Now that it's not April Fool's Day any more...

No, me starting a blog was not an April Fool's Day joke. Whether you continue to get one post a day may become one, though, but right now I am in bed with this horrible cold and a large amount of crafty things on my mind. My muse, just lately, has become very demanding - I've started to stop visualising it as another image of myself, like a shoulder angel with a needle, and started to think of it as, well, a bit like this:

These are plush personality cores of GLaDOS from Portal, and I found them here. They're by Katy Creider from Oklahoma and if only GLaDOS had a craft core, this would be what my muse would look like. It gives me the passive aggressive treatment, tries to double-bluff, tricks me into buying ridiculous things and promises me that there will be sales (the sales are a lie). It is also very enthusiastic, and on deciding that more projects than I can possibly finish in a whole year would be a great idea, demands that I start all of them first.

However, I am overriding my muse for the moment, for the sake of the charity auction, and working only on things which I have offered for said auction. One of which are the microembroidery Willow pattern keyrings that I promised I would show you as soon as I could, and in fact, here is the first work in progress shot, taken in front of my bedroom window since it is in fact a lovely day. (Which makes me almost wish it was a dreadful day so I could appreciate having a cold.)

As you can see, the first of  them is nearly finished, I am just outlining it, and there is an outline ready for the second.
This design is being done in cross stitch in one strand of DMC stranded cotton over one strand of DMC white linen, and I have gone wrong in a couple of places - easy to do when you're working so small - but I don't think it's that noticeable. Progress has been quite quick - what you're seeing here is about two day's work - but then that may have been a mistake. I really should be sparing my shoulder and elbow joints more. Time will tell.

DMC products are among the most easily obtainable on the market, and magazine designs like this are often charted in DMC, but it's actually easier for me to get Anchor threads - I have to go all the way to Manchester for DMC, and since there's a lot of things in Manchester I can't get anywhere else, I invariably end up spending far too much money.
The muse, of course, doesn't help, with a shopping list that basically consists of, 'SHINY!'