A particular friend of the wizard's for personal reasons moved back to our neck of the woods, and while searching for a permanent place to live, stayed with us for a couple of months. People who come into my orbit for any length of time tend to end up with stockings, so this person was my latest victim er, recipient of this custom, helped by the fact that I don't have a lot of other xmas-y projects on my plate this year.

xmas stocking; completed (& photographed) 15dec19

Particularly beloved is a 16 year old long-haired cat, so I did my best to portray him; a love of the Colorado mountains from childhood provided the background (such nice, easy iconography...), with the zebra stripes representing the shared hobby of referee-ing.

With the flap up, to show the clouds. Assorted nylon, metallic & rayon threads, felt, wool kumi, jingle bells.

This also happens to be the first piece made with my own 2019 xmas prezzie, a sewing machine with one of those delightful ‘hopping’ free-motion feet. I've wanted one since forever, because my trusty sears kenmore is awesome in many ways, its high-slant mount doesn't accommodate this sort of foot.

The first day I tried doing the free-motion embroidery is the most stressful art-making experience I can recall for a very long time, mebbe ever: usually when learning a new technique, I don't know enough to work at it really hard (too much fumbling...) They say, typically, when pushing yourself artistically that you wanna be, say, around 80%—working hard, but not flat-out.

I was working flat out. My chest hurt by the time I decided I couldn't deal with the stress any more. I needed two-three days off before I was willing to try again (with the cat bits) and if you look closely, at that point I was actually getting [just barely] good enough to free motion embroidery in loops. Cannot recall the last time when I went from not-really to more-or-less getting it day 1/day 2: typically, it takes me days if not weeks or years to make that kind of progress. So my earlier efforts to do sewing machine embroidery (if not ‘true’ FM) obviously provided just enough of a foundation for an unprecedented ramp-up.

It was a pretty interesting experience, emotionally.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.