Progress on my big, speckled forehead

Another 50 x 50 stitch section done! And this one only took me weeks.

Where I am, 9/13/14.

I have several thousand more stitches to go on my Spanish Eyes self portrait. I know what I'm going to do this fall and winter.

Spanish Eyes is based on this original self portrait.

So many more stitches to go. And library books to make up.

Accidental Bestiality (Or, Sexual amnesia and Cold War vixens)

Here is my latest stitched, card catalog card for a made-up book.  It's a 1951, torrid little page turner called "She Roared: True Tales of Accidental Bestiality and the Good Americans Who Lost their Lives."

She Roared. Mixed media and hand embroidery. 2014.

In the late 1940s, there were several unexplained gorings among the god-fearing, traveling men in upstate New York. In Utica, detectives never figured out how Frank Watta throat got ripped out. And the Poughkeepsie police never did locate the rest of Bill Bettlefield's torso.

Until Josef Lupin put the pieces together, so to speak, and recognized the Red Menace.

Detail from She Roared.

Soon, other men (with missing fingers, torn of ears and other scars) came forward and told their stories, in trembling, chain-smoking, tape recorded sessions with Lupin.

Seems a mysterious bevy of gorgeous, Eastern European women were lurking in the back streets and roadside motels of the Catskills and Finger Lakes. Hardworking traveling salesmen shared harrowing tales of seduction and attacks by these silk-clad, hirsute, surprisingly strong Natashas and Oksanas.

What the vixens look like!

Stalin had found his way into the American heartland and Lupin documented it all in the pages of this book. (Published by the gold folks at Gold Medal Books, New York, New York.)

Building my collection of made up books is fun.

"She Roared" joins my other made-up book, "Frayed Shawl in the Blizzard," a slim volume of poems from 1919 by a homicidal, Inuit seal hunter who falls in love with a lady seal and dies on the a frozen sea.

Yes, I realize both titles seem to feature inappropriate congress between humans and animals. Don't worry... I have other interests.

Next up: A title from a list of actual 18th century novels. (Thanks, Rick!)

Perhaps I'll tackle this title: "Flim-Flams! Or, The Life And Errors of My Uncle, And The Amours of My Aunt! With Illustrations And Obscurities, By Messieurs Tag, Rag, And Bobtail. With An Illuminating Index!"

Who can resist the lure of an illuminating index??