LIFE: Photo An Hour Feb 2015

Saturday became a Saturday without any plans. By the time Friday was upon us, Joe was sick and the forecast was suggesting another 3" of snow. But no snow came, and Joe was feeling (somewhat) better, but like January's #photoanhour, estate sales were bleak and few & far between, so we were a meh about them all. In the end our day ended up revolving around one of our shared loves - records. 

8 am // Saturday morning started like any other - snuggles and play time with teeny tiny (who actually turned four in the past week). Normally she has her butt up against the air vent in my craft room, then see's me and get's all "come and rub my tummy" but today she was all about owning a paper bag. 

9 am // After picking up a handful of cheap original 7" singles (think Johnny Cash, Michael Jackson, Motown) the week previous I decided it was high time I got around to decorating our single shelves in our record room. 

10 am // Some people read, some people poke the internet, I cross stitch to pass the time while we worked out what we were going to do, or think about doing. This Transformers piece is one I've been working on since Christmas, I have a bit of a love hate relationship with it but the end is in sight.

11 am // Because bacon and egg sarnie. Need I say more?!

12 pm // Getting out in the frozen tundra is an effort in itself with all the layers, boots, hats, and frozen snow, especially with it being -18C most of the week. Even Iceland has been warmer than Detroit. Brrrr. But I get cabin fever pretty bad so sometimes you just have to get out regardless.

1 pm // We ended up in Hamtramck. After coming across this Metro Times article about Detroit's best record stores and having not hit any for a while (plus we finally got our brand new turntable at the start of the week wup) we decided to hit Detroit Threads which is a mashed up mix of records (lots and lots of techno) mixed with vintage clothes and souvenir tees. 1 pm hit as we were making a chilly dash back to the car and this building caught my eye with it's old painted advertisement. Hamtramck is one of those places that is now firmly on my to explore list, with it's Polish heritage and now increasing Indian population, it's home to some great places to eat, or so I hear.

2 pm // By now we'd explored Solo Records (super friendly) in Royal Oak and were leaving Found Sound (super hipster) in Ferndale with a bag of records in tow. Horrid Michigan winter grey skies for added gloom.

3 pm // New records means an afternoon listening to them. Like we need an excuse.

4 pm // Finally got around to sorting out some threads and starting off those first stitches of a new cross stitch project. This'll end up as a group of daffodils i'm going to stuck upon and use for a greetings card, much like I did with the ones at Christmas. It's actually a free chart from DMC - yey.

5 pm // Weakness of living near a Taco Bell is that I can't turn down a trip, smothered burrito for tea it is then.



6 pm // Pretty much starting the evening as we intend to go on - a date with the remote for Netflix and Hulu (gotta love how our DVD player has a Netflix button, oh modern technology). Between watching South Park, anime and old X-Men cartoons it was a night of catching up with the Metro Times and blog reading.

7 pm // Oh and drinking whiskey, because that's how I roll. I tend to call it a day at this point, because I run out of ways of showing blog reading, TV watching and whiskey drinking.

I guess you could say Saturday summed me up pretty well - whiskey, records, cats, cross stitch, Detroitness and food. If that sparks your interest you can always follow my day to day going's on over on my instagram if you haven't been inflicted with it all ready!

So that was my Saturday, how was yours?

CROSS STITCHING: VW Bugs and Vintage Record Players

Me and Joe play the punch buggy game* all the time - be it during a quick drive to the post office or a road trip somewhere. It's always fun and I nearly always loose, it's just one of our little couple quirks. In my stitching mission to sew things that are personal to me/us it was Joe's suggestion to stitch something related to a VW Bug, I mean they are pretty cool right?

The design is adapted from a cross stitching book by Jeanette Crews Designs titled 40 Classic Cars - One Nighters which had a delightfully cute 1960's VW Bug - a design I just repeated lots and lots. Keeping things simple, each car is stitched in just one colour (colours reflecting the actual ones we see here and there in the old Metro Detroit area) and finished off with a simple black backstitching design. Popping it into a 6" wooden hoop its yet another addition to that wall of mine.



Going along with stitching more personalized self created designs I thought it was high time I tried stitching something vinyl record related, what better than trying to recreate our vintage 1970's Sony player - a player we picked up at an estate sale for a mind blowing $3 (yes really). It certainly wasn't the easily task, what with trying to stitch a circle so it actually looks like a record was on the tricky side but I like how it's turned out.



Granted I jazzed up the colour from it's vintage brown into a more dashing blue, but most of the dials and so on are pretty much in their correct positions. The back stitching was pretty much free hand, a tale of learning and stitching as I went along. Just excuse all the mess in the background of that image - that's the packing pile for moving.

I've even managed to bulk stitching some simple markers in blackstitch lettering for the back of my pieces because I totally suck at remembering to do so and it's nice to be able to that somewhere a reminder of just when something was stitched (I mean aside from my blogs and stuff).

This is probably an excellent time to tell you about that other blog Hook Stitch Hoop that I've been working on, one more dedicated to my cross stitching, works in progress and the like. So if that's you're thing too, make sure to follow along!

What have you been crafting lately?

* Punch buggy game is one children often play and, on spotting a VW Bug one gets to punch the upper arm of their team mate, shouting either "Slug Bug"/"Punch Buggy" or shouting out the colour of said car.