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Come freely, go safely.
I did not go backpacking last weekend! The weather was so bad that I wasn't sure I would be able to drive to the trailhead safely, much less walk to the camp, so I chickened out. The next day the weather was beautiful so I did four miles around my neighborhood with my pack, which was a delight, so I am now less worried about next time, at least!
I am now in Alabama at my sister's house, we are leaving for Gulf Shores tomorrow. Her kitten is very, very cute and suffers from an excess of photogenicity (he also has a very soft white underbelly.)
It's also Dracula Daily time on Tumblr again, and since I've had time on vacation, I finished up a cross-stitch pattern I started a year ago, based on the words Dracula uses to greet Jonathan Harker when he comes to the castle: "Welcome to my house. Come freely, go safely, and leave some of the happiness you bring".
I wanted a sampler for my front hall, but all the patterns I could find were very Hot Topic Goth. Nothing wrong with that, but my goth aesthetic is more "creepy thing found behind the wall in an old attic". I was looking around for inspiration and stumbled on this 1871 sampler by 12-year-old Jemima Clements in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It's a little bit early for Dracula but the aesthetic was spot on, so I spent a long time squinting at a zoom of the best download of it they had to copy the wolves and the letters, and then left it for almost a year because I got frustrated trying to figure out how to get a good-formatted pattern out.
When we came up on a year I got frustrated and went with the good-old fashioned grandma method and used a spreadsheet. So on the off chance you want a creepy Dracula sampler for your front hall, I have it in .pdf and spreadsheet form. The .pdf is formatted to print on legal paper, but it will be a bit small that way; you are welcome to fiddle with the spreadsheets to get it the size you want.
PDF of the pattern of the Dracula quote
^this will not work if your browser redirects to https because my webhost messed that up, but it should work if you force http
Google Drive link to a shareable/downloadable Sheets file
The pattern uses 7-10 different thread colors; I don't believe in locking in brand-name floss, so the pattern includes color description and it's up to you to find stuff in your stash that looks good together.
I could not come up with a decision on the border, so the options are:
1. Make all the flowers plain lavender
2. Use a variegated purple for the flowers
3. Pick 4-6 different shades of lavender/light purple and alternate them - this is most similar to Jemima's border
4. Use the "allium flower" pixel art pattern I coded into the pattern (recommended only if you recognized the allium flower pixel art pattern.)
Tumblr post if you prefer
I am now in Alabama at my sister's house, we are leaving for Gulf Shores tomorrow. Her kitten is very, very cute and suffers from an excess of photogenicity (he also has a very soft white underbelly.)
It's also Dracula Daily time on Tumblr again, and since I've had time on vacation, I finished up a cross-stitch pattern I started a year ago, based on the words Dracula uses to greet Jonathan Harker when he comes to the castle: "Welcome to my house. Come freely, go safely, and leave some of the happiness you bring".
I wanted a sampler for my front hall, but all the patterns I could find were very Hot Topic Goth. Nothing wrong with that, but my goth aesthetic is more "creepy thing found behind the wall in an old attic". I was looking around for inspiration and stumbled on this 1871 sampler by 12-year-old Jemima Clements in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It's a little bit early for Dracula but the aesthetic was spot on, so I spent a long time squinting at a zoom of the best download of it they had to copy the wolves and the letters, and then left it for almost a year because I got frustrated trying to figure out how to get a good-formatted pattern out.
When we came up on a year I got frustrated and went with the good-old fashioned grandma method and used a spreadsheet. So on the off chance you want a creepy Dracula sampler for your front hall, I have it in .pdf and spreadsheet form. The .pdf is formatted to print on legal paper, but it will be a bit small that way; you are welcome to fiddle with the spreadsheets to get it the size you want.
PDF of the pattern of the Dracula quote
^this will not work if your browser redirects to https because my webhost messed that up, but it should work if you force http
Google Drive link to a shareable/downloadable Sheets file
The pattern uses 7-10 different thread colors; I don't believe in locking in brand-name floss, so the pattern includes color description and it's up to you to find stuff in your stash that looks good together.
I could not come up with a decision on the border, so the options are:
1. Make all the flowers plain lavender
2. Use a variegated purple for the flowers
3. Pick 4-6 different shades of lavender/light purple and alternate them - this is most similar to Jemima's border
4. Use the "allium flower" pixel art pattern I coded into the pattern (recommended only if you recognized the allium flower pixel art pattern.)
Tumblr post if you prefer