Sunday, February 13, 2011

Valentines Day Craftbook Challenge Fail

Check out this cute little frog! A dear reader, Raquel, made him following my instructions for the felt owl measuring tape and was kind enough to send me a photo of him. He is so great, good job Raquel. (I really love getting this kind of mail, if anyone out there completes any of my projects, please please please send me a photo!)

I want to thank you all again for entering the giveaway, your kind comments were overwhelming as always. Congratulations to the the winners! Gem of GemmaJoy, from Brisbane Australia, and Kristin of Kleas, from Minneapolis MN, your keychain clutches and earrings are in the mail. You both have lovely blogs and I am so happy that the randomizer picked you :)
So I had this fabulous idea to make myself some cute zakka-style oven mitts for Valentines Day. I don't even have plain-old regular oven mitts and I burn myself every time I try to take something out of the oven so I was pretty excited about this project. I gathered up my materials: some pretty vintage cotton rickrack and Japanese crochet lace trim, some linen-esque fabric with a cute red stripe pattern, pretty red and white dot lining and some space age silvery batting. And to make my project over the top, cross stitched little fawns from the wonderful book, A Rainbow of Stitches, by Agnes Delage-Calvet, Anne Sohier-Fournel, Muriel Brunet, and Francoise Ritz. 

How can this go wrong I ask you? OK, on to the FAIL part of my Valentines Day Craft Book Challenge project...
Do you see what I see? Maybe we need to do a little closeup: 

Is it just me, or does that little fawn look, sort of, well, Grinchy? I think it isn't just me. These little fawns are evil twins. I can't have them on my oven mitts. They look like they might burn me with their disapproving stares. Really, I don't know how I didn't notice this until I had appliqued the little red hearts and rick rack around each of them.

I think maybe it is just one of those problems that eyes are so dang expressive, and my little half-stitch is somehow making the deer all squinty and mean, and if you tried this, your half-stitch would make the deer look sad, or happy, or confused etc...

The project picture of these little fawns in the book look decidedly sweet, which is why I chose them in the first place:
So what am I going to do with these little hearts? Should I make them into snarky anti-valentines? Give them to someone nearsighted? Carefully unpick all the stitches and burn them so they can't come alive at night and do the bidding of an evil overlord? (perhaps I have watched too much science fiction)

Happy Valentines Day everyone! Tell a friend how much you care about them.

10 comments:

  1. Bummer! I hate when you get to the end of a project and realize something wrong with it!
    Regardless of the eyes, the pot holders are super super cute.
    Can you give them sunglasses or something? ;)

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  2. Thanks for the tip about Kate of Oodles of Doodles on my blog!

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  3. I think ur cross stitch work is wonderful! I see all the work & love that went into those little deer & they appear very sweet. Just a little suggestion ~ perhaps you worked so hard & intensely on the little deers you would feel better about them if you set them aside(as is)for a little while.

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