Hail The All-Thumbs!

I've been woefully neglectful of this blog--must attempt to rectify that.

Recently, I came to the decision that I wanted to make something. This amuses my family greatly, because (to be quite honest) I am woefully incompetent when it comes to artsy-craftsy stuff.

But do I let it stop me? Of course not. Like any good heathen would, I decided to make a valiant attempt to craft something. For personal betterment, just to say I could do it, and because I wanted to find some way to honour the Aesir and Asynjur. So I settled on the one thing that I am least qualified to do:

I'm going to try embroidering an altar-cloth for my harrow. For somebody whose last attempt at embroidery was several disastrous (not to mention injurious...for me) attempts to do cross-stitch when I was 14, this is quite an ambitious undertaking. After all, a 4x4 altar cloth is much different from a simple little "WELCOME TO OUR HUMBLE HOME" sampler done from a kit.

The cloth isn't going to be anything really super-elaborate. No petit-point, no latter-day Bayeux Tapestry, nothing like that. Just a simple red jersey altar-cloth with Mjolnir stitched in black on a circular gold background, with the Elder Futhark embroidered in black around it on a white ring. And a silver border, because I like silver. A friend of mine jokingly suggested I work a little Stanley Cup in there somewhere, but that is a project for another time.

In preparation for the task, I have been attempting to embroider various runes (on pieces of the cloth that I'll be using for the big project) with satin-stitched backgrounds. They, of course, look like ass.

I'm well aware that this post is useless without pictures, but please bear with me--the computer that my digital camera hooks up to is currently on the blink, so I can't upload anything yet. I'll do my best to keep you updated on the progress of the work.

Please, friends--try to contain your giggles.