A December to Remember

Since my last post, life has once again the craziness of life has once again interjected itself into my world. I ended up dropping one of my classes this semester to have a better work-life balance and SO finished his Masters Degree exams with flying colors, but both SO and his father have been hospitalized since my last post. I also spent the vast majority of October dog sitting, ending up with less than three days off for the entire month. It has been on of the most difficult semesters we've ever experienced and I am extremely grateful to be heading into finals on Thursday.

I am extremely grateful to be going into finals with the new job that I started this semester. My boss has been incredibly gracious to let me adjust my schedule as needed and I have finally been able to sit down and write up my first post to BCCD since October. In truth, I haven't been able to craft much, but I have been able to finish one small cross stitch project, continue working on my charity square for Sprite Stitch, and even Yoshi has gotten some love here and there over the last ten weeks or so.

At this point, I am so grateful to just have a family that is happy and healthy. We have been through so much this year that it's nice to be approaching the end of a year and a clean slate with the upcoming year. SO has received his first official teaching offer for Spring 2015 and is currently waiting for the hiring process to begin for other local colleges.

My goal is to begin updating BCCD again on a regular basis beginning Friday, December 19th. Thank you everyone for your continued support through this insane year and I look forward to seeing you all on BCCD, dA, and Pinterest in upcoming weeks.

Sincerely,
Bob

P.S. I am diligently working my way through the 400+ notifications I have received on deviant Art since October. Please bear with me if you have contacted me this way over the last few months!

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!

Lissa Charity Square WIP 001

Well, I finally manged to snap all of the needles I had saved up for Yoshi, so as of September 29, he's on hiatus for a while while I manage to find some more. I swear that there's a shortage of them in San Diego County, so it might be a while before I can get back to work on him. (Which is a shame, too, because I was booking through WIP 058...)

Original Image

Since the only needles I have lying around right now are 26s, I broke down and decided to start on my Sprite Stitch Charity square for 2015, a screenshot of Lissa from Fire Emblem: Awakening. Lisa isn't my favorite character, but I've always found this image to be really adorable, so I'm diving in and trying my hand at a 6" by 6" quilt square to be completed by August 31 of next year.

I have to admit, the pattern I created is pretty intense for me. I've never had to work with so much confetti stitching before and I'm not one hundred percent sure what I'm going to do to make sure that I don't make mistakes, but for now, with Day 001's progress under my belt, I'm pretty happy. (And I'm not counting stitches because I already know that I'm going to have to pull stitches out because of my inability to count properly. Such is life.)

WIP 001

It isn't a whole lot of work to complete in a day, but some progress is always better than no progress in my eyes. Bottom-left corner complete!

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.

Home Sweet Home Yoshi WIP 048

Thursday, September 4, 2014 marked a pretty neat day for Yoshi. The 464 stitches that I added after work and school tipped me over the edge of the 40% completion mark at 8,650 total stitches. I am super psyched. The hours I've dumped into HSHY are tremendous, but they have been incredibly worth it and SO is really excited to have it complete and hung up in our home someday. His excitement (and my excitement, too, quite frankly) is what keeps me fueled on this project. I'm hoping to complete the tree's outlining, soon, but for today I decided to focus on the eaves' shadows and finishing up the background section between the tree trunks that I'd been chipping away at for so long.

Total Stitches through September 4, 2014: 8,650/21,600 (40.05%)
Total Time through September 4, 2014: 2 days 18 hours 39 minutes

Pattern Postponed

This week's Robin pattern from Fire Emblem Awakening has been postponed until next week. I mistakenly left my laptop at Home Base before heading to a client's home this week, so I am not able to produce patterns until I've my laptop again sometime this next week. Sorry! Here's a picture of Sophie and Meme, two of the super sweet dogs I'm watching, to make up for it!