Giglamps rambles

It's time for another round of "Shunt everything off of Neon because it has fuck all storage space and it's having a universe-ending conniption"; I knew going into it back in 2023 that 128GB is bugger all storage, but this load of ol' pants was all I could afford at the time. While that whole drama was going on, I did a bit more housekeeping on Rose Fossil, trying to bring some discipline to years worth of files that were lazily dumped on there to sort later and among all this chaos, I found more old art... it's time for the Saturn pattern! This is one of those things I've been meaning to get a better photo of for ages but for now, here's the general gist of it. This is the final version of the pattern, from 2024, based on the striped version of the logo, with French knots and Smyrna stitches for the stars, and using some lovely variegated thread for the nebulae. Can't remember the specific DMC number but it might be called Bougainvillea. It's ...

Some more doodles and old art today, rustled up while I was attempting to tidy some folders of doom. Maybe someday I will get all these bits of external storage properly organised and backed up in a sensible, logical manner that would be easy to navigate, but today is not that day. Anyway, onto the art... Starting with this impromptu scribble from a couple of years ago. This is an idea for the redraw of issue 2 of Facts About the World. It will see the light of day eventually. I am determined .  Jonesy and a bit of art style practice, which I am keen on in terms of all the texture and what-have-you... would've helped if I'd actually written down which brushes were used for all this, really. More Facts stuff, with a logo design for the Nautilus Technology Expo. This one was inspired by some retro Sega designs, mainly the PAL region logo for the Dreamcast (the blue version, superb) and the STI logo, as in Sega Technical Institute . Quite an unfortunate acronym, to say the least.....

Haven't got much to say at the moment as there hasn't been anything going on, unless you count grinding away against an immovable creative block, carrying on with cross-stitch (I'm determined to get that craft drawer cleared out this year and just keep any stash contained in the cupboard; it'd free up a lot of storage space) and generally wandering around. It's from those wanderings that these pictures have mostly originated, so let's have a look... Relatable priorities here. A nicely designed sticker on the back of an old clock (the clock itself was nowt special - I bloody love a good clock, vintage Seiko ones especially, but this one was just plain uninspiring.) A piggy bank in the midst of an identity crisis. Another abandoned shitter in the wild (didn't intend for this to be a recurring theme, I just seem to have coincidentally been coming across a lot of discarded thrones lately.) View across the grass towards town in one of my usual haunts. Stone comme...

For today, we have a Janlynn kit from the '90s, which I did as a little breather project after finishing something that took far longer than expected. I framed this one earlier today seeing as it's been hung up to dry all week and I needed the octopus to dry some socks (rock 'n' roll, I know!) Also still in the process of re-organising this room, so here it is for now next to a highly relatable Joe Lycett print, on top of the chest of drawers. I'll work out somewhere more salubrious for it to sit some other time.

More crafts for today and to start with, here's a longstitch kit from the '80s, designed by Roger Reinardy. This one inexplicably contained some dull grey patches so I improvised with leftover yarn from a previous project, to keep it looking light and airy. With the photo, it was originally my intention to have the sheep wearing the "Scotland's for me!" thimble on its head, but no such luck, it wouldn't balance there. Alas, what could have been. A cross-stitch based on a pattern from the '80s; the designer wasn't credited. This kit was an Avon Needlecraft effort with tapestry gear to make a draught excluder, but the pattern was difficult to read, faded and damaged in places, so I remade it in Winstitch and set about making this as an incredibly long-winded proof-reading exercise, to weed out any errors in the new version of the pattern (it's very easy to get snowblind with these things.) I still need to get 'round to re-uploading this one. A sh...

Now to the intermittent world of cross-stitch patterns that I've designed myself; this is another thing where I'd like to do more of it, but just don't have the time and energy. This idea came up after playing Alone in the Dark sent me on a bit of an Art Deco kick, and the design was made specifically for the frame. I also experimented with variegated threads here to try to replicate the slightly mottled look of stained glass windows, when the light is shining through them. Of course, achieving Peak Cat, Alan always wants to play with my decorations when I'm photographing my projects, but when the project is a portrait of him, he goes off for a nap. The cross-stitch without its frame, before being washed and ironed. The white areas had to be stitched with plain thread because the colour I originally tried, a delicate mix of pale cream and pink tones, looked like it would make a nice, gently marbled effect but in practice, it just looked like the thread was dirty. And he...

For today, here's a cross-stitch that I did in spring last year, one of a set of designs from a magazine - I can't remember who the designer is and the patterns are in one of several ring binders which would take ages to rummage through, so I'll have to come back and update this post with that information later. For now, here's the cross-stitch, photographed with Alan's kind assistance.