Metallic Thread Experiment: The Booty!

So, I feel like a bit of background is needed on this one in order for it to make absolutely any sense whatsoever. I follow a band called Planet Booty and I've been a really big fan since July of last year. So much so that I actually just finished seeing them five times this month during their Southwest tour with TWRP. (It was a blast and if you ever get the chance to see either of them, you should.) But I digress.

The point is, I'm a big fan and there is a large community of other fans like me that are all over Twitter and Instragram. We're like a family. There's this girl named Katie who does perler bead art that actually made a perler bead version of Planet Booty's Booty. It immediately called to me. I had to cross stitch it. So I reached out to her and she very kindly made a pattern for me.

Originally, I followed the pattern exactly, but the perler design didn't translate to cross stitch the same way, so I ended up tearing everything out and starting over with metallic silver thread. Now, I'd never used this stuff before and I likely never will again. It is an absolute PAIN to work with. It splits and it frays and it hates me despite all the tricks I looked up online and tried to make work for me. My piece ended up a mess, but I'm still happy that I made myself a Booty. I have one now and I never have to make another one again!

I probably wouldn't have it done today, though, if it weren't for Josh Cantero's birthday. He's one of the Planet Booty band members and an absolute sweetheart. If you get to meet him, I almost guarantee that you'll get a hug. My point, though, is that with today being his birthday, I finally got motivated to finish the Booty and post it online to say happy birthday. Since I can't draw and I can't paint and XC is one of my main creative outlets, that's how I decided to show my appreciation. He liked my post, so hopefully he actually liked it, but it's the thought that counts, right? Here's what the Booty turned out like along with a few pictures of Josh from PB's NYE concert. Let me know if you have any suggestions on using metallic thread. Any and all help would be appreciated for the future.

Crafting for a Cause

Until about two weeks ago, I'd never crocheted for charity before, but I came across a post on reddit that just broke my heart and I felt compelled to help out the person who posted. Her friend's mom was recently diagnosed with cancer for the fourth time. To try and give her some strength and love, the poster, u/tryingforadinosaur, asked the r/crochet community to send her granny squares so that she can make a blanket for her friend's mom.

Since I got all of Sharon's yarn stash in December, I haven't really known what to do with most of the yarn since there's only one or two skeins of each color. This project was perfect, though, because I didn't need much yarn for each square and it allowed me to destash some in the process.

In all honestly, I intended to take pictures of all the finished squares before I packaged them and sent them off to Utah, but somehow I forgot and here we are. My best guess is that I sent something like twenty or more squares off to u/tryingforadinosaur and I'm really proud of myself for being involved with this project. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm pounding my chest and yelling about it from the mountain tops, but I do feel good about the entire thing and I really hope that she gets enough squares to make her friend's blanket. It'd be great if she could send us pictures of it when she gets done, but I'm not sure that that will happen and thusly I'm not getting my hopes up. Either way, all is well and I was glad to be a part of the process.

New Project: Servotron's Mario Through the Ages

Pattern & More Info Below

I told myself that I wouldn't start any new cross stitch projects until I finished up my 2017 Danganronpa SAL, but I just kept putting off finishing the thing because in my head I was remembering that the pattern took too much of my effort to actually focus on. Wrong... Last night I took it out to see how much actual work I had left on it and I ended up finishing the SAL off. I'm stoked because now I can start a new project, Mario Through the Ages, and focus on my other WIPs like my BIL's blanket.

My next project (which you'll see me refer to as MTTA from here on out) is another big one, bigger than Home Sweet Home Yoshi. When all is said and done, MTTA will be 72 inches square, which is huge. Truth be told, it's going to take some major time to finish, but on the weekends I'd really like to get two 18x18 squares done. It'll be a lot of work, but since this pattern has a lot of solid color blocks, I'm thinking that I'll be able to work on it pretty quickly after I grid my aida and really start digging into it.

For now, I'm just excited to be cross stitching again. Like HSHY, this project is going to be my baby for the next several months (or years) and I can't wait to complete the entire thing and get it framed on the wall. For me, there's no bigger sense of accomplishment than finishing a large project like this and then showing it to the world. And who knows, maybe it'll inspire another stitcher to start a new project!


Pattern Links:
Servotron's Mario Through the Ages Pattern (via Sprite Stitch)

Home Sweet Home Yoshi is DONE!

After almost three years of off and on work, I have successfully completed my goal of finishing our Home Sweet Home before we've moved in. And if I may say, for my first time finishing, lacing, matting, and framing something, I feel like Yoshi looks pretty amazing.

I stopped counting how much time I'd invested into the project, but I know that it's probably close to 200+ hours and there are a total of 21,600 stitches in the completed piece. It took my a while to figure out how best to handle all the framing work, but after about an hour of trial and error, I feel like the final product turned out very well.

I'm hoping to get a better picture of Yoshi as soon as he's in the new house, but for now the picture below will have to suffice. I can't believe that it's finally done, but I am so grateful and excited to have completed this project. It's really boosted my confidence as a cross stitcher and has helped motivate me to move onto bigger and better projects like Mario Through the Ages and Epic Pokemon Gen One.

A Decorated Journal Jar

I have been a semi-bad crafter, but I have to admit that even though much of my crafting has been on pause for the last few months, my stress relieving activities have not been.

Life has definitely thrown me some curve balls over the last year and particularly over the last six months, but journaling has really been my rock and my physical foundation on bad days, so I've been channeling quite a bit of my extra energies toward it as a result.

On April 1, 2016, a coworker and I decided that we wanted to start a Journal Jar. If you're not familiar with the concept, a journal jar contains guided journal prompts that are randomly selected each day for participants to reflect on and write about. Today marks Day 28 and after four weeks of habitual writing, we finally managed to get the front of the Journal Jar decorated. My coworker supplied the mandala from her favorite coloring book and her incredible set of colored pencils for me to borrow and as of 9:00 o'clock this morning, our Jar is no longer plain and simple. (And we can actually display it now since the not-so-safe-for-work label that's underneath the mandala can no longer be seen.)

Eventually, we'd like to do more with the Journal Jar and make it more whimsical with ribbons, quotes, and other assorted craft items, but for now the blue-green zen of the mandala works wonderfully. And--my four favorite ghosts from Haunted Mansion are on watch to make sure all stays fine and dandy. How could I ever ask for more?

P.S. If  you are interested in creating your own Journal Jar or prompted journal experience, please keep an eye out for my new blog which is coming soon. The new blog will contain daily journal prompts for you to work on as well as information about starting your own journaling group and physical Jar.

SO's Blanket: Complete!

As you may know, SO and I have been together for over five years. When we first started dating, I was only a crocheter and spent countless hours on his couch crocheting blankets for others. When I finally got around to starting his blanket around Thanksgiving 2011, I think the blanket went through four froggings and a plethora of pattern ideas before I finally settled on just a simple giant granny square like the one I had been working on for myself.

It's funny because I distinctly remember dragging this blanket around with me on a regular basis for the first few months that I worked on it and once it got too big, my progress on it really began to come to a standstill because I was rarely home between work and school. In total it took me almost four years to get SO's Blanket done, but he absolutely loves it, so it was worth all the time, all the yarn (almost four miles of it!), all the carpal tunnel issues were worth it. It now lovingly lives on SO's Queen Size bed as shown below and I just got word that he "had the best night's rest he's had in months" because of it!

2014 Xmas Cross Stitches #3 & #4: Happy Elephants

The Bob Crochets family has always had a thing for elephants. Elephants with their trunks held upward are lucky, so when I found this third adorable pattern from Mini Stitches, I honestly couldn't resist. I stitched two of them over the course of day and I am extraordinarily happy with how they turned out. And they're so teeny weeny! I'm wondering if I should stitch up a whole army of lucky, rainbow-colored elephants this year! Even SO said that they were some of the most adorabe pieces that I've done in a while.

2014 Xmas Cross Stitch #2: Winter Fox

Last year, Frie loved her penguin ornament so much that it has been hanging up in her bedroom ever since. Because she likes them so much, I decided to go ahead and make her a second ornament to go along with this year's penguin (see last week's 2014 Xmas Stitch #1 post).

As part of her Christmas gift last year, SO and I bought her a really cute gift card to Michael's with a fox that looks almost exactly like the Mini Stitches pattern that I found when I was pulling patterns last week. Because of the similarities, I pretty much had to pull it and stitch it... so I did! And here's the result! I worked on him over the course of two evenings and I have to say that I'm really happy with how he turned out. Maybe next year I can find a pattern of a fox and a penguin together. Then Frie can be doubly happy!

2014 Xmas Cross Stitch #1: Cute Penguin

Last year, I stitched a really simple penguin Christmas ornament for my best friend Frie. I wasn't planning on stitching her another penguin this year, but when I found such a cute and easy pattern on ministitches.tumblr.com, I really couldn't resist. And I finished it so quickly! From start to finish, I had it done in less than an evening. It was a bit weird since I'm so accustomed to large pieces like Yoshi and Lissa, but it was a nice change of pace and I'm really looking forward to finishing up my other Christmas items over the next few weeks.

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.

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.

HEY LISTEN!

As promised in my post from last Friday, today's post is all about Christmas ornaments. The last few days of July were really busy again. I was dog sitting, but somehow managed to schedule three nearly back to back evenings of concert outings with SO. On July 24th, 25th, and 27th we were supposed to see Video Games Live, Danny Elfman's The Music of Tim Burton, and Othello respectively. The shows on the 24th and 25th were San Diego Comic-Con specials performed by the San Diego Symphony. Because of the traffic during SDCC, we decided to ride the trolley both days. The first night was fantastic, but SO had a bad cold, so he didn't make it to the next night's show. Instead, I took Frie and she had a blast. SO was feeling well enough after a day's rest to attend Othello.

I must say, taking the trolley  to and from these shows was wonderful for my cross stitching projects. I got an entire Christmas ornament done between the four hours of travel to and from Downtown. I found a really cute pattern for a Navi in a Bottle on dA a while back and decided that it would be a good one to take along with my dog sitting since it was a simple pattern with just a few colors and a big block of white to fill in. Like I mentioned before, it was a quick one to finish and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Finished dimensions are approximately 2 inches by 3 inches.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Batman! (Tutu)

Most of my readers don't know that I'm a double agent who not only maintains Bob Crochets Craft Down, but also a second blog called #RunTylerRun. There I keep track of my running races and training. Rarely do the two subjects mix, but sometimes my crafting and running can become one and the same topic.

Since May 2013 I have run five half marathons, two of which have been the Costume Party Half Marathon*. For the 2013 race, I was still new to the whole idea of running, so I decided not to dress up. It was too intimidating to me, but for 2014 I knew what expect and I was ready. Three of us were running: Claudia, my mom TJ, and me.

A few weeks prior to our race, Claudia found superhero technical tees at her local Target and texted me saying that she'd purchased our race shirts for us. I was going to be Batman, Claudia was going to be Superman, and my mom was going to be Spiderman, because it was that or nothing. TJ was too petite for anything but a men's small, so shopping for her was...difficult.

We made it happen, though, and as soon as the shirts were purchased, I began work on the rest of my costume for the race. All it took was a trip on Wednesday to Old Navy to buy the pants I wanted and a second stop to JoAnn's for tutu material and I was off.

This is what my poor client's dining room table looked like for three days. I'm sure it looks clean, but as soon as tulle strips started to pile up, it became a total mess. In all, I think I used about twelve yards of tulle, but if I had been feeling really determined, I know that I could have used up all fifteen yards that I had purchased.

I alternated cutting and tying tulle as much as possible since both have a tendency to be tedious. In total the project took me three days and a boatload of Netflix episodes to get, through, but I ended up very happy with the fruits of my labor.

End of Work Day #1

 I have to admit that the photograph from Night #1 don't seem to show a lot of progress, but off camera there were a lot of piled up tulle strips ready to go for the next day. I also try and make my tutus as stretched out as possible, with just a little bit of overall give to them, so even though I cut a strip of elastic that was about eighteen inches long, by the end of the first night My elastic had already become about twenty to twenty-two inches in circumference.

End of Work Day #2, Front View

End of Work Day #2, Top View

At the end of Day #2 I had gotten to the point where I was headed around the back of the chair, a huge feat in any tulle tutu making process. From the top down, it doesn't look like much, but from the front, this Bat-tutu was starting to come together. I figured that if I got all the rest of my cutting done on Night #2, that I could spend my last day of work, Friday, just knotting on tulle.

And that's what I did. My Batman tutu was done after roughly 3:00 in the afternoon on Friday, a healthy two and a half days before CPR. Here's my horrible mirror picture that I sent to TJ and Claudia that afternoon.

 

And even better, here's our picture from race day!

See you all with a new post soon!

* For more information regarding CPR 2014, please click here.

Charlotte's Going Away Scrapbook

Well, I managed to get photographs of Charlotte's scrapbook finally! I had to take them with my cell phone at a bowling alley, but I did get photographic evidence of everything minus one page, which I somehow missed during my quick fire photography session. (You can even see some people’s bowling shoes on the left in some of the pictures. It’s pretty funny.)

The story of this project, though, from start to finish. The whole idea of this came about in the office one day while our staff members were contemplating what kind of gift to give Charlotte before she went home. I recommended that we create a scrapbook for her to take home with her and by the end of April the ball was rolling.

Four mass emails were sent out over the course of four weeks and every day that I went to work, I brought along 6x6 inch pieces of scrapbook paper for people to write notes on. It took huge amounts of haggling, finagling, deception, and hiding what all was going on, but by the time my deadline for submissions hit, I had over thirty notes to put into the scrapbook.

In previous posts, I have mentioned that I’m a semi-professional dog sitter and luckily I work for families who don’t mind me scrapbooking in their homes. During the month of May I was home and animal sitting for three different families who didn’t mind me taking over their dining room tables, so I spent many of my waking hours hanging out with dogs, watching Netflix, and scrapping pages as I could in order to get a head start on the beast. I knew that I would be giving Charlotte the book at a final going away bonfire mid-June and I didn’t want to have to do everything all at once, so I started as early as possible and toted my scrapbooking materials all over San Diego County in order to get pages done between class, work, animal sitting, and studying for finals.

And thank goodness that I did because things got really rough in my world at the beginning of May. On May 4, TJ and I ran the 4^th Annual Safari Park Half Marathon again (my second time, her third) and we also had a family friend’s wedding to attend. I suffered massive heat stroke and foot blisters during the race and was almost hospitalized, so it was an extremely long day. The wedding started at 5:00pm and we had been awake since 3:30am without any extra rest. Things got really bad, though, when I got a phone call from my boyfriend saying that his father who had been recently hospitalized may have taken a turn for the worse around 10:00pm. I was more than an hour’s drive from the hospital and it was a really rough night. May 4 was the Sunday before Finals Week at University for both SO and me. I was dog sitting 35 minutes from the hospital from May 4 until May 13 and spent many of my would-be scrapbooking hours at the hospital or over at SO’s house helping however I could. I began my second dog sitting job on May 14 and finished my finals on May 15. I was able to get some pages done before I left my second dog sitting location on the 18th. I had my new job interview on May 21 and began my final dog sitting position on May 23. I was able to get almost ten pages done while I was with my final group of furry friends.  I had my final job interview (and got the job!) on May 29 and went to an amazing Hugh Laurie concert on the 31st. May ended on a very, very good note, but it had been one of the most extraordinarily long and trying months I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.

June was better, but still busy. SO’s dad (I’m calling him FIL on this blog from now on for simplicity’s sake) ended up back in the hospital two more times before Charlotte’s bonfire. It was like reliving the horrors of May all over again, except that I was there firsthand for more of it. SO was a real trooper, too, because he not only had to cope with the issues his dad was experiencing, but also some of life’s other curveballs. We had to put one of my own pets down on June 5 due to mammary gland cancer and he just happened to be up at my house when that happened. Then FIL  had an allergic reaction to his new medicines. I was over at the neighbor MAB’s house. MAB is an amazing scrap booker and was giving me some advice on where to proceed on some pages when SO called to tell me that he and his mom had called 911. FIL was having a bad reaction to his meds and was having a very difficult time breathing, so they immediately took him to the nearest Emergency Room. I didn’t even get an opportunity to pack up my scrapping supplies. MAB and her family did it for me and I spent the rest of my day in the ER waiting room at the local hospital. After that day, I really didn’t have much of a heart to scrapbook anymore. All I could think of was rushing out of MAB’s house and seeing FIL being loaded up into an ambulance after that. It was too much, too soon and was way too overwhelming.

Things didn’t really seem to get brighter until the 11th when I went to Disneyland with Charlotte and two other friends. That trip pretty much saved my sanity, but throughout those six weeks of craziness, I was able to get only those ten or so pages complete out of a much larger total. I was excited to do some Disney scrapbook pages, though. I had all the Mickey Mouse paper and everything ready to go, so I got a little bit of my mojo back in terms of scrapbooking. I was able to get a page or two done here and there, but I was nowhere near being done. I still had something like forty-five pages to complete.

 

Needless to say, I was really behind on Charlotte’s book. The last forty pages were finished within two days of Charlotte’s bonfire. All I did was scrapbook constantly on June 23 and 24. Charlotte was coming to spend the night at my house on the 25th, so everything had to be complete, wrapped up, and finished before then. With the help of MAB, her daughter, and my best friend Frie, we were able to get it all done. I still don’t know how 40 hours of work got completed in 48 hours, but it did and Charlotte loved the scrapbook. She didn’t cry like we wanted her to, but in her own words, she’s “German. Germans don’t show much emotion.” I did get something like eight hugs at the bonfire alone, though. It was pretty awesome.

So, yeah, that’s the story of Charlotte’s scrapbook. It was a long journey, it was an emotional journey, but it was so well worth it. I’d do it all again if I was asked to, but for now, I think that I will be retiring from making scrapbooks as gifts. This experience was enough to last me a lifetime.

Pokeball Keychain

Over the last few months, I've been fortunate enough to attend a number of Street Pass San Diego events in the area and meet a lot of other local 3DS players. It's a really neat group and because they do so much for the local community, I told them late last year I would craft some items for them to give away at their monthly meet ups. After finally getting my act together in terms of time management, this is what I came up with. When coworkers asked me how long it took, all I could say was "two episodes of Mad Men," but this was a really fun project and I can't wait to make one for myself in the future.

Bellsprout: Cut Out (2/20 Done!)

Well, he's finally done. Charmander still doesn't have a head, but Bellsprout is 100% done. It took me until Tuesday night to work up enough courage to use my new Xacto knife, but once I got the hang of cutting things out, I actually had quite an enjoyable time extracting Bellsprout from his plastic canvas prison.  I ended up with so many little pieces of plastic on my desk, though! Look at the pile of little plasitc bits that I ended up with on my desk.

My next step was to try and find a better way of backing this little guy. I used sticky felt and scissors last time with Bulbasaur and I had a terrible time with the adhesive sticking to my scissors, so I was hesitant to reuse the method. I liked that the sticky felt held all the threads in place, though. A friend on Sprite Stitch recommended that I just take stiffened felt and backstitch it to my canvas, but quite honestly, I've never tried backstitching on a project before and it just sounded scary.

So, it was back to the sticky felt. I wasn't sure how the adhesive would behave with my Xacto knife, so I just went for it. As it turns out, an Xacto knife cuts through that stickiness pretty darn well and I was able to back Bellsprout and add a hanger to him relatively fast before getting ready for  class. (Yeah! I've actually been on top of my studying so far this semester, so I've had some time to not only craft, but craft on weekdays again!)

Anyhow, hopefully I'm back indefinitely in terms of posting. I have about three other posts in the works today and--finger's crossed--my studies won't end up consuming all my time again. Like I said, fingers crossed!

Pokemon Sprite #2/20: Bellsprout!

As mentioned in a previous post, my "new year's resolution" was to cross stitch a whole bunch of Pokemon sprite ornaments for my boyfriend so that was can have the nerdiest Christmas year ever in 2014. I never put down into writing how many sprites I wanted to complete this year, though, and after some contemplation, I've landed on the nice, round number of twenty. Although the number is rather small in comparison to the total number of Pokemon that Nintendo has put out over the last few years (718, yikes!) I think that twenty ornaments is an attainable feat, even if I am working twenty hours a week and taking fifteen units this upcoming semester

Anyway, I have finished my second sprite, and I must say that I absolutely adore it. When I was younger, I loathed Bellsprout. I thought he was weird and funky and...strange to say the least, but because of the following, I've been in love with this little guy for years.

After reading up on plastic canvas pieces, I have decided to leave my sprites uncut and on their 8.5x11" sheets until the plastic fills up. It creates less waste in the long run and should help keep my workspace from being perpetually bombarded by little flakes of plastic from cutting. The pattern is by Vicky of Birdie Stitching. What do you think? (The WIP sprite above is a Charmander.)

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

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!