House Demo & Reflection

We got the keys to our condo on Thursday and ever since it's been nose-to-the-grindstone renovation work so that we can move in as soon as possible. Work on Yoshi has come to a complete standstill. And as much as I'd like to finish up this amazing project, my hands are just jacked right now.

On Friday, I took off all the switch plates, vent covers, etc. along with some prep work for the following day. All day Saturday, we dealt with baseboard. We tore it out; I nailed all the new stuff in; and then I caulked the entire master bedroom for the rest of the evening. Yesterday, I installed all of the remaining baseboard in the office area, tore out a door frame, and caulked everywhere in the house that needed it until I ran out of steam. I'm exhausted and my hands have taken a serious beating, too.

Renovations have pushed Yoshi back yet again, but the condo is really starting to feel like home. Aside from paint, we're almost completely done with renovations, though, and as soon as my hands can take it (and are clean enough to actually work on a cross stitch project), I really want to finish up Yoshi. In the mean time, here's a progress picture of where we're at.

Unproductively Moving Forward

As predicted, I've already started working on Yoshi again, but every stitch feels forced and frustrated right now. I feel like I got almost nothing done yesterday night (and ignoring the fact that more than half of my attention was focused on the Philadelphia City Finals of ANW.)

And while I didn't have the most productive day in the craft room, I did manage to find foam core, mat board, and a frame for this little guy after work yesterday. It's small, but it'll allow me to get Yoshi framed as soon as I'm done with him and that way I can have him move-in ready!

Speaking of which, the notary didn't deliver our paperwork back to our idiot escrow office on Friday, so our closing date has been pushed back again. I scheduled an appointment for the internet to be installed on Saturday, so things better get done quick, you know? Egh...

Anyway, more to come very soon. If I can get the tan area finished by tomorrow, I think I can have the whole thing done by Friday. Fingers crossed, as usual.

"I Quit", Ikea, and Other Musings

I rage-quit cross stitching yesterday. It's definitely a temporary thing, but I'm really burnt on it for the moment. I have been putting every spare ounce of energy I have into finishing Yoshi and when I finally decided to give myself a break and work on a different project, I found out a few minutes into it that I had made an everlasting screw up toward the beginning. There was no way of fixing it, and thus I threw it in the trash. (Honestly, it felt sort of refreshing, but it was the first time I'd ever junked a cross stitch piece, so it felt pretty foreign.)

It's dead to me now...

So, after relieving myself of the gift that never gave, I decided to start another project--again an image of a present--that I'd wanted to complete as a Christmas gift. I, however, miscounted and had to completely start over twice. Needless to say, I was pissed, so I threw that one out, too. And now I have no other projects in my queue that I intend to work on for quite some time.

My guess is that an enormous haul at IKEA may have done me in yesterday. Fiance and I decided to get the vast majority of our furniture shopping done before moving in to our new home, but we didn't realize the consequences of buying things without a place to store them, so not only were we frazzled by our shopping trip, but we ended up being flummoxed by what to do with everything once we got back to his parents' house.

Everything ended up in our gaming area/my crafting spot...

See that bin in the left-hand corner with all the boxes of thread in it? That's where I like to sit and stitch when there is natural light available to me. IKEA has taken over the family room and until everything is assembled and put into it's proper place at the new house, I think I'm going the be a cross stitch retiree/quitter.

That should only be about seven to ten days, though, if we work quickly. Fiance and I are set to close on our condo tomorrow, so we should be able to go in and do all of our upgrades starting this week. Today I'm actually headed over to pick out paint and set up our internet package, so we're progressing, but it seems to be at the expense of my free time.

In all reality, I will likely begin working on Yoshi again tonight. It's not a hard project and all I have left is fill work, but right now there's just no joy in the process for me. It's a race against time to get HSHY done before we move in--I still need to learn how to frame the thing--and since we're moving in super duper soon, things will be tight, but I think that getting it done will be a huge boost to my morale and sanity.

There is always a silver lining to things, though, and the result of my misadventures is that I'm going to teach myself to grid my fabrics for my next big project. I plan on practicing on a smaller project first, but I have a feeling that the practice will make things easier over time. Fingers crossed, right?

I Admit It, I'm Totally Behind

I have been up to so much since I last posted...and managed to procrastinate on so much more.

First and foremost, I gave up on trying to track how much time I've invested into Home Sweet Home Yoshi. It's been over five days, so I might as well, just admit that I've invested an enormous amount of time into it--and that's okay. My goal is to actually get it finished by the end of this month, if not sooner. I really don't have that much left and the vast majority of it is fill work, so the stitching is easy and I'm able to tune into other things like Netflix while I work. This is where I'm at as of yesterday night. Pretty cool, huh?

The fiance is ecstatic about it. We finally bought our first place--yes, bought--and he is really excited to have it hung up somewhere prominent. For him, I think that it's a milestone that we have our own space and we're able to decorate it with our own things that are based off of our own interests. As I've probably said before, we're pretty big on video games and video game culture, so for us, having a four foot by one foot pokemon cross stitch on the wall really isn't that weird. In fact, it's a medium-term goal that we'd both love to see come into fruition.

More to come, though! I really, really want to get this project done and then get moving on Christmas.

No More Pen Thieves!

When I went through my office recently and took inventory, I discovered that my office had not one pen in it. There were pencils and pens and highlighters, but no pens--Oh, sorry! There was one, but it was completely crusty and dried out. So, yeah, no pens.

What I ended up finding out is that pen theft is an occupational hazard for me. They get taken at meetings during sign-in, at meetings during sign-outs, and during meetings whenever someone forgets their own writing utensils. And since I have meetings at least once a week, pens tended to have a short-lived residence in my/my predecessor's office.

As petty as it sounds, I've decided that pens will no longer grow legs while I work in this new job. Plus, not having pens gave me a really good excuse to try out a project that I've been wanting to do for over two years when I was working in my previous office: pom-pom pens!

It only took about five minutes on Google Image Search to find exactly what I was looking for on Doodle Craft. (Thank you, Google, for all that you do.) The link to the tutorial can be found here, along with my "I hate cliche flower pens" comment at the end.

So, what did I use? You'll be proud! I took a photograph before ravishing the new craft supplies I got at Michael's. And did I mention that my new job gets me 15% everything there now because I work in education? I know... I'm going to be broke soon.

From left to right are some donated Bic pens from a colleague, a new hot glue gun since I apparently have never owned one before (Don't ask me how. I still don't know...), Recollections brand "Twine" from the card making section of the store, 26 Gauge silver floral wire, and some Purple Tones Aunt Lydia's #10 crochet thread.

Now, if I haven't mentioned this before, I've decided on The Nightmare Before Christmas as my office theme, hence the black and white twine. Originally, I was planning on using Aunt Lydia's #10 crochet thread in "Zebra," but for some reason I haven't been able to find it anywhere, so I'm stuck with the twine until further notice. I think it turned out really well, though, and I've had multiple meeting attendees ask me where I got my pens. Nightmare has officially become my signature at work.

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 045

I've decided that I go through phases on this project. Some days I really enjoy outlining and some days I really enjoy stitching in color. Recently, I've really been enjoying outlining again and I'm very close to completing the outline of Yoshi's canopy that he sleeps under. (How he doesn't catch the eaves of the tree on fire with his fireplace, I don't know, but that's not my issue.)

Today was a huge day for Yoshi. SO is in the home stretch of his MA program and had a ton of jurnal articles to read over the weekend, so I nestled down next to him and worked on Yoshi for nearly five hours throughout the day. SO ended up leaving for home around 8pm and I was still animal sitting, so my world was pretty quiet, but it was nice until my parents' truck refused to start when they got back  to the San Diego airport from Boston. They ended up getting home a midnight, three hours later than originally planned, in a rental car because the truck's fuel housing ended up going bad while they were out of town for the weekend. Can you think of worse possible timing? I felt really bad for them.

Before all the car drama, though, I added 514 stitches to HSHY on August 31st and I'd guess that I'm less than 200 stitches away from having all of the black outling done for this entire project. (So close yet so far...) I only have the words HOME SWEET, the canopy, and the mailbox yet to add. The tree trunks are 100% done now in terms of outlining. If you look over on the right-hand side I was also able to fill in a considerable amount of the hill underneath the second HOME. I'd like to have that entire section done by the end of September along with the darker green of the tree leaves and the tree trunks. It's ambitious, but doable.

Total Time Through August 31, 2014: 2 days 14 hours 7 minutes
Total Stitches Through August 31, 2014: 7,889/21,600 (36.52%)

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 044

Having the house to myself over Labor Day weekend was an absolute godsend to my cross stitching work, especially when I'm accustomed to spending my weekends cooped up in my room to avoid the noise of the TV in the living room. SO came up early in the afternoon, so I wasn't able to get much cross stitch work done through Saturday August 30th, but we had a wonderful day together making sure that the animals were well before we went out on a date to our favorite restaurant. It was nice to unwind and spend some time together since school is back in session, but I regret not working on HSHY as much as I probably could have on this day.

Of the stitches I was able to add on this day, I can happily say that I got to do some more outlining on this piece. I hadn't done any in a few weeks, so doing something easy and familar while SO was grading some papers was very simple and relaxing on the mind. I only adde 75 stitches on the 30th, but it seems like the stitches were more impactfult that before. Maybe it's because the outlining lacks color and stands out because of it? I don't know, but stitching it in was fun regardless

My apologies for the incredible hoop mark on this picture. I had honestly pressed this piece on Friday evening, but between being stored and then worked on, there are wrinkles everywhere on my Aida fabric.

Total Time Through August 30, 2014: 2 days 9 hours 57 minutes

Total Stitches Through August 30, 2014: 7,375/21,600 (34.14%)

**Note: I have been having major issues uploading images to dA, so if blog posts and dA submissions aren't correlating correctly, please know that I am working on getting things corrected as much as possible. dA is having some major server issues that are out of my control.

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 043

As a dogsitter, it's extraordinarily common for me to work holiday weekends. Labor Day weekend was no exception expect for the fact that I got to stay at home and watch my own (parents') animals as a very uncommon assignment. With my parents out of town, I pretty much had the house to myself. It was wonderful. Aside from the small bits of classwork and animal care I had to complete, I was able to relax and focus on the things I wanted. Napping and cross stitching were very high on my to-do list. I also got my first paycheck from my new job deposited for the month of August on this day which quite a happy surprise.

After finishing most of my homework, I was only able to complete fifty-four minutes of stitching while I roosted in favorite living room recliner. That being said, I've become much faster with my stitching and pattern-reading over the last year. I used to stitch about 1 stitch per minute. These days, depending on what distractions I'm presented with, I can stitch three times faster than that (and it's wonderful!) I was able to add 157 stitches on the August 29th, adding more color to the tree as I went.

Total Time Through August 29, 2014: 2 days 9 hours 22 minutes
Total Stitches Through August 29, 2014:  7,300/21,600 (33.80%)

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 042

Its pretty much goes without saying that if I'm traveling, my projects go with me. Whether or not I actually work on them is a different matter, but when SO and I went up to visit family on 8/15 and 8/16, I really did manage to get quite a bit of work done on the road and at the house. This trip was really a chance for us to sit back and enjoy our last few days of summer before heading back to work on Monday.

Since my mind was mostly relaxed on Saturday, I decided to focus on an easy part of the pattern so I could focus more on visiting (and napping.) This is the result of my lazy vacation day:

I added 155 stitches to the tree that day and even though I didn't add a ton of stitches, it looks significant because of all the open Aida cloth around it. I'm still contemplating the easiest way to make sure that the fruits are placed in the correct spots, but I think those will be some of the last elements I complete last. We'll see, but until then, happy Wednesday. WIP 043 will be up on Friday.

Total Stitches through August 16, 2014: 7,143/21,600 (33.07%)
Total Time through August 16, 2014: 2 days 8 hours 28 minutes

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 040 & 041

Thursday August 14th was a big day for me, both career-wise and in terms of HSHY. Thursday morning was my first minute-taking meeting of my career and even though I was really nervous, I was told by multiple individuals afterward that I did really well. The build-up to the event, though, had me really stressed out, so I was glad when I got the opportunity to head home for the day and work on Yoshi

Over the course of Thursday afternoon and for a few minutes the following morning I was able to start some serious, dedicated work on Yoshi's tree. After such a big day at work on Thursday, it was really nice to just sit back and not worry too much about which colors went where on my fabric. The dark green was incredibly easy to sew in and when I started stitching up the tree leaves in a simple, straight line, the time and work flew by. I only added 261 stitches between Thursday and Friday, but you can see for yourself how much a difference the addition of stitches has made. I was really pleased with the progress and was excited to take HSHY with me on an overnight trip with SO to La Mirada. I wasn't sure how much time I'd have to work on Yoshi over the following days, but I for sure knew that I wanted to finish up this first section of dark green.

Total Time through August 15, 2014: 2 Days 8 Hours 15 Mintues

Total Stitches through August 15, 2014: 6,988 / 21,600

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 039

Wednesdays have become my "half days" this semester. Since I'm only working Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and my classes hadn't started yet on August 13th, I was able to stitch in 573 stitches that day, something that's almost been unheard of for me since starting this project last year. (573 stitches is over 2.5% of HSHY's totality if you were wondering.)

What amazes me is how incredible the fireplace looks now that it's all filled in, especially since the bricks are only stitched with three different colors. The hills on the right-hand side are really beginning to take shape, too, with only the upper area left to fill in now. Personally, I don't feel that the picture below does the shading on this project justice. I'm in love with HSHY now more than ever and I think that it may be why I got so much work done on the 13th. I just love how much life is coming to this piece as more and more details are added.

As of August 13, 2014, I've finished 31.14% of this project. I'd like ot have it done by Christmas of this year, so I can use Christmas gift cards (which have already been requested) to pay for framing. If I want to get it done by Christmas, though, I really need to hustle, but every day pf progress on this piece is a good thing, even if I don't hit my self imposed deadlines this year.

Total Time as of August 13, 2014: 2 days 4 hours 51 minutes

Total Stitches as of August 13, 2014: 6,727 / 21,600 (31.14%)

September Goals and...Where did August go?

I've decided that August is the fastest month of the year. All of a sudden, it's August, it's autumn, and then you turn around and 'Poof!' August is gone and it's September already. Now, that all being said, August was a really fun and busy month. I started my new job; SO and I went to see Into the Woods; we took a weekend trip up to La Mirada to visit some of SO's family; SO and I both headed back to University (it's his last semester as a student!); and this past weekend I did some animal sitting in my hometown to wrap it all up. It was a great way to bring summer to a close, but I think I'm in the same mindset as most individuals when I say that I wish it could have lasted just a little bit longer.

Individuals who have followed my crafting misadventures through summer already know that I blew my goals for August out of the water. My original goals were to finish one Pokemon ornament and sew 1,000 stitches into Home Sweet Home Yoshi. I ended up finishing two Pokemon ornaments, Charmander and Ditto, and sewed over 2,400 stitches--over 10% total progress--into Yoshi. If the saying "blown out of the water" doesn't apply here, then I don't know what does. August was a great month and I was able to get an extraordinary amount done on my current projects. I'd still like to complete Yoshi by the end of the year, but that's yet to be seen. I'll still be happy if I can work enough on it to have all of the black outline work done by December 31st.

As for this month, September 2014, I'd like to do the following:

1. Keep this blog updated for the entire month.
2. Add another 1,000 stitches to HSHY.
3. [BONUS] Finish another Pokemon ornament and post a tutorial on the entire process.

The good news is that I've already added ~200 stitches to Yoshi, and I've been bringing it to class with me during the week, so there's hope for me to work on it, but as for Pokemon, that's yet to be seen. Stay tuned because this much you know as much about my month as I do, but until something happens, all is well and headed in the right direction.

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 036 & 037

Apologies that Friday's post didn't go out as regularly planned. Between two separate trips to Disneyland, two (unrelated) migraines, work, and prep for my return to University, this post ended up falling through the cracks. Add that to the fact that I'm almost ten posts behind on progress pictures for this post and I'm in some trouble.

Since I only added 40 stitches in on WIP 036 (August 5th), I forgot to take a picture of it the next day, so this photograph includes work from WIP 037 (August 6th), as well.

Apologies for all of the wrinkles. I haven't been able to press this piece in a while and it's clearly showing.

Over the course of August 5th & 6th I was able to add 223 stitches the project, which isn't a ton, but it did mean adding over 1% to the project as a whole. And oddly enough, the stitches that were added over these two days were mostly invisible--small areas of fill on Yoshi himself that were green and white.

Total Time through August 6, 2014: 1 day 21 hours 19 minutes

Total Stitches through August 6, 2014: 5,651/21,600 (26.16%)

I Got A Box!

Well, it's definitely that time of the year again and the school year is rapidly setting in again. I have no idea where summer has come and gone to, but I'm extraordinarily grateful for all the incredible things that have happened since mid-May. There were a lot of hospital visits for SO's dad, some incredible concerts, and many dog sitting jobs, but at the end of it all this was one of the most packed, fun summers that I've had in years.

On the flip side of the coin, however, is the fact that as summer ends, school and work take its place. Last semester I took my cross stitching with me a lot to campus and work, but I was already worried that the way I was transporting it would lead to tragedy if I didn't constantly tote my supplies around with me in my hands (meaning that if I needed to carry anything outside of my backpack I was screwed beyond all description), so I decided to buck up and figure out a way to solve my problems. This is what I came up with:

You're seeing it all loaded up, but this box even fits my Pako floss organizer. I was pretty impressed by that, I must admit. The box is actually from the scrap booking supplies section of Michael's and I think I got it for something like $4 after a 40% Off coupon. Killer deal, right? I'm thinking of going and grabbing a second one for work, to be honest. It's just a great little box and it meets all my safety requirements for toting around all my cross stitching crap stuff when I want to bring it with me on campus.


Now I'll never be without my aida, patterns, pen, snips, needles, floss threader (bane of my existence), hoops, etc!

Spreading the Cross Stitch Love

So, I think I may have finally converted Frie to cross stitching! Ever since I made her that penguin last Christmas, she's been really curious to see how difficult (easy, if you ask me) it is to make something and she finally broke down and decided to try it with me the other day.

I decided to start her on a Makibird pattern since they're super user friendly and as soon as Frie saw Vicky's Harvest Moon cow, she fell in love. We were at the craft store within the hour to pick up supplies for her. Here's the pattern:

Since this pattern was on my to-do list anyway, I decided to do a sort of stitch along with Frie as she got accustomed to reading a pattern and stitching things in accordingly. Frie kept getting frustrated that my cow was coming together faster than hers, but she kept persisting and managed to get quite a bit done by the end of the evening. Look at how hard she was focusing!

Now, I will be the first to say that Frie hasn't finished her cow yet because I haven't been able to swing by her house and help her finish up the bits of her pattern that she still has questions with, but I think that her cow will be done within the next few weeks. I feel lucky to have finished mine on Saturday. Granted, this wasn't a large project by any means, but this was my first big week at work and I haven't been able to get much done on my various projects. I have no idea what I'm going to do with Bessie, but I'm hoping that she'll stay with me forever, either in a picture frame or as an ornament or something else fun.

Meet Bessie!

August Goal #1 Complete!

Well, after almost eight months of procrastination, Charmander is finally done! After I set my month's goals on the first, I decided that I was just going to finish my "Complete a Pokemon Ornament" as soon as possible. I didn't touch any of my other projects until Charmander was done, even though I was incredibly tempted by Home Sweet Home Yoshi and some undisclosed patterns that I'll be working on over the course of the next year for the Sprite Stitch Charity Quilt. (I should have those two projects announced by October at the very latest. I just don't want to spoil the surprise until I officially have the games I want by my name on the annual spreadsheet.)

But back to Charmander! I worked on him furiously over the first weekend of this month and I was completely done by early Sunday morning, so I decided to just to dive head in head first and printed off a Ditto pattern to work on, as well. Turns out that by the end of August 3rd I had TWO pokemon ornaments to show for this month! SO is really happy and I have to admit that I am, too. I'm not on track to finish my goal of 20 ornaments for the year, but in total I have 5 done so far. If I'm smart and I choose easy-to-sew patterns, I can definitely get the last fifteen done by the end of 2014, but that's only if all 18 units of classes this semester, plus dog sitting, plus work don't take all of my time up first.

July Recap & August Goals

Well, it's hard to believe, but happy August 2014! I have no idea where summer has gone, but as of Monday it's officially ended for me. I start my new position at work come Monday, but no University until the end of the month, so summer may be winding down, but luckily it isn't over yet.

Last month I set out four goals for myself:

1. Use up remaining cotton yarn.
2. Add 2,000 stitches to HSHY.
3. Finish one Pokemon ornament.
4. Add 20 rounds to Ian's blanket. (Sort of.)

I blew my goals for Yoshi out of the water and added at least 2,000 stitches, if not closer to 3,000. I also managed to use up almost all of my remaining cotton yarn from my stash--pictures to come Wednesday. And even though I technically didn't finish my 4th goal of adding 20 rounds to Ian's blanket, I did finish up another blanket very similar to his and it's all wrapped up waiting for me to give to a good friend once I see her at work again come late August. The only goal that I didn't complete was #3. I did not work on Pokemon ornaments at all, but I did manage to get sidetracked and finish two other cross stitch ornaments for our future video game Christmas tree. I should have them posted on Monday, but I'm really happy with how they've turned out so far.

As for August goals, I'm not really sure how things with my new job are going to work out, so I'm setting the bar pretty low for this month.

1. Add 1,000 stitches to HSHY.
2. Finish one Pokemon ornament (Charmander).

Anything else that gets done next month is extra credit, in my opinion. There is going to be a lot that goes on in the next month just in terms of work and school, but SO's dad might be going back in for some elective surgery within the year, so I'm not sure what's going to happen. I'm just going to play it close to the chest for now and whatever gets done gets done. As I always try to remind myself...