Update on Mario Through the Ages

Okay, pun intended here, but it's been ages since I've worked on this project. And even longer since I've posted anything about it. The last post I put up on here was May 29, 2018 which was my third week of working on this project. For grins and giggles, let's say that I started this project on May 4, 2018. That makes today day number 335 of this project. And frankly, I'm pretty okay with that because I'd say that I'm about 35-40% of the way done with this piece. I don't work very fast on my cross stitch, so 35-40% is just fine with me.

In this post I don't have a full-piece progress picture, but I should have one posted soon. It's silly because for me the biggest change that I'm noticing is that I've changed my needle minder out, but in reality the progress that's been made on this piece is enormous. I've almost finished four complete pages with just Mario aspects left to stitch (the hard parts, of course!) The filler parts I've been knocking out on my breaks at work which is the progress that's in the picture below.

More soon. In the meantime, enjoy!

Before work                                            After work

The Scrapghan is Making a Come Back!

I started going back to my knit and crochet group about a month ago and since then I've been crocheting nearly everyday (meaning that my cross stitches and cards have taken a back seat, but whatever.)

As a result of all this crocheting, I've been going through a lot of the scrap yarn that was given to me by a coworker before she retired. Truth be told, I'm still trying to get through it all to untangle and organize it, but I'm most of the way done and I've been crocheting up granny squares and granny's daughter squares (GDs) like a fiend. The extra scraps that are six inches long or more but aren't long enough to become GDs are then put into my scrap yarn container to be tied together later and added to my super scrapghan.

This is what the balls look like when I have enough to wind together and add to my blanket. I intentionally leave the knot tails wild so that they stick out all over the place as I crochet. The effect is pretty cool and I love the fact that this blanket will truly be one of a kind. The yarn has come from previous projects and friends and there's tons of memories interwoven with the yarn.

Off and on, I've been working on my scrapghan since January 2012. The project gets worked on when I'm actively crocheting, but until recently I haven't really been working on projects. With me going back to Sassy Stitchers, though, progress is imminent on this project. This last ball that I added made the blanket at least four inches longer and I'm over half way done with the entire thing, so I'm pretty happy with it all. Now if I can just get all my UFOs done and make space in my craft area for different things other than yarn, I will be very, very happy.

Link to my Scrapghan project entry on Ravelry

MTTA: Week 3 Progress

Ah! How have I already been working on this for three weeks! Time is flying and I have no idea where it's running off to. Things are really progressing on this piece which is really making me happy. The long weekend was good to me and I was able to get both Tanooki Mario and Frog Mario completed. (Frog Mario was a PITA, though. My god...)

I think last week I had set a goal to finish Baby Mario, as well, over the weekend, but by the time I'd finished Frog Mario I was grumpy and pretty tired of looking at cross stitch for the weekend. So, he didn't get done and I probably won't work on him for a few weeks. I'll do him later on down the road when I'm feeling more animated to work on something more difficult. For now, I'm going to do fill work to my heart's content or I know 100% that I'll burn out and put everything aside indefinitely.

25+ days in and counting!

My goals for this next week are to get the dirt section of this piece completed by the end of the week. It's similar to the water in that all the stitching is pretty uniform and for that reason I think it'll stitch up pretty quickly. I just need to find something good on Amazon or Netflix to watch, though, or things might get monotonous. We'll see. Whatever happens happens--I don't need to get super hard on myself for not meeting trifling goals.

Fun Fact: I have put the blunt end of an embroidery needle through my right thumb two times now!

MTTA: Week 2 Progress

(I know this is almost a week late, but I keep telling myself that I'm going to post pictures every single week, so here goes nothing!)

My husband keeps telling me that I'm flying through this project so far and in many ways I have to agree with him. Within the week, I'll be finished with all the water on this piece and in that time I'm also hoping to have at least the tanooki on the left done and potentially the seaweed, too. This upcoming weekend is Memorial Day, so I'm quite confident that I'll be able to get it done.

After finishing the three characters in the water, I'll be moving onto the dirt section of this piece. It looks like it's going to be another extremely section to complete, so I'm excited for the relaxation that stitching it is going to bring.

In all honesty, I'm quite curious as to how long this project is going to take me. Everything is going really fast so far and the only areas that I think will take me a lot of time are the Mario sprites. Even then, though, they're pretty small, so who knows. I'll continue to update as things progress!

MTTA - Week 1 Progress

I saw that this is my Week 1 progress photo for Mario Through the Ages, but in reality it's my Week 1+ photo because it's probably about 10 days of work overall and not 7. Not a big deal, though.

Right now I am working on finishing up all the water in this piece--and there's a lot of it. At the moment, I'm about half way through stitching all the water, which has me pretty pleased. The only thing is that I've almost worked my way through an entire skein of floss so far and I'm having a hard time locating another skein. I've never been through a whole skein on one project before, so it's a new experience for me and I'm sure that it'll continue to happen as I stitch my way through the hills and sky, too.

I plan on keeping track of how many skeins this entire project takes so that people who decide to follow this pattern in the future can more accurately plan what supplies they need to get everything done. I just hope that people will be able to find this post down the road and find any information that they need.

MTTA Day 1/Week 1

As of today, I can officially say that I have gridded aida for a project: Mario Through the Ages. It took me about an hour from start to finish, but I think that I could have had it done in as little as thirty minutes if I hadn't checked my work so much to see if I was making any mistakes. Regardless, I'm 100% sure that the investment was worth it.

For one, and most importantly, it'll help me make sure that I'm not making mistakes while I stitch. The other thing it'll help me do is track progress on MTTA as I work my way through it.

As of this picture, I've completed 32 stitches. My plan is to work bottom-left to top-right and hopefully be done with the entire project by June of next year.

Stay tuned each week for weekly progress pictures!

Walt Disney World Scrapbook - The Beginning

I've been procrastinating on creating a scrapbook for my April 2016 trip to Walt Disney World for two years now (which, to be frank, is entirely too long.) Well, I finally buckled down this last week and started to design the first page, the title page, for what will probably turn out to be an enormous scrapbook that will encompass over three hundred pictures.

Honestly, my Cricut is probably going to lead the way for me as I progress through this journey. It'll cut pretty much anything that I can possibly dream up and I have a feeling that once I get the ball rolling on everything that I'll be able to churn out two to three pages or more per week.

This is what I designed for the book's front page so far. As I get pages done, I'll make sure to post them here. Let me know if you have any suggestions!

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.

Endless Fill Work

It's really blurry, but here's the latest progress picture for Yoshi. I'm feeling a bit under the weather right now, so it's given me a good chance to work on projects, but I have no clue how I'm going to get work done on this bad boy today. I've been running a fever off and on all day at work and despite repeated attempts by my boss to send me home, I refuse to give in and use up my sick leave.

If I can muster, my goal is to get the sky complete all the way to the S in SWEET this afternoon. I'll be over at the condo for a while to let the painter in, so I should be able to stitch there while it's quiet, but I think it might be in my best interest to crawl into bed instead. We'll see. For now, I'm just trying to get through the work day.

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.

Home Sweet Yoshi WIP 055 & 056

It seems like my posts for Home Sweet Home Yoshi are finally catching up to my actual progress. It seems somewhat impossible since I've been playing catch up for so long, but here are WIPs 055 and 056 in all their glory. My goal is to finish posting older WIP pictures for this project and then begin working on this project again, finishing it before the end of the year.

As of September 18, 2014, this project is OFFICIALLY over halfway done with the addition of over 600 stitches added between September 17th and 18th.

WIP 055

WIP 056

Total Stitches as of September 18, 2014: 10,854/21,600
Total Time as of September 18, 2014: 3 Days 10 Hours 54 Minutes

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 054

Happy Monday, everyone! I give you Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 054 for the day. Unfortunately, we're still all the way back on September 16, 2014, but progress is progress! A total of 165 stitches and 76 minutes were added to the grand total.

Total Completion: 45.59%

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 053

It's hard to believe that WIP 053 is from all the way back on September , but the progress from this day is pretty remarkable in comparison to WIP 051 and earlier. I got a little bit more of the second tree trunk filled in and even though there's a bit of a mistake at the top, I think I've done a really good job in hiding it.

Stitches Added on September 15, 2014: 14

Time Added on September 15, 2014: 5 minutes

Total Stitches Since December 18, 2013: 9,663/21,600 (44.74%)
Total Time Since December 18, 2013: 3 Days 2 Hours 33 Minutes

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 052

As part of an effort to get BCCD back on it's regularly scheduled Monday/Wednesday/Friday post schedule, I bring you HSHY Work in Progress Post 052! While WIP 052 is from all the way back from September 14, 2014.

According to my calendar, we actually went to the theater on September 14th, so I must have been over at SO's house working on Yoshi while we were getting ready for date night. It has not been uncommon in our relationship for me to take projects along with us, either, so I would not be shocked if some of the day's stitches occurred in the car or while we were at Balboa Park waiting for the doors to open for Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Stitches Added on September 14, 2014: 222
Time Added on September 14, 2014: 2 hours 8 minutes

Total Stitches Since December 18, 2013: 9,649/21,600 (44.67%)
Total Time Since December 18, 2013: 3 Days 2 Hours 19 Minutes

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 051

Sometimes I wonder if my issues with my eyes (I'm legally blind without my glasses in case you didn't know) are the reason that my Work In Progress images end up so blurry sometimes...or maybe I'm drunk when I take them. I don't know, but I'm sorry that today's WIP image is so blurry. This is the best one out of the three that I took. The rest we just disasters.

This is my progress through September 11, 2014. I managed to get the entire right-side tree trunk done! And as I begin to fill up the entire bottom section of this piece I think that it will really start to take on some character. For now, I'm just happy to have gotten some progress done!

Day's Stitches: 105
Day's Time: 45 minutes

Total Stitches: 9,427/21,600 (43.64%)
Total Time: 3 days 0 hours 11 minutes

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 050

Looking back at my notes and WIP 049, I got a lot done on September 6th. I mean, I managed to get the YOSHI sign lined in and I was even able to start filling in one of the tree trunks that had previously been just outlined in black. Yoshi is still a little sickly looking, but I'm sure that he'll get some color in the future. Hope everyone is well!

Day's Stitches: 311
Day's Time: 2 hours 16 minutes

Total Stitches to Date: 9,322/21,600 (43.16%)
Total Time To Date: 2 days 23 hours 26 minutes

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 049

As you can tell from last my last post on December 10th, last year was not a good year for my family to say the least. I cannot even begin to articulate in words how grateful I am to be in 2015 with all of my family members alive and well and I managed to pass all of my classes with flying colors.

Currently, SO is playing Civilization V theme songs in the background while I write this post and it seems like everything is back to normal. Well... almost normal. He's no longer a student and he's officially teaching two classes at his Alma mater. I've got sixteen weeks' worth of classes before I graduate with my baccalaureate, but SO is making it really hard to focus. He has so much time on his hands now!

Onto Yoshi, though! It's been months since this poor project made an appearance on this blog.Work In Progess #049 is actually from September 5th. (Yeah, I know that's almost five months ago. Shame on me...)

So, yeah... The entire right side of it is done at this point. I'm super excited. I managed to get the last bits of the background done and even filled in the M and E of HOME. It isn't the most work that I've ever completed in a day, but because this section is entirely done now, it feels like a huge chunk of HSHY is done now.

Day' Stitches: 361
Day's Time: 2 hours 31 minutes

Total Time: 2 days 21 hours 10 minutes
Total Stitches: 9,011/21,600 (41.72%)