V🌺✨🖌️

Illustration of little mice surrounding a soup pot making soup! The text reads “do not disturb.. I’m busy making soup”

It’s soup season!
#art

AI impoverishes us at every step of the process: - data centers pollute our environment - energy use drives up costs - content theft robs creators of income - the actual output is used to displace workers and depress wages - using it harms our mental health and impairs our competence - the flood of AI slop is damaging our sociopolitical landscape All in service of making a worse product - and world - to enrich a handful of already spectacularly wealthy people

While defending the luddite argument in Discord, I stumbled into this IMO succinct explanation for opposing generative AI:

At every step in the process, it impoverishes us.

the patterned portion of the large cross stitch I have been working on little by little is finished,
though as it was intended to be done on black aida, the blank background is free real estate to fill with as much sparkles and colour as i want.
full coverage.
🐱🪡🌟

it's world embroidery day.
🪡🧵🧶
9 months ago i started to learn how to use a needle and thread.
my hands have slowly relearned how to feel textures and pressure by sewing a little bit every day.

DIY > AI

needless to say, i had read the entire earthsea series in like a month...
for that era in the west, the portrayal of gender in a big adventure story is amazing.
🐉✨️
i want to read more cool stuff in english.

Hiatus update:
°•hiatus since late april•°

the cross stitch i started is moving along at its own pace.

the weather at this time of year seems to cause pain flare ups, so i've been taking the downtime to learn more about (english?) embroidery and textile arts.
primed canvas is a fabric after all.
🌸

here is the new big cross-stitch, measuring 15"×11" or standard aida size.
🌊🧙✨️🪡🧵

i think i've already used here close to the largest number of stitches on a piece i've made yet.

though it's very big and thus an exponential amount of stitches, the colours and shapes are relatively simple (20 maybe?) so in theory it should be ok to move up.
the largest i think i've made so far is like photo size.
🪡🧵🧙✨️🌟

following a pattern now almost stitch for stitch, with a few colour changes, and it's so big that it takes up the whole piece of aida cloth that comes in a package.
scanning it in was its own new challenge and large file but i managed.

it'll probably be a work on in between other stuff thing.

less cold wars more warm blankets
🍲☕️🫖🧸😴💤

this cross stitch was kinda a self exam, and compiles a lot of different techniques i've been learning in the past 6 months.

including:
heavy pattern customisation, 3/4 stitch, half stitch, two-colour stitch, mixed-colour threads, french knots, straight stitch, and seed stitch
🪡🧵📝💭

a cross stitch picture of two tropical antillean hummingbirds drinking out of some fuchsia flowers, worked in aida cloth and normal cotton stitched together fixed to an embroidery hoop with temp pinned in edges. one humming bird is shiny green and brown and the other is reflective black and aqua. the fuchsia flowers are light pink with red accents in front of some leaves.

Hummingbirds with Fuchsia cross stitch ✨️🪡🧵🌸🦜🐦‍⬛

the hummingbirds are custom colour, localised to species of where i'm from.

tea bag packaging in individual sachets uses so much paper for no reason, outside of office use maybe, that i've just been rolling them up and using them as temporary bobbins lol they're the perfect size

there are definitely those weird 3/4 cross stitches in this simple 12-colour pattern's grid but i didn't see them mentioned anywhere on the usual instructions leaflet lol

in the next pattern i'm following, there are bird species that are directly associated with where the pattern was published in the ne us.

the ornamental flowers are actually from the tropics though, so i think it will be fun to "localise" the birds to ones found around here in gardens ☺️🦜🐦‍⬛💐🏝

the stitches are sewn through both aida and cotton layers sewn together in the hoop. it helped a lot to keep the tension even and had a nice tactile feel.

as with espeon, many colour decisions were made on the spot for umbreon, and i'm a big fan of how the yellow rings mix turned out.
✨️🌙🪡🧵

cross stitch picture of espeon worked in aida cloth and cotton fixed to an embroidery hoop. espeon is a psychic type Pokémon that resembles a pink cat with long ears and two tails. image is decorated with IG stickers of pink flowers and glitter, showing its forehead gem shining.

cross stitch picture of umbreon worked in aida cloth and cotton fixed to an embroidery hoop, with visible basting stitch grid lines. umbreon is a dark type Pokémon that resembles a black cat with long ears and yellow rings on its features. image is decorated with IG stickers of a moon and stars, sparkles and clouds on a dusk background.

espeon and umbreon cross stitches completed!
🐈‍⬛️🌙🔮🌸🌌

the umbreon cross stitch colour palette is shaping up to be like the starry night ✨️🌙🖤🌌🌃

between that, and the mentioned environmental conditions, the humidity, the acrylic paint was just wiping off, or going bad in temporary storage...

if it fails in drier weather, at this point, i don't mind repainting sections or starting it over entirely.
such is how pastures go anyway.

i think i've figured out what was preventing progress on mister cow.
i probably need to go take more reference photos of the shrubs etc from better angles.

conditions weren't great to be outside when i was painting it in the height of summer last year. (half the reason i was painting...)
🐄🌱🌳

happy international women's day! i hope that someday, women of all kinds can just Be.
i mean this whole-heartedly, that every day is women's day to me now, and i want to live that way.
💜🌙

many thread colour decisions were made on the fly, due to the inherent visual difficulty of pink and purple.

a lot of the pixels are two-toned as well, creating a cool shining effect, and breaking up colour banding in shadows.
🌸🪡🧵

tilted view of a cross stitch of the Pokémon Espeon, an evolution of Eevee, a psychic type pink two-tailed cat with long ears. the background is edited to be a soft purple.

been working on an espeon cross stitch, and planning to complement it with umbreon 🌙🐈‍⬛️

i made the pattern using the grid in procreate, based off the gen 4 game sprite, with custom dynamic outline pixels going beyond the 16 colour limit
💜🔮💖

link to full post on ig
🐾

www.instagram.com/p/DGi1j3nAJ4...

album cover with blue cream silver orange painted origami paper stars and purple zigzags on a grey background. titled “some origami i made” in a red nostalgic font

origami cream colour cats with drawn on :3 kitty faces on a lit grey background with a rainbow slinky and heavy shadows. “meow, friendly” hovers above the heads of the paper cat npc’s

some origami i made in 2023
💫

been surprisingly better at tying start or end off tiny knots since i learned the forward chain stitch 🤔

crochet and its loop de loops are still a total mystery to me...
though it probably is significantly easier to pull thread through knots with the hook rather than the needle lol
🪡🧵

i got a small pointy pair of tweezers to help hold the thread or push through close to the fabric

and within the first 24 hours
it came in useful to pull out 2 fairy knots in stitching this staticky mauve thread

link to the full post on ig
🐾🖌️🎨

www.instagram.com/p/DGbBG61OoU...

album cover has a zoomed in and edited picture of a calico cat portrait with sparkly eyes and nose in oranges and pinks. titled “Watercolour portraits”

tilted view of a watercolour portrait of a very fluffy orange and white tabby cat with long whiskers and bright green eyes on its wide face

Watercolour Pet Portraits 🐈🐾
commissioned and made over summer 2022 to summer 2023 on cold-press paper.
largest size is 9”x12”
🫧