I Feel Unproductive Because I've Not Managed To Finish Anything, But Here's What I've Been Working On.

I feel unproductive because I've not managed to finish anything, but here's what I've been working on. This stitch takes so much time. The above represents about an hour and a half's work, and I'm maybe just over a quarter done on this code.

I couldn’t work on the Iliad this morning due to lack of working phone to take a picture with, so I worked on this instead.

It took hours longer than cross-stitch, but I like it.

Irritatingly, though, the QR reader app on my phone can’t read this one; and if it cant be read, i’ll have to undo it and rework it until t can. Though I’m given to believe the app I have is rather crap so I’ll try a few more out before undoing those hours of work. (And if anyone else has a QR app please feel free to try reading it and let me know if you have any luck)

Edit: my partner's QR android app can read it just fine, and that's good enough for me. Yay for not having to undo work.

This represents about five hours work. It's not the sewing that takes so much time, but the jumping around, finding the next spot, occasionally undoing, realising you've forgotten a solitary N somewhere and finding the thread out again just to fill in that one letter. This is just under half of the planned piece. It's William Blake's 'The Divine Image'.

your august 15 post, i have a question about. im a former crafts grad. did you crochet the piece, dip in slip then fire? i ask because someone at school was doing something similar, and I haven't seen much of this done but really interesting!

Yup! That was pretty much it.

I used a cheap acrylic yarn (because wool is expensive, and it seems a waste to just burn it), which let off a *lot* of black smoke as it burned off. I used a crochet hook a couple of sizes bigger than is recommended for the yarn, to make sure it was hole-y enough (both for aesthetic reasons, and to help air circulate in the firing). I dipped it in earthenware slip, let it dry out for a few days, did a very slow fire, and then glazed with a transparent glaze. 

And of course this is the other thing I spent my weekend working on. I'm about 25% done. Book 2 is the longest book of the Iliad, at 877 lines. I'm around line 220.

I'm working on this book a lot more slowly than I did book 1. But I wasn't also working for a PhD when I did book 1. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

I'm hoping I can finish this whole project at around the same time I finish my PhD, which gives me 3-4 years more.

Day 37.

Day twenty.