anonymityblaize: (cat)
2012-10-08 04:39 pm

Showing Off Type Stuff

I have no idea why I've been so reluctant to post about this, as I've been inwardly flailing for quite some time now. I guess I'm just not very good at bragging when I really have something to brag about. Anyway, enough faffing about...

The upshot is that my Forbrydelsen cross stitch pattern is going to be in The Killing Handbook: Forbrydelsen Forever!

It's exciting enough that one of my patterns is going to be in a book, but it was all made even more fabulous by the fact that Emma Kennedy is writing the book (and I loooooooove her) and Emma Kennedy emailing me was enough to have me flailing around like a mad thing. Then she said this on twitter and I just about keeled over from too much squee.

emmakennedy

As if that wasn't awesomesauce enough, Emma Kennedy, glorious human being that she is, showed my Sarah Lund cross stitch to the wonderful Sofie Grabol who plays her, and let me know that she "absolutely adore[s] it."

And then, blog-reader, I died of over fan-girling. I am typing this from beyond the grave. I am on the astral plane of people who like liking things, with my ghostly arms permanently stuck in Kermit-like wibblyness and my voice about three octaves higher than usual.

I think I may have perhaps slightly given the impression of how excited and chuffed I was. So here ends my not-so humblebrag. If you're a fan of the original-strength Danish version of the Killing think about buying the book when it's out on November 15th!

~~~

And in unrelated news about actually related persons, my mother is still the coolest Mum ever, and I clearly got my awesome from her. Not only did she send me this handmade Tatooine collage as my birthday card, but she has just started art school. I'm still having trouble imagining Mama Blaize as a fresher, but I'm ridiculously proud of her.

tatooine1

anonymityblaize: (Default)
2012-09-28 05:57 pm

When I Eat It Is The Food That Is Scared

So I made a Ron Swanson cross stitch to go with my Leslie Knope one! And now I can check one thing off my things-to-post list. Hurrah!



And if anyone wants the pattern just let me know!  Here's the pattern... )
anonymityblaize: (cat)
2012-06-19 02:58 pm
Entry tags:

Forbrydelsen Forever!

 
While I was on my unexpected blogging hiatus I found myself in need of a craft project to keep me from going stir crazy. I had worked on a nearly completed pattern of the lovely Sarah Lund's face, from the original (and vastly superior) Danish version of the Killing, but there was something not quite ready about it. And then I had a sudden epiphany - I'd designed a Sarah Lund pattern that did not include the iconic wooly jumper! And that clearly wasn't right. But my attempts to actually render that amazing garment in cross stitch looked so weird that I gave it up, until it occured to me that the pattern of the jumper would make a fantastic border. And so that's what I did!
 
Here are the crafty stats: the design is 8x10 inches on 14ct aida, with 7452 stitches made up of 5 different colours of thread, and the project took me a little over two weeks. And here's how she turned out!

sarah lund 15

More pics... )
More photos here, including the in progress pics I took along the way and never actually posted. And if anyone wants to stitch this themselves, just let me know and I'll add the pattern to this post.  I won't be putting this pattern online - see here for reasons and details on where you can find the pattern.
anonymityblaize: (Default)
2012-04-25 10:25 pm

Vote Knope!

So, I totally failed to post these pics of my finished Leslie Knope cross stitch on Friday, but here I am now. I am still suffering from cultural over stimulus (otherwise known as the curse of "too many awesome things") and I don't think I'm going to calm down any time soon seeing as I'm already bouncing off the walls from the excitement of seeing the Avengers tomorrow. I am beyond giddy.

But I'll try to keep calm long enough to share Leslie with the world. I can't remember right now how big the stitched design is but the frame is an A4 one to give you some context. There's just the four colours of thread and she took a little over 3 weeks to stitch. If anyone wants the pattern just let me know and I'll edit it in. There should be a Ron Swanson piece to go with it sometime soon I hope! (If my current levels of squee don't cause me to spontaneously combust!) (This post has too many exclamation points!!!11!!!eleventy!!)

So here she is! (!!!)

vote knope 1

More pics... )

And here's a handy slideshow of her progression from pattern to finished. (Or you can just check out the flickr album or look back through this project's tag.)


Edited to add pattern - under the cut... )
anonymityblaize: (cat)
2012-04-19 04:44 pm

This is a post. With some bits. And some stuff. And things. And then strippers.

A few years ago Mister Blaize and I made a decision to get those nifty Cineworld unlimited cards. It's turned out to be a very smart decision financially, considering how many movies we go see. But it does occasionally lead to crazypants decisions like going to the cinema three times in the space of a week, the same week as we also went to see a Cirque du Soleil show. So my brain entirely melted from cultural over stimulus and I had to hide with a duvet over my head.

They were four very different experiences though, and I feel like I ought to be able to write a post on each one, but my blogging-fu has weakened due to lack of use of late, so the 100 things challenge is a very well timed bandwagon for me to jump upon. I think I'm going to do 100 things that I get ridiculously overenthusiastic about, and break it down into tens - 10 songs, 10 books , 10 movies etc. etc. Join me, won't you?




{Take the 100 Things challenge!}


So, some brief thoughts on my week of too many things, as a warm up exercise.

Cirque's Alegria was as stunning as Cirque shows always are. Especially a pair of female contortionists who were so flipping bendy I sometimes was confused about what body part was where. On the cinema front, Headhunters was totally not what I was expecting, in a totally good way. It's a Norwegian thriller co-starring that dude who plays Jamie Lannister in Game of Thrones with that name I can't spell and can't be arsed to google right now. If you like a good art-crime/chase movie then see it if you can. Battleship on the other hand, I'd avoid like the plague. It makes the Transformer movies look like masterpieces. It really is as bad as the reviews are saying. I love me some Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgaard and it wasn't even worth it for them. Rihanna (Riannha? Rhianna? Another name I can't be done with spell checking.) was the best thing about this movie, and put in a performance actually resembling a human being, unlike any one else, which was really weird. Also, this a movie about ships that doesn't actually understand how water works which is beyond distracting. I went in with low expectations and was still disappointed, that is how bad this film is. I suffered, you shouldn't have to. And then at the other end of the spectrum was Cabin in the Woods - probably the most fun I've had in the cinema in a good long while. It wasn't as scary as I'd expected (I went in pretty blind, which is how I'd recommend seeing it - the less you know the more fun it is, I would imagine) but it more than made up for it in demented creativeness and a joyful reveling in horror movie tropes and cliches. I'll shut up about it now lest I end up in spoiler territory. Though I will add that I now reeeeeeally want Hollywood to wake up and cast Fran Kranz in more things. Although I do think that of a lot of Whedon alums.

I've been lax in posting pics of my Leslie Knope cross stitch, but I have managed to stick to taking the pictures every day. So here's a huge clump of them all in one. Should have her all finished and framed and ready to post tomorrow, which feels very appropriate with Parks & Rec being back tonight. I'm very excited - it's the first time since I started watching Parks that it and Community have been on at the same time. So I'll probably have another overload from awesome - It's terrible; I'm turning into some Victorian lady with the vapours. At this rate I'll explode by the time the Avengers have assembled! Anyway, here's some Leslie pics: Lots of pics under the cut... )

And finally, in this post of ill-fitting-together things, the Magic Mike trailer. I am simultaneously mocking it and also thinking it looks awesome. And I can already anticipate how absolutely ridiculous its fandom will be.



anonymityblaize: (Default)
2012-03-30 04:41 pm

Why is it this hot in March?

Scotland appears to have skipped spring entirely and jumped straight into summer. It's very confusing, but quite nice. The sunlight seems to have lifted my mood, but I still haven't got back into the swing of this regular posting malarky.

Saw the Hunger Games this week and thought it was amazing. I totally ugly-sobbed my way through the bit that seems to be making everyone cry. Jennifer Lawrence put in an incredible performance and I'm looking forward to watching her career go from strength to strength. And I am loving Woody Harrelson's career resurgence. I haven't read the books and given the massive pile of stuff I want to read that I haven't got to yet, I don't think I'll manage to get round to them for quite a while. Since that means I can't dive into the Hunger Games fandom without the risk of getting spoiled, can anyone answer a few questions I've got?

Under a cut to protect anyone who's not seen the film yet...Read more... )

My Leslie Knope cross stitch is coming on in leaps and bounds. And I've been pretty disciplined about taking a picture every day which I'm quite chuffed about as I intend to do that with all my projects and never normally manage any better than a pic every few days. So here's how she's looking... under another cut... )
 
anonymityblaize: (cat)
2012-03-12 03:47 pm

*sheepishly sticks head above the parapet*

Hello, internets. I went into lurker mode for a bit there. I tend to do that when I'm a bit stressed out. Sorry if anyone's been expecting comments or anything from me, but I'm getting back in the swing of it now. I've still got a backlog of crafty stuff I need to post, and I really need to go on a new icon hunt at some point soon (I needs me some parks & rec and avengers icons stat!), but I'm going to ease myself back into the whole actually-participating-in-fandom thing by showing y'all the new cross stitch project I've been working on while I've been grumpy and brooding offline.

So, when I'm done I should have something like this:

leslie knope chart preview

Here's what I've done so far under the cut... )



It's moving on pretty quickly, but I wish I'd started this much sooner so I could use it as evidence of Leslie Knope's awesomeness that I would cross stitch her so I could persuade everyone to vote for Leslie in [livejournal.com profile] f_march_madness. But instead I'll just leave this here and hope you'll take it to heart!


anonymityblaize: (disappointed coach)
2012-02-08 04:58 pm

#IAmSpartacus

Reposting this pic as the Twitter joke trial reached the High Court appeal today. It's utterly baffling to me that this nonsense has got this far without someone doing anything remotely sensible. If you have no idea why I made a cross stitch of a criminal and "clearly menacing" tweet, you can read more about this Orwellian nightmare  here and here.

tweet1

And on a lighter note, here, have a stitched Star Trek coaster.
7C61074A-3C5C-11E1-8F63-A7D10607072E
anonymityblaize: (keep calm)
2012-01-16 05:11 pm

Things I Have Learnt Since Thursday

So, lessons learnt since posting my Inception cross stitch o' doom:

1.) I need to learn to pick better preview images of crafts projects - the number of people who commented to say they initially thought it was just a print of the poster or something implies to me that some people might have scrolled on by never noticing it was made of cross stitch. Which is oddly complimentary but simultaneously frustrating!

2.) Apparently I'm a really fast cross stitcher. This is a revelation given that I was the worst and the slowest at everything in home ec classes at school. I totally Britta'ed that subject. Just a late bloomer when it came to crafts and such, I suppose.

3.) If I don't pay attention I will type "thabks" rather than "thanks" every single time. Every. Single. Damn. Time.

4.) Cross stitch pattern programs are evil. Why does each program need its own file type thus making all of them incompatible with each other? Because they are bastards, that's why. I kinda knew this already but reason #5 made me face this again...

5.) At least two people out there are foolhardy brave enough to want to try this for themselves, which is always very exciting to me. So exciting that I don't even mind doing battle with technology to get something shareable! So here, have a pattern. Do with it as you will, but credit or a link back here would be appreciated, and I'd love to see the results if anyone does stitch it!

Click for the pattern! )



anonymityblaize: (inception)
2012-01-11 03:30 pm

The Dream Is Real. And Made of Cross Stitch.

It's finally time for me to unveil my completed Inception cross stitch! I am terribly excited about showing this off, and I hope other people like it as much as I do!

I began thinking about this project around this time last year, but didn't start stitching until towards the end of June. It took me a long time before I was happy with any of the umpty jillion patterns I tried and discarded. I noodled around with several screengrabs and whatnot of the hotel corridor fight for quite sometime before settling on doing the Arthur poster image, mainly because it had a wider range of colours than using a scene directly from the movie. I was finished the actual stitching part by the middle of November so it would seem that I keep taking around five months to do one of these cross stitches o' doom, regardless of the size of the project. (For reference, Arthur is over twice the size and contains over three times the number of stitches as my stitched Serenity, and almost double the stitches of the Enterprise one.)

At no point did I get frustrated with this project, which is a novelty to me. Not even a minor pout or kerfuffle. I can't decide if that's the reason this has been my favourite project so far, or if it is genuinely the best thing I've made. I've certainly never stitched better. The stitches and the tension are much more uniform across the piece than I've ever achieved in the past.

Here come the stats! The stitched design measures 22cm by 29cm. It contains 31,108 stitches from 25 different colours of thread. I used nearly 150 metres of those threads, and almost 50 meters of that is the very dark navy that dominates the piece.

So. Yeah. This happened.


Many more pics, and larger ones too, can be found here.

(BTW, does this count as fanart? I mean, I know it does, but could I post it to inception comms as fanart? And if so, which ones should I post it to? I am excited to show it off, but confused as to where it would be welcome. I am a bear of very little brain sometimes.)

Right, now I'm off to check my totem so I know I didn't make this beauty in a dream...

ETA: Pattern now available here.

x-posted to [livejournal.com profile] geekcrafts here, [livejournal.com profile] craftgrrl here, [livejournal.com profile] inceptionfilm here, [livejournal.com profile] inception_art here, and [community profile] inception here.


anonymityblaize: (bomer trekkie)
2012-01-09 04:34 pm

Ooooh, windows 7 is considerably better than I had anticipated....

As I transfer pictures and patterns and other random files to my shiny new computer I've discovered loads of stuff that I've made and not yet posted any pics of. So working through the backlog should keep me busy for a while, which is quite nice - I was worried I'd have nothing interesting to post until I'd finished any of the umpty-billion half completed and then abandoned craft projects I have cluttering up the place!

So to start out the year, here's the gift I sent for the [livejournal.com profile] ontd_startrek secret santa.

red1

A few more pics... )

And under the cut - the wonderous gifts I received from [livejournal.com profile] silviasmurf

Yet more pics... )

And to keep up the Star Trek theme, I was asked if I would share my Star Fleet insignia cross stitch patterns, so if you want to stitch any of these...

all star trek badges

...then a pattern lies under the cut!

The cut has a pattern... )
anonymityblaize: (Default)
2011-12-01 05:09 pm
Entry tags:

How can it possibly be December already?

I am having issues with the linear progression of time. It is all moving far faster than it ought to, I'm sure.

So, it's already that time of year to remind anyone who might be thinking of buying something from my etsy shop that the last posting dates before Christmas are -
UK: Wed 14th December (Parcelforce options available at extra cost until Tue 20th December)
Western Europe: Mon 12th December
Eastern Europe, USA and Canada: Fri 9th December
Everywhere Else: Mon 5th December

In other crafting news, Arthur is finally finished and is quite possibly the best thing I have ever stitched in my life. But you're not getting any pics until I'm happy with the framing, which currently, I am not. I want it to look its best before I unveil it to the world! Well, here's a sneaky peak of the unsightly back side of for now!

Click for pic! )


anonymityblaize: (Default)
2011-11-15 02:26 pm

Did'ya miss me?

Hello internet world! I have returned! Our phone line went all wonky again and RL has been well busy and made of stress of late. But everything is tentatively fixed and I'm back again. Did I miss anything good?

I've picked a very weird day to get back into the habit of posting. Community is/isn't/is-in-danger-of-being cancelled and there is definitely/definitely-not a Doctor Who movie actually-happening/not-happening/in-development-with-no-one-attached/in-development-with-David-Yates. It's like Schrödinger's news day. I am confused. Someone hold me. Or perhaps tell me not to rely on tumblr for information.

I've been moving a bunch of pics into a new photobucket account to stymie those dastardly hotlinkers from guzzling up my bandwidth allowance, but it does mean I've broken a lot of my own links. I think I've got most of them fixed on lj and I'm going to get around to doing the same on dw as soon as I can, but if I've missed anything please let me know. Don't want to deny anyone their picspams!

Speaking of picspammage, here's some pics of how the Inception cross stitch is coming along.

Very nearly finnished now! )Very nearly finnished now! )



anonymityblaize: (Default)
2011-10-19 04:41 pm

Terrifying Space Monkeys! Or perhaps just cross stitch patterns


Anyone remember when I made this lovely cross stitch o' doom?



serenity framed 1

Well, some crazy brave soul was interested in making one of their own, so here's the pattern for it.

Read more... )
 
 


As always, feel free to do whatever you want with it, but credit or a link back here would be very much appreciated. And I'd love to see the results if anyone does stitch it!



anonymityblaize: (Default)
2011-10-10 05:15 pm

I cannot for the life of me think of an interesting title for this post. This will have to do.

That whole posting-more-often thing is not going so terribly well. Should be able to spend more time sashaying my way around the internet a bit more when the building work from hell is finally done, which should apparently, allegedly, possibly be quite soon or sometime approximating soon-ish. Or something.

Not helping with the making-time-to-do-more-than-lurk problem may be the fact that I saw Drive the other day (which was amazeballs and may get it's own reaction post) and now may have fallen into a deep well of Ryan Gosling tumblrs. Why did no one point out this man to me sooner? I expected more from my fangirl-enabling flist! But, hey, better late than never, and just in time to find a bazillion pics to add to my semi-completed picspams too. Hurrah!

Anyhow, the Inception cross stitch is still ongoing, and coming out rather nicely. Have finally worked out my issues with pale colours - it turns out to be a rather simple issue, basically it's easier to see errors in the pale coloured stitches whereas your eyes just see the dark stitches as plain blocks of colour and you don't notice if the tension's a bit wonky or the stitch isn't lined up perfectly. But armed with this knowledge I'm now attacking the pale portions a little differently, which may end up making a world of difference. That probably only I will notice. I'm a fool to myself when it comes to the ol' cross stitch! Some pics under the cut of how Arthur's shaping up:

Pics, pics, pics... )
anonymityblaize: (Default)
2011-09-30 01:37 pm

Champagne makes my head fuzzy. But in a good way.

Have returned from my family get-together. It was beyond fabulous. The usual good food, good booze, good company combo with additional aunties and uncles and added drunken dancing and general hilarity.

And brilliantly, after posting about my own amazing childhood birthday parties, my mother turned up with this as her birthday cake.

cake

Mama Blaize for the win!

A pic of the menu from her birthday dinner (complete with wine pairings! I am so spoilt!) under the cut so you can be jealous of our gluttony.

om nom noms )

I've missed most of the Delicious debacle while I was away, but it doesn't look pretty. I'm going to give things a few days to settle down and then look into Pinboard as that seems to be where everyone is migrating.

Then, as if I didn't already have enough fandom stuff stealing all my attention and freetime, I got into Pottermore this week. I'm RookQueen63 - let me know your name there if you'd like me to friend you. I'm a Hufflepuff (yay!) and my wand is rowan with unicorn core, 14 1/2 inches, slightly swishy. This stuff makes me more excited than a grown adult really ought to be. The site itself is pretty cool - the artwork is gorgeous and I love the way you interact with it, but if it can't handle the number of people on it at the moment, what's it going to be like when it opens fully?

And finally, some more pics of my Inception cross stitch under the cut. Eight out of sixteen pages of the pattern are complete now! But it's more like 3/4 of the way done. And I've still not reached a stage of rage yet! It's clearly a magical cross stitch project.

stitchy stitch stitch )
270911


anonymityblaize: (Default)
2011-09-14 04:10 pm

Et tu, oven?

It really shouldn't be possible for so many things to break in such a short space of time. And it definitely DEFINITELY shouldn't be possible for two ovens to break in the same way in the space of two years. And yet in such a short space of time I had forgotten just how many meals we eat rely on having a working oven. Well, more frying and boiling and grilling and microwaving recipes shall be learned or rediscovered over the next few days!

In happier news, I found this article very interesting - I think of it as "fandom: older than you think." (Also, more back-up for the argument that girls are not "ruining" fandom; we bloody started it in the first place.)

In related, but depressing, news - Internet troll jailed for 18 weeks.

And in crafting news, I've been featured in some more etsy treasuries, which you can see here, and my Inception cross stitch continues to trundle on apace. Click for cross stitch pics! (Try saying that ten times fast) )

anonymityblaize: (Default)
2011-09-01 04:33 pm

September? Already? Really?

Some updates on the state of me!

Building stress: Still stressful, but inching towards completion every day, so my state of mind is distinctly better than it was. Given that the work was meant to be completed in October last year it would be quite good for my emotional well-being if it was finished before October of this year, however.

Telly stuff: Caught up on Leverage in a massive splurge and it was glorious! I don't feel like the show ever dipped in quality or anything, but this season has been really fantastic. They've made me cry at three separate episodes this year and I don't think Leverage has ever made me cry before. All the Parker and Hardison stuff is making me flail around like a flaily thing, as has the Nate and Sophie stuff but for different reasons, and Eliot is still the most adorable killing machine ever. And everyone wants to hug Hardison all the time. As well they should.

Photobucket

Went to see a screening of the first episode of series 2 of The Killing (the Danish version, not the AMC remake) and a Q&A with Sofie Gråbøl and Piv Bernth hosted by Emma Kennedy. It was, unsurprisingly, amazeballs. Going to be a very annoying wait until November for more episodes. Sofie Gråbøl is so ridiculously gorgeous in person, and very funny. And Emma Kennedy is every bit the Forbrydelsen fangirl that she seemed on twitter (the pronunciation was explained to the audience as "Ferb-noise of person puking-son".). And in series two Sarah Lund has a new jumper. It's very exciting.

Cross stitch o' doom progress: Also very exciting. So exciting in fact that I'm putting the pics under a cut from now on until it's done. Which might still be ages away, but it's coming along very nicely. Am still rather suspicious about that.

Pics of progress... )
anonymityblaize: (emo)
2011-08-08 05:13 pm

Harrumph

First of all, my thoughts are with all my London peeps - hope you're all safe and sound and un-looted. *hugs*


My own life is being a tad unfun at the moment. Were I able to look at it objectively, I'm sure I'd actually be quite impressed at the world for the varied and imaginative ways it has come up with to frustrate and upset me, but as it is I'm just generally grumpy. In order to spare you all the boredom of reading me moan about my life I'd usually just picspam my blues away but I've got about a bazillion (well, eight actually) half compiled picspams on the go and am unsure which one I should focus on with my time that I really ought to be spending doing more productive things. But as my flist are fantastic enablers of wasting time on the internet, I thought I'd ask you which you'd rather see. So here are some very random themes I have been contemplating.

[Poll #1768097]
Despite all my woe, my cross stitch seems to be going very well indeed. I am deeply suspicious of it. I'm sure it has some cunning plan to annoy me tucked up its sleeve...

080811
anonymityblaize: (Default)
2011-07-29 01:11 pm

Is this thing on?

Oh, LJ. You poor beleaguered thing. It'd be nice if you could hold things together for longer than about 15 minutes at a time. Maybe this time it's back for the long haul. I feel uninformed and deprived of pretty things without my flist, it's a tragedy.

I'm trying to recreate as much of my flist as possible over on dreamwidth, if you're there and I haven't found you yet, please leave me a nudge in the right direction, or add me yourself - [personal profile] anonymityblaize. I think LJ will remain my primary internet home for the time being, but I want to be prepared to jump ship if that becomes necessary.

And I have dreamwidth codes if anyone needs them, just ask. Anon commenting should be on for this post if you're having trouble staying logged in.

I had thoughts on stuff that came out of comic con, but, other than some serious flailing over Community casting news, I seem to have forgotten it all since I could last make LJ bend to my will.

I also have thoughts on the news but given that there are many people on facebook and twitter saying things about Norway, Hackgate, Amy Winehouse, and/or Somalia that are making me want to get a bit punchy I'm going to keep those opinions to myself and hopefully avoid all fist fights, literal or otherwise.

Finally saw the final Harry Potter film, and cried through most of it, as I expected I would. On the whole I think it was fantastic - I just wish the early movies could have been less craptastic so that I could have a dvd marathon one day. I suppose at least they got all the casting right - those kids have grown up remarkably well. Neville was always my favourite in the books and I think I might have started a riot in the cinema if they had messed up Neville's BAMF moment, but instead they actually managed to make movie!Neville even more badass than book!Neville which was all kinds of fantastic for me. And dammit, Matthew Lewis, stop making me feel like a total perv. Most Triumphant Emergence From Puberty indeed. And Rickman was amazing, as always. And McGonagall! Oh, Dame Maggie you are a national treasure. Sorry, my thoughts are somewhat disconnected apparently. Short version - loved it, even though I have been deeply critical of the movies up until now.

And here's some more cross stitch progress. I am rather excited now that Arthur is mostly done, and you can even see most of the guy falling away behind him. And I've reached both the right and left hand edges now. It's moving on quite quickly. Hurrah!

290711


One more pic from earlier in the week... )