the march of the penguins

This week has been very strange hasn't it?  We've been settling into our new routines and way of being, learning to work around the others in our household so that everyone can do what they need to.  We've set up our guest bedroom as an office for my husband.  My two adult children are both at home and taking online college classes for the rest of the school year.  I'm teaching a middle school costume design class via Zoom. No actual costumes will get made but there will be lots of research and designing. It's a major adjustment for everyone. 

I've been struggling a bit with being able to concentrate on anything for long.  I've also been dealing with an asthma flare-up triggered by seasonal allergies (everything is blooming here in California) and fueled by anxiety.  I have some more meds now thanks to a video call with my doctor who shared how stressed he and his colleagues are and how he goes home as little as possible to protect his family.  How thankful I am for our medical professionals right now.  What a task they face. 

I have been stitching though and I've been working on these penguin pincushions.  These are papa emperor penguins with their chicks.  This design uses something called thread painting, where you use different colors or shades of thread and blend them.  For the yellow on the papa penguin I used three shades of yellow and one of orange and used just one strand of each.  I'm no expert but I've gotten better with practice.  I've found this book to have very clear instructions and examples of thread painting.  

The sides of these pincushion design are grey and have icy ocean waves with tiny silvery fishes.  When my children were little we had a membership to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the penguins were always a favorite.  The penguins they have are not emperor ones like these but my daughter had a bit of a penguin obsession so we watched all the penguin movies!  

I have these mostly all stitched up and ready for stuffing now and when finished they will be part of a future Etsy shop update.