So this wee project was born from my lust for these Grove iPhone cases, here. Sublime - but ridiculously expensive for a poor PhD student such as myself. So, in sifting about through the internet for ideas, I came across these here, and immediately bought one. I wasn't even sure what I would do with it (or if it would even arrive in wee New Zealand), or how I would decide on a design, but it was one of those things that are perhaps just...fate (dum dum duuuuuum).
Fate, impulse buy - same diff, right?
Anyway - its taken me 12 days of about 2 hours per evening to complete it (and if I'm honest, one whole half day last weekend...its kind of thesis writing, right? Its got a Dros on it!), and here it is. I did try to straight-stitch in wing veins between the white wing-crosses, but due to the black background you just couldn't see them, so I took them out. I should have perhaps cross stitched in the veins themselves - but meh. Next time maybe.
There's also a wee story behind my superb, one-of-a-kind, indie design (yeah, I'm gonna milk this); my original idea, which you can see on the pattern below, was to have multi-coloured beakers and flasks.
Generic 'science', but bright and happy. The supe walked through our office one avo and saw me tinkering on it and proceeded to ask why exactly I was drawing chemistry signifier's, since I was a Drosophila geneticist. (not the 'work, minion!' I was guiltily expecting). I proceeded to have a wee moan about how that would be really hard, and he basically flat out challenged my creative/design/cross stitch abilities.
Challenge accepted.
With such a 'pixel restriction', I had to keep it fairly simple, and in recompense for the thousands of male Dros I have killed over the course of my thesis, its a boy (ten points for Slytherin if you can tell me how you know that to be true).
And just because I can, and love photos, and love this freaking fly - here's a million progress shots (spot the one fine day we've had in the last 2 weeks!):
Yeah, it felt pretty slow going right up until the last couple of threads of blue. And I perhaps should have used a better colour to show up the contrast in the flowers, leaves and vines (for which I was chastised by the supe - the scale is wrong, how could I? Hilarious.). The fraying sitch is also going to suck, and I doubt this is a case that will last long when confronted with scraping pockets and icky fingers (not my own, of course - all those miscreants I call friends).
And because I know you are a purist and love such details, the back is not as neat as it should be; I started out with good intentions, but....yeah, meh.
You can have a squiz at the pics native, here.
So that's that. Umm...thesis writing?
No comments:
Post a Comment