The Hobbit - 1/16 Thorin

"(...) and also a sky-blue one with a long silver tassel.

This last belonged to Thorin, an enormously important dwarf,

in fact no other than the great Thorin Oakenshield himself,

who was not at all pleased at falling flat on Bilbo's mat (...)"

One year. Fuckitty fuck.

Sorry for the lack of news. A lot happened in one year. (And I'm lazy, yeah.) I surprisingly became a professional SF translator, finished a second master's degree in the obscur field of GIS, aaand... decided to create my own company. Oh, and I turned 30. Phew. Busy year. Less surprisingly, it resulted in a quite uneventful private life. Still single. (But no cat !)

Hope you are all doing well =)

The "tapestry-cross-stitch thingy" is going well. I have a few dwarves waiting to meet you. This week : the mighty Thorin.

By the way, the last movie of The Hobbit ? Meh.


What movie / TV-show am I going to ramble about ?

The second season of Black Sails ? (Oh yeah.) Kingsman ? (*nerdgasm*) No. Let's talk about... Murdoch Mysteries.

I sometimes watch TV, but not a lot. Good French shows are scarce, to say the least. But from time to time I'm too tired for English shows and subtitles, so I channel-surf and watch something in French. This is how I discovered Murdoch Mysteries.

Crabtree, Dr Ogden, Murdoch and Brackenreid :

arresting criminals and dealing with new technologies with style

I was asked to describe it. I think I said : "a Canadian kind of steam-punk Sherlock Holmes". It's so much more. The main character is not a badass hero, but a shy, polite and nerdy inspector. Nikola Tesla is a recurring character. Nikola. Tesla. And so is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

What more could you ask for ? A spin-off relating the ridiculous horror novel written by one of the characters ? Check. A second spin-off where the main character ends nowadays and meets the 2010's version of his colleagues ? Double-check.

Anyway : it's fun. It's clever. It has nothing to do with the novel. It's historically instructive. It's sometimes hilarious, especially when Officer Crabtree philosophizes about aliens or cows. It's a great show. Go and watch it !

The Hobbit - 1/16 Dwalin

"It was a dwarf with a blue beard tucked in a golden belt,

and very bright eyes under his dark-green hood."

(Someday I will buy a good camera and you will have a good-quality picture, I promise.)

So Dwalin and his little bald head ! My god the ponies are so disproportionate in the original art. In the same way as Balin, I still have the details to stitch. (I just made the eye to have an idea what it would look like.) And I intent to sew little beads in their beards.

Next time : Thorin !


What show was I watching at the time ?

A few, but let's talk about the finale of How I Met Your Mother. I may not be the biggest fan of this show but I quite liked it, and it has been a constant, tiny part of my (and a lot of others people's) life for many years. And it produced Barney Stinson, so - yeah.

The absolute bastard everybody love.

Some episodes were hilarious. Some were good. I forgot a lot of them, because they are like cookies : they make you feel good at the end of the day, for a short period, and it's all you want from them. Robin irked me a bit (but I like Cobie Smulders ^^), Ted is the standpoint the story needs to be funny, Marshall and Lily are actually my favorite. But it's the team that made a great show, of course.

A have mixed feelings about the finale. I like the fact that the episode takes the time to show the future. I like that this future is realistic. (*SPOILER* : Barney and Robin's divorce, Ted's wife's death ; I actually cried.) I'm not convinced by the "trick", as I want to call it : that the story was not about meeting Ted's wife, but about realizing that he is still in love with Robin.

But all in all, it was a pretty good ending to a legen... wait for it... dary show !

Small project : Yoda (2013)

Do or do no

there is no Try

Mmmmf. Not very satisfied about the face. Maybe I will do it again. Someday. Because I'm the kind of person who, when one of her projects is almost over, loses her motivation and drop her work.

(This one was almost finished one year ago. I just added the details and the sentence this week. This blog seems to have a good influence on me.)

But I'm working on my flaws ! ><


What was I watching at the time ?

No idea. Instead, I will talk about Rise of the Guardians, the DreamWorks movie. Because it is awesome.

Sandy. So badass.

I didn't see it in 2012. I simply was not in the mood. But last month, I was in a FNAC bookstore (it's a big brand in France) and there were these 5 DVDs / 20 euros sales and I took it. (With Hot Fuzz, The King's Speech, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and Intouchables. Nice week.)

It was. So. Great.
I thought it would be a "Hey, let's take these characters children love and put them in a plotless movie but who care, children will want to see them anyway" film and I'm so sorry for ever suggesting it, DreamWorks.

It was funny, in a "oh my gosh I just understood the joke 3 minuts later !" way. Good backrounds for the characters. A bit slow from time to time, but nice fighting scenes (Sandy vs. Pitch, yeaaah !). I loved the voice of Jude Law. Hugh Jackman'as was... okay, I guess.

After, it took me maybe one hour to undestand there were books and to amazon them. ("Amazon" should be a verb. The kind of verb which mean the next day, you have books in your mailbox.) The movie is quite different. They are children books, written by William Joyce, with illustrations, and they are the kind of books you would like to see more often. Although not a child, I took pleasure reading them. A bit like re-reading The Hobbit. I'm a bit in love with Nicholas St. North now.

Large project (2014-?) : The Hobbit - 1/16 Balin

"Instead there was a very old-looking dwarf on the step

with a white beard and a scarlet hood;

and he too hopped inside as soon as the door was open,

just as if he had been invited."

Balin sans the details. (I plan on outlining the different colors with black thread, and maybe a bit of silver or gold for the belt.)

If you remember this post, the dwarves in the original art are not very sexy differents one from the other. The author respected the colors of their hoods though, and kept them in the same order they arrive at Bilbo's.

As I'm a big fangirl SCREW IT I'M A BIG FANGIRL I decided to mix the book and the movie : I will keep the original hoods, but they will have the faces of the movie. So I spent a good thirty minutes studying the skull and the beard of Balin, and I'm quite satisfied.

You can see that I moved them back a rank, too, in order to have Thorin at the head of the company.

The ponies... the ponies are UGLY. Their legs are too short ! And they have no manes ! I will draw one with black thread, too.


 And I was watching...

BLACK SAILS. Pirates ! Yay ! Toby Stephens, oooooooh ! (CAUTION : bad puns coming aboard.) I didn't really like him in Jane Eyre, but Captain Flint can board my ship when he wants.

Come and loot me baby.

Yeah Billy, you can too.

Actually, they must have been terrible times in terrible places. (Especially for women.) But there is something about pirates... The freedom (to die horrible deaths) I suppose. The sun, the sea and those tigh pants maybe.

*updated 04/07/2014*
A nice lady wrote an article which describes exactly my reactions when I was watching the first episode : Black Sails: Pirates were a real thing
I laughed. I laughed all alone in my appartment like the crazy fangirl I am.

Quotes :
"Ship chases are super anti-climactic."
(About Flint :) "And he looks just like a ginger bearded Ser Jorah..."
 "Smart, resourceful, powerful women with *shock* THEIR OWN PLOT LINES but like also twisty connections to other plot points that aren’t one note or strictly about the men in the show. It’s kind of revolutionary."

Large project (2014-?) : The Hobbit - 1/16 The thunder-battle

"The lightning splinters on the peaks, and rocks shiver,

and great crashes split the air

and go rolling and tumbling into every cave and hollow;

and the darkness is filled with overwhelming noise and sudden light."

Okay so maybe not so impressive on the canvas, but not bad either.

I took so long ! (And before you ask, yes, it is Dwalin's head you can see.)

I changed the color of the lightning. The first drops (on the left) are not very pretty, but I got better. The worst was counting the stitches every five minutes.

No stone-giants in the scene =(

During this I watched :

- The three LOTR movies (I needed my fix !)

- The three seasons of BBC's Robin Hood (A.k.a. the show where Irene Adler is the sister of Thorin Oakenshield and she is not the one wearing the more eyeliner ; this drama is so bad it's actually hilarious. Love the sheriff. Love Guisborn's pecs.)

- Seasons 1, 2, 7, 8, 9 and aaaaalmost 10 of Spooks (MI5). At first for Matthew Macfadyen and Richard Armitage, yes, I confess, but finally for the character of Harry Pierce. I mean. What. Writers, how could you. The last episode shit I was spoiled and I decided not to watch it.

A really liked it. I think I learned more about geopolitic stuff watching it than watching the news these last years. (I don't really watch the news.) But it's so depressing. (Ros. Why. And Lucas. And basically everybody. Why.)

Told you it took a long time.

Small project (2013) : R2D2

A bit of Star Wars wisdom

I made this one last year : I was starting a new job and I moved into a house in the middle of nowhere. It was a building with four appartments and then... crops. And fields. And meadows. And a road. And a kind neighbour with internet, thank god.

It was so big. Maybe 100, 120 m² ? There was a TV. I brought my PS2 and my books. And then it started to snow, and it became a bit lonely, even for me.

The job was horrible and I moved on six months later.

This little guy found a home at my friend Zoé's last week ! =)

 Here you go !

What was I watching at the time ?
 The Simpsons, I think. And a bit later I bought a PS3, and I discovered Mass Effect 3. (I must make some cute Garrus cross-stitch art.) I cried when I finished it and I watched every ending three times. It had been a long time since I had been so impressed by a story. It's so perfect, and the music... !

Small project (2013) : Sherlock BBC

"Sherlock Holmes - the Game is on"

"John Watson - not a Couple "

When I don't have any money

When I don't know what to buy for my friends

When I'm looking for a small gift, and I don't want to offer something impersonnal but instead something a bit meaningful, here is what you can get : bookmarks. (These were for a friend's birthday.)

Choosing the colours for Sherlock was easy, for John a bit less. But his sweater is quite horrible, I'm glad.

What show was I watching at the time ? It was September, so I guess the first episodes of some new seasons. 2 Broke Girls, Brooklyn Nine Nine, Downton Abbey maybe ? Not a lot of great new shows this year...