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Okay, here's the deal: I'm so far behind with everything that I've been wanting to post here that it's threatening to overwhelm and depress me, so in an effort to regain my equanimity I'm going to take advantage of the fact that Mr. Citrus Moon is working all day today, and make one long, rambling entry, adding items little by little in an effort to crawl out from under the pile a bit and maybe get my happy-happy groove back. I'm going to drink 2.5 glasses of wine (because that's how much I think I can drink and still leave enough for the pasta sauce I will also be tossing together today) and just throw a bunch of different stuff in here all higgeldy-piggeldy like (but really only because it gives me a chance to say "higgeldy-piggeldy"). Are You Ready? ...Okay, here goes:

In the spirit of the day, I give you, first of all, the Higgeldy Piggeldy verse collection to get you in the mood, and a pattern set lately in search of a name.

Op Ancient is a set that reminds me both of ancient mosaics and op art; I've made an example layout that stacks three of these tiles, but I didn't have time to actually do the CSS, so it's just a .gif, for the moment at least.

Blueberry Picker (hi, Aimee!) is a set I've been holding back on, because I have a kind of cool layout idea for this that I would like to mark up, but never mind - maybe later.

Hewn & Hammered is a site I've been meaning to post forever. It's a very attractive blog "all about Prairie, Craftsman and Mission Architecture, Art and Design", which is a great idea. I eagerly look forward to their promised "Textiles" gallery. Now, ordinarily, I should have something perfect to go with this post, but let's go for a near-miss instead: Snowdrop is a pattern that I put together using this French art nouveau fabric sample (from another site) as a source. It took me quite a while, because even though the swatch looks very straight and even, it actually isn't, which is always a problem when you want to use the actual original design from piece of fabric. In an image reproduction there are almost always irregularities on the vertical and/or horizontal axis, so it's usually quite a challenge to get something that will repeat properly. I loved this, though, and kept at it. If I had time, I'd do this pattern in about 20 different color variations. Anyway, have a look at the whole site -there are some beautiful things in there. Here is the category index.

I recently read Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike, which is basically a "prequel" to Shakespeare's Hamlet, and this is exactly the sort of book I love - a delectable of fusion of fiction, mythology, history and ethnology, all wrapped up in a fascinating, atmospheric tale. While still in the grip of the story, I created the dark version of this pattern set, which (at the time, at least) reminded me of a sort of medieval embroidered wall hanging. I named it "Grendel" in honor of that famous Danish beast of mythology. As regards the patterns, though, I have a problem. I have two monitors, both recently (supposedly) calibrated with the Adobe Gamma program. On one of my monitors, the dark versions in this set are perfect; on the other, almost too dark to make out. Which one is right(er)? I'd like to fix the brightness, if they are actually too dark, but I don't want to make them lighter than what I'm seeing on my primary monitor.... If you are seeing them as too-dark, do let me know. And, oh! I almost forgot! I have example boxes, dark and light.

Here's a set I made some time ago called "Song of herself"
; I don't remember anything about making this, or why I called it that. I also have no example boxes or layouts to show you on this one, so let me just take this moment to link to a fun zefrank tile toy: just keep rolling your mouse over the tiles to see the various permutations of each design. Then go have a look at the collage maker, the extra-cool "scribbler" (here's my scribbler output - nicey-nice) and all the other many, many groovy things at zefrank.

Here's a pattern couple I've called "Hansel" because for some reason they sort of remind me of a German fairy tale in which everything is quaint and rustic and pretty, and then, sure enough, someone has to come along who wants to burn you alive and then eat you. Here's an example box, but it's just a .gif, because I'm too lazy to do anything else at the moment.

So there you have it. I've finished my 2.5 glasses of wine, and I've made a tiny dent in my backlog pile, though not much headway with my "link-to" pile. On that front, let me at least leave you with MocoLoco, an elegant blog for modern contemporary design. Wallcoverings and floorcoverings are two of my favorite categories here, natch.

Ciao for now, babies.

Posted by taz on August 22, 2004 at 04:37 AM in Patterns, Site News | Permalink

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Comments

Truly nifty post today. I really enjoyed Higgeldy Piggeldy, Taz.

Posted by: Anne | Aug 23, 2004 8:43:29 AM

i enjoyed... everything! Thank you, Taz!

Posted by: anan | Aug 23, 2004 9:13:23 AM

Howdy, T... I love Blueberry Picker(s) and Mesmerized (reminds me of sitting in a bathroom staring at an old tile floor just thinking, mesmerized even...)

Posted by: aimee | Aug 27, 2004 6:51:46 PM

You asked for beautiful textiles at Hewn & Hammered...and we deliver :) Enjoy...

Posted by: jm | Jan 12, 2005 10:59:15 AM