had to keep it consistent with the others so:

Adding a mat did give me the opportunity to do something a little cheeky. Check out that hand – it ended up being my favourite detail.

I struggled a bit to find the right images to create the last piece, but eventually Strength came together quite nicely – it might be my favourite:

And, of course, with the mat:

I love these as a set and the vibe they add to the room now:

Next week, I’ll post about some of my other crafting endeavours. If you want to share some of your projects in the meantime, I would love to hear about them.