Decorating

I have been painting our living room. Our living room has gone unpainted for a while because Partner and I have this ongoing battle about painting things. Partner says we must paint the entire house WHITE like a MAD WHITE CUBE and if I show him dusky blue or grey he looks appalled and disgusted, and it all becomes difficult. I say, other people have colour in their houses why can’t we, let us experiment with subtle coffee colours. Then Partner says, no, WHITE! WHITE EVERYWHERE! And I say, clearly we are not suited, and actually you would probably be much better off with someone else, perhaps I will leave or alternatively you could leave, and Partner says, I cannot leave because I would have to make a lot of trips on the Number One bus with all my books in boxes, so we had better just find a way to compromise and live together. And I say, magnolia? And Partner says, no! WHITE!

Paintings by me

Paintings from etsy and I am reasonably sure there is nothing dodgy on that bookshelf

Anyway, my friend has now moved into a mansion, and after I saw it I decided Partner and I must make a pretense at living like adults, and not e.g. have a hole in the ceiling which is partly covered by a botch job involving handbag interfacing. So I gave in and painted the living room white, and actually I think it looks fine. It makes the room next to it look worse, but, I will move on to that one at some point, although I may do the bedroom next. I am embroidering this cushion to put in it,

I am working up to engaging with the French Knots

and I think I may cut off the back panel and back it with something different, then use the back panel to embroider something else. I have some skull transfers from Sublime Stitching, so I thought that might look nice. Skulls and roses.

I am a brave little soldier

I saw this furry little chap in Cambridge the other day. Is there anything sadder than a dog tied up outside a shop? He was being very brave and patient, and waiting. I bet he was left there for, ooh, a good five minutes. How do they get their faces to look so poignant? It is probably a skill I would do well to master.

(Dye job tomorrow. Me = nervous!).

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

I have been ill this weekend (nothing exciting) and haven't felt like doing anything demanding. So I whipped out my embroidery that mum bought me for Christmas.

I haven't done the back very well. But it's a cushion! No-one will see!

This is going to be a cushion cover. It has this flower pattern at all four corners. You do it in cross stitch and french knots, and it has the little crosses already printed so it is, and I mean this in a good way, satisfyingly mindless and lots of fun. You don't have to think, and that was what I wanted, sitting huddled miserably on the sofa under my rainbow blanket.

In a way you could see anything where you follow a pattern/ guidelines as uncreative. Knitting pattern, sewing pattern, recipe, anything (and, just to get on my hobby horse one more time, this is basically the argument Germaine Greer uses in The Female Eunuch to show that all the things women do are rubbish and they should be doing something more exciting. Please don't make me dig the book out and quote properly).

A rook, basically just hanging out near the jobcentre

In another way, the presence of a structure doesn't mean the loss of creativity: it means creativity has something to use as a jumping off point. I see your argument Germaine, and I raise you Jacques Derrida's concept of différance. Besides, are we going to tell someone staging Tristan und Isolde that it's just telling people where to stand and picking a few frocks, and there's no creativity involved because someone else had already written it?

So I plough proudly on with my cushion cover (and thank you to the person who left me a comment about Sublime Stitching a while ago - I had not looked at their designs for ages and I like them very much. I am considering buying the sugar skulls one but I have not the first idea what I would embroider it onto. We don't have embroidered anything in this house. Pillowcases? A tablecloth? Answers on a postcard).

'Twas on a starry night

Two sparkly bullets I dodged recently:

1/ Did not buy sparkly gold hotpants from TopShop even though I was drawn to them like a moth with questionable taste to an artificial-fibre flame.

I'm slightly ashamed to say that I have got shoes which would go with these

Although I could probably get into these hotpants with a wing, a prayer, and a very small lunch (look, I'm not suggesting it would be pretty, only that it would be physically possible), where would I wear them? And how much would I have to drink before I felt quite convinced that sparkly hotpants had been a good sartorial choice? And what would that lead to? And how old is too old for sparkly hotpants? (for all of you who are thinking, 17 or indeed 5 is too old for sparkly hotpants, I would like you to know that I once wore a tutu – a proper tulle tutu – to work when I was a senior manager (i.e. at the stage I should have known better). It looked good. I wore it with a fitted tank top because I think if you’re going to wear a tutu you need to keep your top half streamlined).

2/ Embroidered a star on a certain something (which I shall hopefully have finished to show you soon) without screwing it up.

Best to do it on fabric where you can see the threads, that's my Top Embroidery Tip

I have always been nervous of trying embroidery because I thought it would be hard, but, actually, it is not (I mean, obviously the star is not complicated, but, you know, I conquered my fear of embroidery floss and everything). I always like that really seventies kind of satin-stitch embroidery, so if it turns out I am able to go near a bit of floss without hyperventilating I may experiment with combining it with patchwork. We shall see.

I promise I won’t ever embroider hotpants. Well, I won’t embroider hotpants and then wear them out of the house.