Meaning Behind Cape Cod Dogs

Cape Cod Dogs they don't chase cars they like to pick up girls in bars!

I have been meaning to write a bit about the meaning behind this canvas for me. I've gotten several comments about this design really meaning men were dogs, but for me, this isn't the case. I chose the design originally because I knew it would make my husband laugh. He lived along the Massachusetts coast for around ten years and loved the place and the people, so this very typical local dive celebrates that time in his life.

The artist Elizabeth Mumford has many paintings similar to this one--featuring mermaids paired with other creatures and funny sayings in the border. If you browse a bit on her website you'll see many designs that are like Cape Cod Dogs. These are signature elements of her painting style.
http://www.elizabethmumford.com/

There are mermaids as nurses, mermaids decorating the Christmas tree on a cold winter night, or in the kitchen with a Golden Retriever cooking. You should know that there is a famous tavern on Nantucket called The Black Dog which is named after the founder's black lab mixed breed dog. Dogs are often symbols of the ocean-faring folks in Massachusetts.

Knowing that and that Ms. Mumford replaces women in her art with mermaids, the mermaids and dogs in Cape Cod Dogs are stand-ins for the regular people who live on the Cape. So this piece is a tribute to those folks who were my husband's friends, but symbolized by magical creatures. That's one reason I stitched all the liquor bottles in sparkling metallics. These are magic potions instead of beer and cheap hard liquor or wine, capable of turning the most normal bleached blonde into a mermaid or her suitor into a fabulous cuddly talking dog. Or in making the bar a home-away-from-home for people who are out for a drink and good conversation with their neighbors and friends.

Cape Cod Dogs is the friendly and comforting Cheers bar of the tv show brought to life by needle and thread and populated by fabulous creatures.

At least that is how the design is playing out in my head. That's the fantastic thing about painted canvases, you see. One takes the original artist's design and turns it into something personal and unique....

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

New Wine and Champagne Glasses (Plus Wood)

As you can see, I've redone the wine glass by the mermaid's hand, stitching in slanting long diagonal stitches in one strand of clear Accentuate paired with one strand of red Sulky machine sewing thread in the Holoshimmer 145-6014. Sulky makes lots of styles of thread for machine embroidery. Holoshimmer looks like a thin strip of Fyrewerks if you are familiar with that thread.

The wine glasses just above the dog's whiskey glass have been redone as well. They are in two shades of blue Accentuate and my clear 300 Accentuate, one strand in tent stitches.

Here's a closeup of yesterday's glasses for comparison purposes.


I like the new version of barware, although I probably will outline the red wine glass with a thin black thread which is how it is painted once the bar top is stitched.

I've started on the wooden wall and shelves behind the bar. The wall itself is completely stitched in my Soy Luster Solid Color #Sedona Hills 176, one strand, in Alternating Oblong Cross, a stitch I found on page 22 of Stitches for Effect. This is my long skinny cross stitch done over three horizontal threads. Do one skinny cross stitch, drop down a thread, repeat the stitch, jump back to the original position and stitch, drop down again, etc. In the photo it looks like brick stitch but in person you can see the Xs and also some of the paint underneath. I am hoping this looks like the rough texture of a plywood wall. These beer joints all along the ocean south of Boston are thrown together things, meant for the summer trade and then expanded as more people live in the area year around.

The line that separates the plywood portion from the shelves of alcoholic beverages is just continental stitch in some of my light brown Trebizond silk perle. I also stitched the white frame at one side of the window, using white DMC cotton perle in size #5. This is not my favorite thread (I prefer #8 perle for 18 count) but it raises the section that was stitched to make it more like woodwork. I switched to #8 white DMC cotton perle for the round duck head piece on the wood panel and also used the smaller size on the square framed thing I plan to make a square bottle of liquor. Various thicknesses of thread can really come in handy. It's one thing that makes the Kreinik line of metallics so important to me--I can choose from various thicknesses in the colors for various effects.

The edge of the shelves is a line of continental stitch in another shade of Trebizond silk, but this time I unraveled the Trevizond's perle twist to give me three plies. Trebizond unravels on me as I stitch and I tried using it this way to see if that looked as good as regular Trebizond (on the wall under the window) and stitched easier. I like how it looks, although it isn't as raised as the Trebizond under the window. But that's ok for what I'm doing. When a thread misbehaves, if you can't set fire to it (I kept my Water N Ice from unraveling as I worked with it by touching a blown out hot match head to the end) then try using it another way.

The last thing I've done is to start on the background of the shelves. I am basketweaving this in three shades of brown. I discovered yesterday that the dark brown Sampler Thread I planned to use is actually dark olive brown so I pulled a skein of #838 DMC cotton floss out and used it for the darkest shadows (4 plies). I've finished those and have started on the lightest background using my Needle Necessities overdyed cotton # 125 (also 4 plies). The medium shades will be a mix of these two cotton flosses, probably half and half although I'll experiment to get the look I want of something between the very dark brown shadows and the cinnamon brown highlights. By the way, I'm mostly turning Cape Cod Dogs upside down for my tent stitching of the shelves. They are easier to reach without touching other stitched areas that way.

I really have gotten into this piece, leaving poor South Seas Fiji languishing, but I never was a big fan of rotations because I get obsessed with what will happen next in my stitching. Think of Cape Cod Dogs as a really good soap opera....

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow