Now hear me out…

Part 2 is preemptive but iykyk

Crocheting every movie I watch this year until I run out of patience or get better at it part 1

What if you drew Mona the Vampire but did it from memory and also she’s a teenager

It is autumn, my dudes

It’s probably not finished yet. I’m unsure about including the poem at the top, and my own journey is far from over. But, it’s done enough for me to share while I wait!

It has been rolled and hung and folded and stroked and cradled. It has been admired, and treasured. It has also been changed - bits have been removed and permanently marked. It will never be the same again.

This fabric has felt as I have felt - I have acted out my pain upon it. It has been through what I have been through - but it has also been dyed and dried and steamed with care, love, and tenderness.

And lastly, the method and materials themselves. The act of embroidery is a violent one - I have cut into this fabric, ripped holes into it and sewn them back together. I have stabbed a needle into this fabric thousands of times.

There are patches of different fabrics sewn into the piece, which includes a patch of satin from my prom dress - it’s a piece of the young girl whose journey was just beginning, who didn’t know what the next 10 years would have in store.

These spots and sequins are the patches of disease that can only be identified invasively. You could remove them with blades and the “canvas” would look intact from a distance - but doing so would leave behind scars and holes, evidence of what was once there.

the glimpses of hope one comes across along the path to diagnosis and understanding. There are sequins and embroidered spots all over the piece - these are spaced at random and designed to be intentionally difficult and time-consuming, but possible, to unpick.

The stitches are running stitches, some are in contrasting colours but others intentionally blend into the background. These represent the continuous and often invisible nature of chronic conditions. There are glass beads along some of these lines, which represent

The first thing is the size of it - it’s intentionally big. It’s unmanageable, unwieldy, difficult to see all the detail at once. It is bigger than I am and yet you have to get up close to really see it and all of its parts.

It’s really quite personal for me and steeped in meaning. It represents a lot of the emotions and frustrations I’ve been feeling this year around my personal health and how menstrual health conditions are treated both in society and medically.

I’ve been a little quiet here recently but over the past few months I’ve been slowly adding to this big (like 2m tall) embroidery piece…

I desperately miss drawing things and really hoping I can get back to it at some point in the next few weeks but I am… so tired

I am officially giving up on trying to do any kind of October drawing challenge. Here’s some baked goods instead, drawn without references from the back of a car in the southern bits of France!

The prompt for peachtober day 2 was sparkle so obviously it’s Chip Skylark

Picking up #peachtober24 several days late 🌼

There’s a little corner of Bow that’s just a street but it’s a street with the name of my hometown