Hello April friends! I hope you are doing well.
Now that it’s (slowly) getting warmer, I’ve decided to take up a new Lap Hobby™️, given knitting through summer sounds uncomfortable. Enter embroidery! I was inspired by making a quilted jacket last weekend at Ray Stitch in north London. There was quite a bit of hand-sewing involved, something past me has not enjoyed. Imagine my surprise when I loved it, and found it soothing the savage beast of my soul! No doubt another symptom of getting older, along with increased interest in birds.
Here are my efforts so far: accidental Keith-from-The-Prodigy merman, woman in flower, Bender from Futurama with one leg, alien.
I’ve just started using a water-soluble stabiliser paper - you can draw your image onto it, stitch over and then soak it in water and it dissolves - brilliant! I’m using Pellon Stick-N-Washaway, but there are probably loads of kinds.
I mentioned here about wanting to make a t-shirt with the Frankenstein quote. I found an online t-shirt printer, ordered one and sat back to wait - the website said it would be 10 working days. Over those days I thought a bit of the Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin orders a propeller beanie hat from the back of a cereal box. He waits, and waits, and imagines the wonder of this hat. It finally arrives and, failing to make him actually fly, is an early lesson in the disappointment of expectation (and advertising!) vs reality. (My own first bummer of this kind that I remember was Sea Monkeys - anyone else here burnt by that mosquito-larvae-masquerading-as-mermonkeys sting?)
I genuinely had a couple of dreams about my t-shirt before it arrived. I was very excited when it did, but noticed something strange when I paraded out in it for Rusty’s first walk. The clouds DID NOT spontaneously uncover the sun when I stepped onto the pavement. NO ONE was dancing for joy in the streets. NOT ONE PERSON burst into song on perceiving me. Apparently my t-shirt excitement didn’t translate over to the general public.
What a lot of nonsense for one post! Perhaps you feel like Bertie in The Code of the Woosters right about now:
I rose. It was my intention to say goodbye to all this. I don’t mind people talking rot in my presence, but it must not be utter rot.
If you’re still here, thanks for reading, and see you soon!
I would say dog-walking is not the right activity to truly gather awed responses, because there are quite a lot of words there and I don’t think passers-by will have time to read and digest the message (both sides). What you should really do is go and sit somewhere visible all day, ideally in an area where people linger and have time to look around (Post Office queue?). It’s a time investment but I think it’s worth it 😎
You have to remember that the tshirt only comes into it’s full glory when someone is BEHIND you. I think you need a periscope or system of mirrors to monitor the responses accurately and gauge it’s impact (which I have no doubt will be immense)