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!

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!