Monday, December 30, 2013

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 004

Before I get to the meat and bones of this post, I'd like to address some information regarding my future posting schedule for this blog. Since it's winter break, it's very easy for me to hop online, type up a few blogs, and then post them. Realistically, however, it won't be this simple for me to get online and write or even get enough time to sit down and work on projects once the new school semester starts in mid-January.

In order to make posts more regular from here on out, I've decided to post on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule, so posts in the future maybe delayed from what you see on my other sites such as Deviant Art or Ravelry.

Back on topic, though! I present to you HSHY WIP 004!


My apologies that this photograph is so blue. I didn't realize how the sun was hitting my camera when I took took this shot. I am definitely a dingbat sometimes. WIP 004 is current through December 24, 2013 (Christmas Eve!) I didn't get to work on it too much since SO caught a nasty cold, but I was able to sneak in about 15 minutes worth of work while he was in the shower. I wish I had more than 20 stitches to show in a WIP picture, but something is always better than nothing if you ask me.

In total, I have spent 2 hours 42 minutes on this project since starting and have sewn in 252 stitches. In total, I'm about 1.16% of the way there. Not too bad for the Christmas season, I suppose. I wish that I had more to say right now about techniques, difficulties, etc. in regard to this project, but so far, each block has been sessions of sewing ten stitches across for three rows and then adding "the hump" to that block of the chart. Nothing fancy, nothing worth mentioning, but I have used a considerable amount of 3064 DMC floss--and I'm less than half way through this color. Hopefully I won't run out of what I have in my collection. I live out in the boonies and my nearest craft store isn't very reliable in terms of stocking their embroidery floss regularly. Wish me luck!

Friday, December 27, 2013

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 002 & 003

Well, it's Christmas Eve and things are pretty quiet here at the Bob Crochets household. My mom is out and about for the next few hours, SO spent the night and is now grading student papers before his grade submission deadline comes up, and I've been sitting at the computer for the last two hours catching up on email, blogging, and a large quantity of YOGSCAST Sips. If you're a fan of Let's Play videos, I highly recommend his stuff.

Before I get too tangential, though, let me cut right to the chase. This is my first WIP that I've blog posted, but as a general rule of thumb, I do not think that it will be a normality for me to post multiple WIP photographs together unless there is very little to show between the two (like today.) I apologize for being a little late in posting these, but as you can tell, things have been a bit busy out these past few weeks in terms of other projects and activities.

Here is WIP 002 taken on December 21st. There isn't much of a difference between this one and WIP 001, but I did add 38 stitches over thirty minutes. As of WIP 002, I am 2 hours 8 minutes into the entire project with 204/21,600 total stitches completed. I've got a long way to go, but so far this has been a very fun project--and simple to follow, too.

WIP 002
 

If WIP 001 and WIP 002 were similar, then the differences between 002 and 003 are negligible, but as a part of the process, I have promised myself to take progress pictures every single day that I put stitches in. This picture is from December 22nd. I only put in 20 minutes this day, but I was able to put in a total of 28 stitches. (Something is better than nothing, right?) Here's the photograph. I think from now on, for blogging's sake I think I'll post these photographs in landscape. Otherwise the page gets too stretched out.

Total Time: 2 hours 28 minutes
Total Stitches: 232 / 21, 600 (1.07% Complete)

WIP 003

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Shiny Squirtle FO for Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope that this post reaches you in good health and high spirits. After weeks of toiling, twelve hours of work on the turtle himself, and a countless number of hours (twenty plus?) filling in the background, this little guy is finally complete!

I am also pleased to say that SO loved him more than I thought he would, too. In fact, this little squirtle was beloved that I was asked not to sew him into an ornament, but instead finish this piece so that it could be hung up on the wall all year round. I think I was more excited than SO when he said that!

Some information on the pattern before I forget. This pattern was made by littlemojo. An archive of his Pokemon patterns can be found here. I'm not sure if all 718 species are posted on there, but if you're looking for a particular one and can't find it, I know that the Squirtle file included Wartortle and Blastoise, as well, so that might be a way for you to locate missing patterns.

Merry Christmas,
Bob


Friday, December 20, 2013

Oh, Christmas Tree! Oh, Christmas Tree!

This year, my mom and I have really been on the ball with Christmas. We had our tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving (i.e. my birthday) and we've also been able to finish all the Christmas shopping within a reasonable time frame. It's the first time that we've ever been so on the ball and it's been absolutely wonderful.

Now, that all being said, we always procrastinate when it comes to gift wrapping. My guess is because my mom and I are the only ones who do the gift wrapping our entire family and group of friends (roughly 20 people total.) True to this year's form, however, TJ and I were on the ball this year and we powered through six hours of gift wrapping today. We only stopped once to get food around 2:00pm because neither of us had eaten for the day. Our library area was an absolute disaster for the day, but it was really fun to spend so much time with my mom and get all the remaining Christmas chores done. This is what the house looked like until about an hour ago when we cleaned everything up and finally stacked all the presents under the tree. As you can tell from my mom's face, we were a bit surprised by the state of cleanliness in the Bob Crochets household. (Please ignore my running shoes in the corner.)

My view.
Mom's view.

Overall, I think this Christmas season has been one of the better ones that I've experienced as an adult. It's been a pretty low stress, jolly few weeks and now we're just counting down the days left until the actual holiday arrives this year. It makes my other half happy, too. Christmas is his favorite time of year, so having the Christmas tree up and all the presents under the tree makes him a very happy grad student. Here's the before and after of our Christmas tree in terms of presents. If I don't post again before the 25th, have a very merry and relaxed holiday.



Thursday, December 19, 2013

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 001

When I started cross stitching about a month ago, I had ambitions of working on personal projects, not just gifts for others. Granted, working on Christmas ornaments for everyone this year has been an incredible experience, but starting a piece of my own has been on my mind for weeks.
Initially, it was the Epic Pokemon Gen I pattern on Sprite Stitch that got me motivated to start cross stitching in the first place. Prior to that, I was (and still am) an avid crocheter. Something truly appeals to me, though, when it comes to cross stitching. In many ways, it allows me to be the artist that I never thought I could be and I love the fact that I can see progress when I work on projects. It's my new favorite hobby, so I figure that it's time to start my own keepsake project.
I decided to work on a pattern by Rosaka called "Home Sweet Home Yoshi." I actually found the pattern on Deviant Art about a week ago and fell in love. And to add to my excitement, my boyfriend nearly begged me to make this piece for when we finally have a house together someday. So, I've decided to stitch it! Below is my first WIP picture. My goal is to try and take a progress picture every day that I work on this project. In some ways, it will be my visual cross stitch diary for the next few weeks...or months. Yesterday I stitched about 180 little X's over a very relaxing three hours. This is the result below. So far, so good I think, but I'm probably a little bit biased. Let me know what you think!

Monday, December 16, 2013

Snowflakes, Penguins, & Airplanes

Between finals and Christmas chaos, these last few weeks have been a tad bit nutty. I've been able to get some cross stitching done, though. Nothing is 100% done, yet, but I still have nine days until Christmas. I think I can get it all done, still. Here are some pictures of what's done for right now. The snowflake is from Cross Me Not, the plane is from the cross stitch portion of About.com, and the penguin came from a modified perler bead pattern found here.



I have about four more projects to get through before Christmas hits. Hopefully I can get a picture of the Christmas tree plus all of this year's gifts posted before the 25th. If for some reason, we don't cross paths until after the holidays, happy holidays and see you next year!

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Christmas Ornaments WIP and FOs

With final exams rapidly approaching, crafting has become my main activity to de-stress since the final stretch has begun. I've completely finished four Christmas ornaments and finished an additional two cross stitching portions. I'm not exactly sure how many more I have left, but the number is definitely dwindling down.
The snowman, helicopter, gingerbread man, and candy cane are all done with the biplane and purple snowflake done and ready to be sewn.

My current WIP is a Squirtle for my boyfriend. I plan to be done with it and two more ornaments, a Wartortle and Blastoise, before Christmas, but at this rate, I have no idea if that will happen. He already has other gifts under the tree. I really need to prioritize my projects for the people that I don't have anything for yet!

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Snowman WIP

Happy Thanksgiving! This is a very late night/early morning post, so pardon me if I seem a little tuckered out. I spent almost 4 hours with my new little snowman buddy this evening.
I started working on him last weekend and with about 8¾ hours under my belt, I'm almost done. I imagine that if all goes well, then he'll be finished by this afternoon. It's also my birthday today, so I'll have more leisure time than usual.
I'll post more projects soon!

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Christmas Is Coming!

Last weekend, to say the least, was terrible. I haven't ever been that sick in my entire adult life. My apologies for being away for the last week or so.

I've been trying to get a leg up on Christmas gifts. So far I've gotten the main cross stitching portions of three ornaments done and I have about 8 to 12 more to get stitched up. The good news is, that these little projects are going very fast (1-2 days per piece), and once I hit the sewing machine to finish them off, these projects should be done lickity split. Below are images of the three pieces I have done so far*. All of the patterns are from Cross Me Not. Enjoy!

 The helicopter isn't technically finished because I'm still working on the background fill, but I finished up the pattern itself last night.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Hiatus for Illness

This evening I was planning on posting an update picture for my octopus cross stitch, but since about 9:30 this morning I've been running a consistent fever of 99 to 102° F. I'm not feeling good, so I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again, but I'll keep everyone updated as much as possible.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Cross Stitch Organization & Preparation for Winter Break

For the past few weeks I have been ogling a cross stitch pattern called Epic Pokemon Gen I by servotron. The pattern is available through SpriteStitch.com for free, but I was worried that by taking on such an enormous project as my first cross stitching attempt would be a terrible idea--especially since I didn't know if I'd even like the craft.

Well, it turns out that I love to cross stitch and that I'm actually very good at it already. It took me a little while to get the hang of hiding my tails on my backside, but on the whole, I've picked up the task quite effortlessly. The only "major issue" I've had was when I stuck a #28 embroidery needle eye-side into my finger about half of an inch, and even that wasn't too bad, so I've been feeling more confident as a needle crafter as this week has progressed.

And then I did it... I broke down and went to Michael's with a 25% Off Everything coupon and bought all the floss that they had in stock for my Epic Pokemon Gen I cross stitch. It took me over half an hour to completely find all the floss colors I needed (minus the seven or so that were temporarily out of stock) and by the time I walked up to the register, my basket had almost one hundred individual skeins of DMC embroidery floss in it. My receipt was over three feet long when it was all said and done with, but my total bill was only $40.08 after buying all that floss, 84 new bobbins, and the correct size Aida cloth to start such a monumental project over break. In the words of my mother when I got home, I feel that I was "pretty shopper savvy" at Michael's the other day.

But then I had to organize it all. This is what my desk looked like when I got home after I gingerly took every single skein of floss out of the bag. I was terrified that the paper rings were going to slip off and that I was going to have no idea what colorways and numbers I had brought home, but I ended up keeping everything together. This is what one hundred individual colorways of DMC floss looks like when it's piled on top of a desk:
 I wish that I had kept track of how long it took me to label, wind, and organize everything. Unfortunately, I can only ballpark the total time, but I definitely worked on getting the pile whittled away for a span of two days off and on. My guess is that it took me about four hours to get it all put together, but the results were definitely worth it. I just need to get a second floss caddy now since I've run out of room in the first. I'm keeping the remaining skeins on a ring until I can get back to the store this weekend, but overall I am very happy with how nice everything came together. It will make my current and future stitching project much easier to keep together and will help to keep my entire sewing/crocheting/quilting/cross stitching corner of my office neat and tidy again. Here's what it looks like now:
Every colorway is labeled and in order from White to the 3800s. And for the record, this was extremely inexpensive to organize in this way. I got the caddy on sale with 25 bobbins for $3 form Jo-Anns; the DMC floss stickers from Jo-Ann's for $2 and the floss winder--an absolute life saver--for $4 off of Amazon. Adding in the extra floss bobbins I got from Michael's during this last trip for $4, I've only spent $13 on getting over one hundred colors of floss organzied from now until forever. That's not too bad!


Monday, November 11, 2013

An Experiment in Cross Stitch

About three weeks ago I found a website called Sprite Stitch. It's an absolute haven for crafty nerds like me and as I scrolled through the multitudes of free patterns available through the site, I just fell in love. I've been a semiprofessional crocheter for almost fourteen years and a gamer for my entire life. The epic projects that I found on Sprite Stitch were just too much to pass up. And, again, they're free.

At the moment, I'm just starting small on a project and pattern that aren't from the site. It's a simple monochromatic octopus and so far, I'm in love with the entire idea and art of cross stitching. This is what I have so far on Mr. Octopus since I got all of my embroidery supplies in the mail this afternoon. It's on 16 mesh Aida fabric.


I'm hoping to finish this first project up within the week so I can move on to other things and hopefully make a few Christmas gifts before time runs out. I also have a bunch of tests coming up within the next few weeks and a multitude of other gifts to work on for the holidays. Hopefully I can put a post up sometime this weekend for all the quilts and crocheted blankets I've been making. I've got a lot of work to do before Christmas and only a few short weeks to get it all done. I hope that this blog can help me stay motivated and spark some creativity in others along the way.