Seventeen Hours and BOBBINS!

I haven't done an IHSW in so long~ I didn't sign up for this one as I wasn't really sure what was going to happen this past weekend (plans? who makes plans?) but it turned out I got around four hours in on this Final Fantasy piece. In case you haven't guessed it yet, it is the Final Fantasy III (DS remake) logo, one of at least five (shhhh) games I'm currently playing. If you would like to see what it will look (somewhat) like when finished, you can click here.

Anywhoodle, this is where I left off just over a week ago:

seven and a half hours!

And the march of progress:

nine and a half hours!

thirteen and a half hours!

seventeen hours!

Whew! I feel like progress is rather slow on this but I'm not going to get discouraged. The more I stitch, the fiddlier this pattern seems so it takes some staring and thinking and fretting over what color to put next. While I love all the colors in this, I'm scared about the blue. It seems so dark. Unless it's under a bright light; then it looks right~ @_@

My absolute favorite time to stitch is when my husband is playing video games. He plays games I'm not necessarily interested in playing myself but I like to stitch along and get the story. Stitching ... or winding bobbins. Because I got bobbins. 1000 bobbins!!

BOBBINS

Amazon finally had them on sale ahaha. So, 1000 plastic bobbins of joy. While I don't think I (and I kinda hope I don't) have 1000 skeins of floss, I do have a huge amount. I tend buy it when I find it in thrift stores or yard sales and they're usually of a questionable age and shape. Putting them on bobbins seems to satisfy my deep-seated urge to tidy up spaghetti blobs.

Of course, now I'm running out of storage... I have one clear box and one pink one. I cannot for the life of me find another box in a different color -- does anyone know if they're even made anymore? My mom had the highly-coveted teal one but she gave it to my niece.

Anyway, please enjoy your productive fingers this week too!

EDIT - Derpy me didn't include the link to the bobbins! I bought them on Amazon (US) here, where they are currently going for $10.87, the cheapest I've ever seen them. I, however, try to stick with Amazon over 3rd party sellers and they're currently at $12.82 which is still pretty cheap for the amount.

They are Darice brand instead of DMC and my initial impression is that they are a shade thinner than the DMC variety. This may just be my imagination... or that the DMC bobbins I have are so old they were made thicker. They're bundled into little bobbin stacks of 25 with a rubberband so you don't have 1000 bobbins running amok all at once.

It's Christmas Tiiime In the... Wait, What?

Back before I vanished off the face of the blogging world, I mentioned in this post that I was starting a new project for a Christmas present. It was the last thing I stitched for a year and it turned out fairly well, though I did have some issues. Not very many WIP pictures (though I took a LOT at the time, jeez!) in this post.

Entire collection!

I love, love, love his coat!

Arms and "snowball"!

All assembled!

I think this would win the award for most complicated piece I've ever stitched. My mother really likes jumping jack ornaments, so when I found this brand new kit in a thrift store (!!!!!), I knew exactly who it was for. Unfortunately I did not fully assemble him until the following year!

Technical Details

• "Santa" jumping jack ornament kit produced by Janlynn.
  
• 2 over 1 on 14-count tan Aida.
  
• Finished size: 4" x 5" (10,2cm x 12,7cm)
• Started: December 20, 2012, Finished: December 28, 2013. Unknown hours.

There were sooo many little things to do for assembling this guy. First you had to cut him out super carefully, then slather him with glue. I did everything according to the directions and partially wished I hadn't. They called for you to make little stacks of fabric to bind the front and back of the piece together and leave enough room for the pull cords to operate. This, however, leaves kinda rough edges for those pull cords to snag on. As you can sort of see in the picture, his arms get snagged in the upright position. I'm not really sure what I could've used instead. I kept the instructions and pattern because he could probably be modified to all sorts of jumping jack creations though who knows if I'll ever get around to it!

Overall, very unique piece for me to stitch and my mom loved it! I even wound up naming him Santa Dave because he looks very much like a close family friend ahaha.

Merry Stitching To All and To All a Goodnight (or Good Morning)!

No, No, Anything But a Frog!

Not too much progress this week but any progress is still progress! :D

last week @ three hours

Sooo, I started off the week swimmingly -- with a frog! A lovely four stitches were somehow accounted for without actually having been stitched. And it wasn't in an area where I could just politely ignore the mistake; it would've thrown off all of the lettering which is kinda important. So, I picked out the bottom green area and remedied it.

post-frog, six hours (sigh)

seven and a half hours!

Is it making any more sense? (Hint: It is a logo like FFVII and FFVIII.) If I wasn't the one who made the pattern and stitched it, I would have absolutely no idea what was going on! Claws..? With wings? Maybe?! This was a very fiddly pattern to make and it's proving to be very fiddly to stitch. I foresee myself doing the "lay some floss on the picture and dashing across the room to see if it looks okay" thing again.

Also. ALSO. I haaate this fabric! It was something I found at a thrift store (of course), new in package. At the time, I was super excited because it was the right size/count for a Final Fantasy for 50¢. Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. It frays if it's looked at wrong, it's crooked, and stitching on it is something else. I know hardanger is woven a bit differently than Aida but it is sooo easy for the floss to slide out of the little hole where it belongs! I will continue to use it for this project because I'm stubborn (silly) like that but I cannot say I recommend Regency cross-stitch fabric after this experience (previously had used Charles Craft). Has anyone else had problems with that brand or did I just get lucky?

Okay, enough complaining! I have some chicken katsu curry to make for dinner (yum), brownies to bake for dessert (super yum), and stitching to do (no yum as I don't need that much fiber in my diet)! Enjoy your productive fingers next week, too! :D

The Birth of a New Project

Welp, I started the next Final Fantasy piece. YAY! Does anyone know which one it is?

The Project Gathering

one hour

three hours

And there I have stopped! Apologies for the crappy photos. My phone does not often like to focus on stitching (and I am not sure what exactly it IS focusing on). Anyhoodle, I am puzzled over this green. Is it dark? Is it bright? It is definitely dependent on the lighting. The floss toss looked great at Hobby Lobby (where my husband so kindly joined me on the floor in the floss aisle and helped pick the colors :D). I would hate to stitch the whole thing and decide I hated the colors after all. Plus, it feels like I've forgotten all I ever knew about cross-stitching after not touching it for over a year. It's kinda scary, haha.

I also did a little tweaking to my blogger page, too. Trying to give it a little bit more of a stitchy feel. And plaid is awesome. Please let me know if you see anything amiss! :D I will be very hit-or-miss with posting. Our Internet has been crap lately so I can barely load text-only pages. It took over 10 minutes just to stay connected long enough for a preview of this entry to load. Hooray for rural broadband...!