"To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" is an anagram of "In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten."

I am in so much awe of whoever worked that out.

And some more Christmas pressies, this time for adult sized humans.

We'll start with my favourite of the bunch:




( Star Wars, Leverage, Wolverine, Audrey Hepburn and random animal t-shirts )

So for Christmas I decided that all the small humans in my life needed their own superhero t-shirts. For the wee-est ones they're obviously more presents for the parents, but those over the age of four had quite the grasp on which symbols went with which superheroes. Indoctrinate the next generation of geeks early, I say!

All the designs were done with homemade stencils, and a combination of discharging dye for the pale bits, and fabric paint and pens. I was asked a while back to do a tutorial on making stencil designs and discharging dye which I'm in the process of getting together. The more people who prod me about, the quicker I'll get it done!

So, without further ado, I present my mini-heroes.



( Individual pics behind the cut... )

D'oh! Oh well, tomorrow is another day and perhaps all my picture uploading issues will magically fix themselves.

To be going on with however I have a thing of magnificence to share. My ontd_startrek Secret Santa present is a GQMFing Spock Monkey, made by hurricanine , and it is a thing of beauty. Thank you so much.

( Pics of my Spock Monkey and the present that I sent await after the cut... )

In what seems like forever and a day ago, I promised to post pictures of the wonderful Wireopoly that rooferrocks made us as a gift. And so finally I get around to showing off her genius blending of Monopoly and The Wire.

I had also said I would write the "standard internet nerd essay about why [The Wire] is the best thing ever on television" but I think many other people have said it so much better than I ever could. So I will just briefly point out a few things before I get to the pictures:

• Charlie Brooker has many thoughts on the awesomeness of The Wire.
• It has practically become the official TV show of The Guardian.
• It's Obama's favourite show.
• I bloody love it. And people rarely point out how funny and entertaining it is. A dark kind of funny, but funny nonetheless. "You're supposed to be the good cop, dumb motherfucker!"

And so onto pictures, a few here and (loads and loads) more behind the cut.







( Buyer's market out there. - Templeton )

As may be quite obvious, I have been quite obsessed with making Star Trek crafts of late. At some point I will wean myself onto other fandoms and obsessions. In fact, pretty soon I will be asking for the wisdom of my internet friends to help me decide what the next cross stitch of head-melting-ly biggness will be.

But for now I present to you some nu-Trek uniforms that I would totally wear as a Halloween costume if I were doing the dressing up thing this year. But I'm not. So goodness only knows why I made them. Hopefully someone will want them!

Previews:



( Some more (quite large) pics behind the cut )

And you can see even more pics here.

The rage of Friday has subsided and instead I will choose to focus on how much love I have in my heart for Charlie Brooker, Derren Brown and, of course, Mr Stephen Fry. And bizarrely, Janet Street Porter. That is all.

ETA: And Dave Gorman too.

Nearly 33,000 stitches and four months have gone into this 42cm by 20cm piece of loveliness.

It's very pleasing to have finished a project and actually still like it. Goodness only knows what craziness I'll put myself through next. But for now at least I know that I like this ship. It's exciting!

A wee preview:


( More pics (some very large) behind the cut! )

And as this is the first time I've used my new mood theme I'll take this opportunity to credit: saxa246.

I have just 15 stitches and some backstitching to do on my Enterprise cross stitch, so I won't post a pic until it's done. Promise not to take as long to post that as I did with the Magnificent Flying Petrelli! Very, very excited for it to be complete. And then I'll have to work out what the next giant-ass project that will melt my brain will be...

And I finally chose a Star Trek icon! Woohoo! (Well, not so much chose as "narrowed it down to 2 and then said, screw it, I'll use both.")

Whilst trying to not let my cross stitch Enterprise drive me insane, I've been letting myself be distracted by making some more t-shirts. But the lure of Star Trek managed to get in there too.

I'll post some of the other new stuff later (followers of my Flickr stream or Facebook page will have already seen them) but for now here's a Next Generation type uniform t-shirt and my very own GQMF top.

Previews:



( More under the cut... )

Nearly there... Oh so nearly there....

Brain melty...

eyes squigly....

I clearly am not good at the end game of large cross stitch projects. Will attempt to borrow a better camera for pictures when it's finished as these just aren't coming out well at all. Both nacelles are done though, so I should focus on the happy that is that.

Why do things become automatically cuter when they're made for small people? It's a mystery to me. But a cute one!

I used to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this old blogging malarkey, but now I'm getting to quite enjoy it. Mostly because every time I start to post an Enterprise update I feel like I haven't done much of late, but then I check my last post on the subject and see just how much more is filled in. It's quite encouraging. But I still think the last few weeks of any large project is my achilles' heel. The beginning is just so much more fun. Shapes appearing as if from nowhere seems so much more satisfying than filling in the details. However, I am allowing myself to add dark colours now and I've made my feelings on pale colours pretty plain by now (I know, why on earth would I think an almost entirely pale design wouldn't drive me mad? I am a fool to myself, that's why.).

Excitingness of the week comes courtesy of having completely completed the port nacelle. I took out all the guidelines there since I don't need them anymore and I'm rather pleased with how it looks.

Picture time!

And the winner is...

( Drum roll please... )

More giveaways to follow soon!

I appear to have lost some of the momentum I had previously with this project, but there's not that much further to go now. I trundle on. I may even allow myself to do some dark colours soon and I always like them much better than the pale bastards.

Oh dear. I appear to be anthropomorphizing individual stitches in a craft project again. That might not be a good sign...



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Have been on quite the T-shirt making binge of late. Pictures of Star Trek, Star Wars, Buffy, Batman and Doctor Who inspired craftyness await you after the cut.

Preview:



( Clickety click )