Tech Patterns, circa '98
(heads-up: this is long. I fell down a rabbit hole.)
Found a really cool vintage pattern while poking around Ebay (I’m ~1100 patterns in, it’s for a project, give me another month or two) and found this absolute banger of a pattern:
Earth Rise by LORRAC designs, circa 1998. It says it’s part of their ‘Science & Technology Series’, and as soon as I saw it I knew I’d give my left and right thumbs to get to see what the rest of those look like-- we talking astronomy? Chemistry? CRT monitors and the shiny newfangled Windows 98?
A quick google brings up old listings or photos for three more astronomy patterns from the series (The Solar System, Moons of Saturn, and Jupiter), plus a single bit of technology: Anita at Cyberstitchers.com posted a photo of one of her finished LORRAC patterns back in 2004, and check it out! It slaps, too!
It is so good! I’ve never seen a cross stitch pattern like it! I’ve been sorting through Santas and floral borders and Precious Moments Angels this whole project and this smashed computer feels life-changing. (of course, it’s also uh... probably 1am this is going down? once it hits 2:00 the tumblr ads will start looking pretty profound, too)
Googling doesn’t bring up any central collections, and the only contact info on Earth Rise is a residential address in Louisiana (not even an artist’s name!). Doesn’t help that most of the photos are pretty bad-- heck, the computer one’s almost old enough to vote-- but the pic for Moons of Saturn is legible, and it’s got something new at the bottom: a website address.
http://www.neosoft.com/~cac/ doesn’t go much of anywhere anymore, but pop it in the Wayback machine, and---
We are golden!! And they even archived the gif of a cute little dog!
From this archive snapshot I’m able to slide forward all the way up to 2003 and their second website, lorracdesigns.com-- still only exists in the archive, and not all the images work, but the ones they have are magnificent.
And there are a LOT of technology ones.
Guys gals and pals, feast your eyes on Office Beanies:
You Have MAIL!!
WWW Logo (”Show the world that you are a Web Surfer with this WWW logo. Finish it as a magnet or pin and display it proudly.” heck yeah I would! I am a web surfer!)
Computer Kid
Evil Computer
and my absolute favorite, Please Logoff:
…and this last one’s a freebie, too! The PDF download is long gone, but the list of floss colors is still up. Between this image and the list I should be able to reconstruct the pattern... so wish me luck! 🤞
Only one mystery remains, then... who was the artist behind LORRAC? I can’t find a name anywhere, not on the whole site. I wonder who they were, what they were like-- they made some really funny and unique patterns, and beautiful ones, too. The pattern themes make me think that the artist was a young adult then, twenty years ago, so odds are that they’re still out there stitching somewhere. I wish I could tell them how much I like their old art. But hey, that’s the internet for you. 🥂
Anyway if you’d like to check out some really unique patterns and also feel nostalgic for the ancient internet, the LORRAC site archive is here. While exploring I also found a fully-intact Angelfire page listing dozens of other cross-stitch sites from the same era-- some may still be up, others might be archived, either way: if you need a rabbit hole, check them out! :)
