Pushing String

Lauren has informed me (and the rest of the world) that the XML 2005 conference website had a problem accepting poster and artwork submissions. The deadline for both has been extended. If you had already filled out these forms, I’m afraid you’ll have to redo them (or, if you like, you can drop me a line if you’re just submitting artwork).

I figured I might as well take this opportunity to share a snapshot of my stitching project for this year’s conference. I already mentioned it’s sort of a sampler that has a haiku about XML parsing in it. I haven’t stitched the actual lettering yet, but you can see half of an “O” at the beginning of what I will admit is the third line of the poem. Any guesses? :-)

XML haiku project as of 28 October 2005

So far this has been a very enjoyable project. Here are some thoughts on the feel of this piece, along the lines of the analysis I did here for another project in February (which languishes unfinished, by the way).

• Under pressure. I’ve never cranked on stitching like this! If I get really desperate I may have to keep stitching through the beginning of the conference. Lynne Price did that when she first submitted her XML with Koalas piece; each day she’d return it to its display location with more done. She’s one fast stitcher…
• Small but pleasant selection of floss colors. I was a little bored doing the monochromatic border, with only a few tricky holes and the corners for relief. I can’t believe I completed the border first on the theory that it would be a quick way into the piece. That sucker took me about 20 hours! But it was the right decision since it gave me the interoperable framework (heh) that I could now fill in.
• Back to 14-count fabric. Yay! I was really killing my eyes on the siapo project at 18-ct. Of course, I’ve also since found out that I had incipient presbyopia by that point, so that explains a lot. Now I’ve got modern bifocals (they call them “progressive lenses” but I rather think they’re all about regression, don’t you?) and stitching is back to being a breeze.
• Huge canvas. I mentioned at the beginning of this project that the piece of fabric was so large that it’s hard to work with. I managed to figure out how to stitch on airplanes with it nonetheless, but it looks wrinkled right now because I work free-hand, without hoops or frames. They mar the fabric and they keep me from getting right close up to the location where I’m working. But that means I’m constantly rolling or even lightly crushing the fabric. It’ll all come out with a steam iron later (heck, that’s easier to smooth out than the original fold lines from when I got the fabric in the first place — I much prefer buying it in rolls for that reason).
• A hybrid design formed by adapting the work of a real professional. The main pattern came from Pat Emlet at Cross-Stitch-Art.com, who has some gorgeous designs, including –as noted on her home page — Oriental, Celtic, Art Nouveau, and Mackintosh styles. It was the Oriental angle that got me interested, and the pattern I selected even conveniently came with a “hole” for me to put my own wording in. Pat kindly also supplied me with a very cool Asian-style stitched font for my haiku. The trouble was, the haiku didn’t quite fit in the space, so I had to extend the border vertically by more than an inch; move the boat-against-the-sunset picture; ensure that the fabric that came with the kit I bought was big enough for the result; and transfer enough of the original design to my own online pattern to doublecheck that the whole thing hung together. This process was really really fun. (For some definition of fun.)
• Flying blind. Even though it was all designed by computer, I had no real idea how big this project was because I didn’t have a stitch count. Pat uses Pattern Maker software to design her pieces (which I first described here as the program that amusingly uses the .xsd file extension) and she sent me the files to work with in modifying the piece. But I only got the free viewer for Pattern Maker, which doesn’t allow you see stitch counts, and of course the portion that I designed in PC Stitch would give me an incomplete count. I’m starting to be able to eyeball the size of projects now, though.
• Process optimization. The thing that looks like a dashed line in the middle is a guideline that I’ll pull out soon. I’ve finally gotten smart about how to parcel off the work — the guideline corresponds exactly to the horizontal page boundary of my pattern printout, which runs to four pages, and to the 10×10 grid markings provided by the software (I already pulled out a vertical guide-line that I no longer need). Maybe that’s why I stitch — it gives me new ways to feel efficient!

I’m hoping that exposing my obsession with this pastime will inspire someone out there to say, “Hey, I could make something better-looking and more related to XML than that in far fewer hours, and I’m willing to come to Atlanta to show it off…”

Oh, please.

It’s time for me to admit that, having kept my hand in on the stitching, I’ve also been indulging in my other favorite pastime: rock ‘n’ roll. Through craigslist, I found a listing for a just-forming “rootsy bluesy jam band” around the time that I was moving to the Seattle area. Rootsy — sure, sounds good. Bluesy — sign me up. Jam — why not? Soon after, I became their sometimes-lead sometimes-backup singer and general whip cracker.

The first gig was almost accidental: Our fearless leader lives in the Madrona neighborhood and runs their annual outdoor BBQ festival. We got invited to play one set’s worth of material, which served (as we say in my native country of Buzzword-Bingoland) as a forcing function to make us practice. I’d say we managed a creditable 45 minutes…and I won’t go into much detail about the 5 or 10 minutes that weren’t.

The band’s name? That’s a bit of a shaggy dog story. For a week we were Pot Roast, a name selected because our drummer happened to be at a concert the previous night when the delicious smell of pot roast wafted into the venue for some reason. I sort of liked this at first because, well, I like pot roast. But after about 24 hours of reflection, we all came to realize it was — how shall I say? — dumb. Then we settled briefly on The Roasters, which paid homage to our glorious Pot Roast history. By the time we actually got to our first gig, we had become Not Dead Yet. I rather like this one. It evokes Monty Python, asserts that although we may be old rockers we’re not quite keeling over, and reflects the fact that our set list contains only about 50% Grateful Dead songs (there are a couple of us who will actually fight to the death to keep the percentage down). The only difficulty is introducing yourself to the crowd. Band: “Hello, Cleveland! We’re not dead yet!” Audience: “Well, yes, we can see that. But your name is…?”

Here’s where the naming thing gets a bit more interesting. We have now wandered into our second gig situation: a Hurricane Katrina charity event coming up on October 29 in our now-favorite neighborhood. The event is called, yes, MadronaPalooza. Since along with the Dead tunes we’ve also been getting into more New Orleans-style funk jamming, someone suggested at last night’s practice that we should call ourselves the Madrona Social Aid & Pleasure Club. Sold! (I had to read up a little bit on the original SA&PC phenomenon to fully appreciate it.) It occurred to us only after the spur-of-the-moment name change that Not Dead Yet would perhaps have been unseemly for the event.

I was lucky, back in the day, to start out with a successful gigging band my first time out. (I’ll save that story for another time.) Then at college I found myself in a band that occasionally played around Boston and Somerville, then a bunch of dorm-party bands. Then it sort of drizzled down into pickup bands every once in a while. (Oh man, I’ve got some really good stories here too, like one of the Arbortext holiday parties… And then there was last year’s XML Summer School… The band names alone would make a whole post.) I think they were all quite good, actually, but the “seriousness” quotient declined pretty radically. It’s exciting to be part of something a bit more regular — but still in the Will Play for Beer category.

Bob comes through again, with a picture of an astonishing cross-stitch project called dos-stitch. The crafter is explicitly re-inventing traditional stitched samplers for the computer era.

This piece is very much in the spirit of artwork that we’ve seen in past XML conferences and that I hope to see at the XML 2005 artwork exhibit. Are you working on your entry yet? The deadline to fill out the submission form is October 28, so there’s not much time! Drop me a line or leave a comment if you want to bat ideas around.

I’m a bit behind on my XML 2005 project, but I’ve got a bunch of really loooooong flights coming up this month, so I hope to make good progress then. No pictures yet, but I will admit that it involves a haiku about XML parsing, so I guess it’s a kind of sampler too, as well as being painfully geeky.

I took a little hiatus there — if anyone’s still paying attention :-), here are some tidbits that may amaze or amuse you.

Bob DuCharme continues to feed me craft-related links. Here’s an article on CNN.com called “Pundits and knitters find common ground in Web logs”. Yeah, it’s two months old, so sue me…

I really need to get off my backside and install something to kill the trackback spam. Mostly they’re boring, but one came in today that I thought was kind of funny. It was on my old Ripping the X off her varsity sweater… post. The text of the trackback is simply “Ripping the X off her …”, and — wait for it — it leads to a bondage-related pr0n site. That’s not what I originally had in mind…

John Cowan’s Recycled Knowledge blog continues to delight. In this post he notes that authentic and effendi share a Greek root. Cool…

I got Eli the moby version of this Opteron workstation for our 15th wedding anniversary. Ah, geeks in love. We haven’t come close to using its awesome capacity yet, but we’ve noticed that its rendering of the “Matrix” screensaver is blazingly fast, so that’s good at least. :-) I think the old gift guidelines are out of date. In the lists of “traditional” and “modern” anniversary gifts you find things like cotton, crystal, leather, and watches. Maybe we need the 21st century version (or maybe we need a fresh list every year, given that the singularity is approaching and all): wifi, iPods, workstations, plasma TVs…