I'm just going to throw a few things together and hope that they will help demonstrate some things I learned and others I figured out on my own. Maybe we can get together over Thanksgiving break and make something together, which is probably the better way to learn anything. :)
So first, I find something that inspires me. Some idea that I might copy as a gift for someone. Here's a few that I have stumbled across and either pretty much copied altogether or simplified to my own capabilities.
Heart ornaments from an Etsy page
So these little red and white heart ornaments are pretty simple. I can tell she had to have cut out 3 hearts, 2 in red and 1 in white slightly smaller than the red ones. First she probably stitched the ribbon loop onto what will be the inside of one of the red hearts. Then she layered the hearts together: plain red heart, then red heart with ribbon loop, and last the white heart. Holding all of that together with one stick pin, she did the red straight stitch you can see tie it all together.
Here's a link to a video demonstrating the straight stitch, also known as a running stitch, which you probably already know it but we'll humor each other. :) I think she does a pretty job demonstrating the straight stitch, plus a good tie-off technique. ALSO, here's a blog entry that details a variety of line stitches, most of which I haven't practiced myself, so I am glad I am creating this little compilation of tips for you! Click here for more basic embroidery line stitches...
So that gets a basic concept down. Next you'll start thinking about layered ideas, different colors, and use the straight stitch for effect. You can use it to secure the layers of felt together or use it as a freehand design. Here are a few images I have found that demonstrate fun use of the simple straight stitch.
So those are some straight stitch ideas. Let's move on to what I call a loop stitch, which can add more interest, disguise, texture, etc. I use it a lot when I am layering some felt pieces and want to "close" the layers, especially if I stuffed it with polyfil. Some people use what is called a buttonhole or blanket stitch. I realize now what I have been doing is the blanket stitch but without staying in the "loop," or some seem to call it a "whip" stitch. Here's a blog entry by someone showing a variety of uses and forms of the buttonhole stitch. And here's a youtube video demonstrating the blanket stitch.
Here's some images of felt projects that use the blanket stitch in a variety of ways, but usually as an edging between at least two layers of felt.
As a contrasting color edging, this looks like that whip stitch...
As an invisible edging... (also, that white embroidery is just straight/running stitches)
Blanket stitch on the outside edge to enclose the whole little project since it is stuffed with polyfil. Also uses the whip stitch around the eyes.
The next thing to show is french knots! I love them and once I got the hang of them I started using them in everything 'cause they are relatively easy and add some interest and texture. Here's a youtube video demonstrating how to do french knots. I'm pretty sure this is the video I first watched. The needle doesn't have to be as she described, but I guess depending on other needs it might be better. I've made knots with three loops instead of just the two that she describes, which means the french knot will be a little bigger. Practice on something with number of loops to see the effect. Plus, the thicker the thread, the bigger the knot will appear.
Also, this woman has a number of VERY well done demonstration videos that I haven't look through entirely, but she seems to be the most articulate and better filmed than any others. plenty of other videos and stitches to learn! http://www.youtube.com/user/MaryCorbet
Her videos can also be watched from her blog, and she's got them organized: How-to Videos by Mary Corbet
Examples of the french knot used in some of the felt freehand embroidery I have liked and tried copying...
French knots used to create floral embroidery
French knots in a circle
Yellow french knots
Just little dots of interest
French knots to make hearts
French knots in the big flowers to hold down the little blue circles down and french knots for the tiny flowers at the bottom. All other stitches are straight line stitches strategically patterned.
So this is a huge collection of ideas, images, links, videos...I hope they helped!
This is what Spotify can do. I searched for songs with "sunset" in the title and I was given a list to browse, listen, and found We Are Trees this way. Their song "Sunrise, Sunset" captured me with its first "ohh-oh-oh" and held me through to the last beat. They even have a mesmerizing video (in my opinion) on YouTube for the song. View it here:
We Are Trees have two EPs available for download through their bandcamp.com website: Boyfriend (July 2010) and Girlfriend (March 2011). Each digital album has four or five songs for your listening pleasure.
These are songs I imagine I'd appreciate most while walking in a park, bicycling through neighborhoods, or driving with the windows down on an early spring day in the country. Plenty of trees. Bound to lift a smile on your face with the free-spirited lilt of the instrumentation. Virginia Beach's own James Nee has a voice that provides the just-right optimism his lyrics already contain, he just releases it into every sung lyric. The fullness of the drums and percussion carries the music with that insistent hopefulness of happy-go-lucky songs. I can't stay seated; These are motivating rhythms. The opening guitar in "You" on Girlfriend is thoughtful and comforting. The melodies are happy, wistful, wishful, but the lyrics address relationship troubles on the horizon in this 2-minute song: "How am I supposed to try to pretend that everything's all right". This might be my second favorite song by them other than "Sunrise, Sunset" on Boyfriend, which was my first impression and introduction to the their magic. Girlfriend's last song has more electric power and push, more energy to send you off into your day. View this lovely video here:
We Are Trees - I Don't Believe In Love from Illusive Media on Vimeo.
So a late Saturday night browsing in Spotify turned into a magical discovery of uplifting music. What a sweet gift.
I find it just a little mind-boggling how a book read twice during high school was one of the contributing texts that convinced me to not pursue drugs, curious as I might have been, and yet it continues to be banned and removed from public and school libraries. When I read it I did not know that it was actually a work of fiction or imaginatively compiled and edited diary entries of a psychologist's patient instead of the claimed anonymous diary of a troubled teen. Go Ask Alice was a quick read that both sparked curiosity in certain drugs but also solidified my own grounded sense of self-control and self-preservation. I wanted to be freer than I felt, but the stories told by those who went too far with drugs never presented them as being free and in control of their lives, but instead wracked with the turmoil caused by heroin, cocaine, acid, ecstasy, and meth.
I remember reading Go Ask Alice sometime in eighth or ninth grade for the first time. I read it again my senior year because I had a friend (on whom I had a crush on) who progressed from one drug to another during the fall semester until one day he came to school so high on acid that he allegedly had danced like a chicken on the discipline dean's desk. His charisma had perked my interest, and if I had been in the right place at the wrong time I would have tried anything with him just to be around him. And I realized this, so I set my feet back on the ground by rereading Go Ask Alice. And when I learned he went to rehab during the winter break, I sent my book by way of a friend to him. I don't recall if he ever said he got it, or if my friend succeeded in getting it to him. I never did manage to run with any friends who did hard drugs, but I knew some of my classmates did. I've never seen the made-for-TV movie based on the book.
I believe I read Foxfire by Joyce Carol Oates during my freshman year, or the summer before sophomore year. Foxfire was another novel that had a real weight of honesty and reality drawn into the plot. I don't remember specifics from the novel so much anymore because in 1996 a film was made from the novel, leaving out some of the lengthy plot and adding a few more twists. When I think of Foxfire I recall mostly scenes from the film. A mix-match group of girls bonded together by the same cause, who help and protect each other when various problems rise up in each one's lives. The hardest of them all is Goldie and how her drug addiction spirals into a mess of problems and disappointment.
There's any number of songs that heighten and raise up the creativity-inducing elements of drugs, but there's nearly an equal amount that share the ails of addiction. I did not hear this song when it first came out but instead heard it years later when I delved into a myriad of female indie-alternative folk musicians. Somehow I came across K's Choice and their song "Not An Addict." The song's lyrics are poignant, nevermind that the intro is like a sad crying of someone desperate, alone, addicted, and wrecked.
I've still never tried acid or 'shrooms, and certainly have never tried anything like the cocaine, heroin, meth, etc. A glass of wine, a beer, a little bourbon is about as far as my interests go. But even alcohol is something I approach cautiously, knowing that I do have an addictive nature if I let it go completely. I've never liked the idea of drinking to get drunk because the few times I have felt drunk I did not find it a pleasant feeling that I wanted to repeat. No, instead, I have a glass or two of wine with a meal, or three beers over the course of a long evening, followed by a glass of water. I have fun by being surrounded by music, or talking with people, or taking pictures. I enjoy being myself with friends who are stronger and more entertaining than any state-altering drug could propose.
I hope that I turn this leaf and return to a routine I enjoyed for some time. This routine is once, maybe twice, a week sitting down to spend between 20-30 minutes to think and write from a prompt. This almost always creates a new path for more writing time as I find the writing prompt brought something I was pleased with onto the page, pleased enough to spend time editing and writing more on the topic.
My favorite prompts are usually from song lyrics, so I will post three here to share as inspiration for whomever that may read and decide to spend some time writing from a prompt as well. I have also linked the song title and musician's name in case you are inspired by their music.
Tips: Choose a prompt. Weigh a few possibilities. Then write without interruption for 12-15 minutes. If, while writing, you’re at a loss for material, shift to another of the five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste); or shift your perspective from high to low, from close to far away; or consider the journalist’s five questions—who, what, when, where, why.
Remember, these are copyrighted lyrics, so do not include the lyric in your own writing, but let the scene or thoughts they inspire be what paints your vision.
I think I know why I have been in a funk lately. I haven't spent long quiet lonely hours in nature this summer. Instead, I holed myself up in the house every evening watching something on hulu.com or packing and unpacking. I haven't spent much time outside photographing nature, have entirely me time. I noticed that was a phase I took on during my second year in Berea, usually lasting a month or almost two. When I first realized this, I was talking with a friend who does something similar but during Winter and moreso into books, but more sociable in late Spring and part of Summer. I recognized that in June or July I would go for long meandering walks, music playing, spend hours on trails in the woods with or without a camera, and always alone. Call it meditative alone-ness, call it me time, call it whatever you will, but I think I missed it this Summer and I realize now that is why I have been facing a major funk (in addition to some other stress-inducing and emotional stuff). A funk that has felt like a sink-hole depression.
So, Saturday during the day I am going to heal. I have some obligations that evening, but I will get up Saturday and Sunday and go away from the city and be in some rural space and realign myself with my being. I hope it will help. And I will need to make more room for this the rest of October.... I don't want to know what my Winter will be like without this lone time. So here we go.
It is a love/hate relationship... Right now I feel like moving all my pictures & videos on my HD to my external HD; edit photos, upload & share; comment on the music I'm listening to; write blogs. Overly inclined to be productive results in not much getting done 'cause I end up scattering about a little of this and a little of that.
And never mind everything contemplating and over-analyzing and planning or wishing in the back of my mind....
In response to someone questioning and contemplating their purpose in life, why they're here, and what they're supposed to be doing:
I think that's the hard part... knowing our purpose. And what we think is our purpose may be one aspect of our life here, but there's another purpose we do manage to fulfill but never consciously know we are fulfilling.
Sometimes maybe we need to accept that we don't have to know it all, but just be here and do what we feel driven to do for others and ourselves.
