New Mandala Patterns
Stitching in the summer time...
Hejsa!
It is new pattern time! Long overdue, but this past weekend I finally finished stitching them. There wasn’t much else to do in the heatwave. On Tuesday we had 36°C. And I spent most of the day in the gloom of our living room, with the curtains shut, stitching away. Apart from the heat it was actually quite nice. :-)
The patterns are part of a small series of mandala inspired patterns I am working on at the moment. I haven’t decided exactly how many patterns will be in the series. But something that happened kind of by accident is that the patterns only use two stitches. I’m not 100% sure that I will keep that going for the rest of the patterns, but I think I might. It is a nice challenge in the designing of the patterns but it is also nice in the stitching of them.
You can focus on the stitching, in a meditative sort of way, and not think about the stitches. Does that make sense? When I was stitching the Chain Stitch mandala I often felt like I got into a sort of flow state. It is really lovely when that happens. :-)
The patterns are in the shop now, you can find them here: Star Stitch Mandala and Chain Stitch Mandala.
You can save 15% on the patterns until July 13th with this code: SINGLE15. The code is valid for all the patterns in the Single Patterns category.
If you are a paid subscriber, scroll to the very bottom of the email for your special code that gives you 20% off. :-)
I am really happy to have some new patterns finished. It has been slow going, making new patterns in the past couple of years, especially because of my dodgy thumb. Hopefully this is a sign that things are back to something more like normal. :-)
Last Friday I met with a friend and we went to see the 150 year birthday exhibition at Liberty. It was a nice exhibition. On the 4th floor they had a large display with things from their archive and some prints on fabric panels.
On the 1st floor you could walk under a house installation made of quilt blocks made by people from all over the world. There were also some ‘books’ with blocks that were left over from the installation. We spent some time flipping through all the blocks. Which was more satisfying than looking at the ‘house’ because that was suspended above your head so it wasn’t really possibly to look at the individual blocks. But maybe that wasn’t the point of it…
Anyway, if you like Liberty and you can make it to London, do go see the exhibition. It is on until July 25th.
Have a lovely weekend!
x Carina
Some Things I Am Enjoying
Book: Is a River Alive?* by Robert MacFarlane. Read this book, it is amazing.
Watching: Jam & Jerusalem. “Jam & Jerusalem is set in the small West Country town of Clatterford St. Mary and is based around Sal, a local practice nurse.” {link} I wasn’t sure about this series at first but I thought I’d give it a go since it’s written by Jennifer Saunders, who is also in it. And Dawn French is in it too, and that is always a great combo. Even if neither of them is a main character.
Music: The Finding Me album by Bronwen.
More music: The Slow album by Yasmin. I bought this as a vinyl record in…1991 or something like that. It has been in my parents’ loft since I moved to the UK but earlier this year I was reunited with it. I am happy that I’m loving it just as much as I did back when I bought it. :-)
*bookshop.org affiliate link.
Some Interesting Things on The Internet
Rise Raise Riso. Buy Riso prints and support people in Gaza.
2,000-Year-Old 'Perfume Garden' in Pompeii Has Been Restored to Its Former Glory. I’d love to go see that. Group trip? :-D
A bit closer to home, coming to the Tate Modern next year: Frida: The Making of an Icon.
This multi-head paint brush looks like fun!
I was watching a YouTube video about the Nazca lines in Peru and in it they showed textiles with similar figures and of course that caught my attention and I fell down a rabbit hole to find out more. So here are some links related to that. (I'm not just using this section to tell you how bad AI is..!)
Reviving a Pre-Columbian Textile Technique.
And let’s just end this with a couple of reminders that AI is bad and can make you batshit crazy!
They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.
People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis".
Hey friends! Here is your code for 20% off the new patterns (and all single patterns)
Star Stitch Mandala and Chain Stitch Mandala. The Single Patterns category.
SINGLE20CLUB -like the other code it is valid until July 13th.
Stitching, yay! :-)