2018 Recap: Books

Whoops, one more recap post! This is my annual "I do occasionally read words instead of writing too many" post where I cover what I read for the year, plus a bit of a ramble.  I wound up trying, and failing, to keep track of the manga read.  There are just too many!  It's especially "bad" in the winter when I curl up with the cats and my laptop and just... binge read all evening.  Imagine all the crafting I could have done!  Oh, well, I am enjoying myself either way. :)

image via Google image search

Italicized is a book I have never read before.   
Italicized and bolded is never read and a new-to-me author.

1. Jingo (Terry Pratchett)
2. The Last Continent (Pratchett)
3. Carpe Jugulum (Pratchett)
4. The Fifth Elephant (Pratchett)
5. The Truth (Pratchett)
6. Thief of Time (Pratchett)
7. The Last Hero (Pratchett)
8. Night Watch (Pratchett)
9. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Pratchett)
10. The Wee Free Men (Pratchett)
11. Monstrous Regiment (Pratchett)
12. A Hat Full of Sky (Pratchett)
13. Going Postal (Pratchett)
14. Thud! (Pratchett)
15. Wintersmith (Pratchett)
16. Making Money (Pratchett)
17. Unseen Academicals (Pratchett)
18. I Shall Wear Midnight (Pratchett)
19. Snuff (Pratchett)
20. Raising Steam (Pratchett)
21. The Shepherd's Crown (Pratchett)
22. The Unadultered Cat (Pratchett)
23. Gilgamesh (Stephen Mitchell)

I started the year continuing the Discworld series.  They just kept getting better!  I was surprised at The Last Hero since I didn't realize some would be young adult novels too.  There wound up being several like this which made for quick and enjoyable reads!  I had hoped to finish the series by June but sometimes there wound up being too much of a delay between books (some had to come from the far corners of the state). I finished in the middle of July.  It's great to have them all read though bittersweet that there won't be any more to enjoy. I cried reading The Shepherd's Crown.

My husband got me The Unadultered Cat off of my wishlist for Christmas last year thinking it was part of Discworld.  I had that book on my list before I ever knew of the Discworld series!  I have no idea where I had heard of it though.

After Discworld, reading books kind of slowed down as I worked on getting caught up on our National Geographic subscription.  I had several months worth of backlog to get through.  There were a few library book sales during the downtime and I stocked up on some new (and old) material.  So, this year isn't as good as previous years in terms of numbers.  And now I have a new series of books to watch for hah.

My husband wanted to read a bit more in terms of stand-alone books (most of his reading is on the computer) and wanted to keep track of them.

1. Ringworld (Larry Niven)
2. Eat That Frog! (Brian Tracy) 
3. Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull)
4. Gilgamesh (Stephen Mitchell)
5. Extreme Ownership (Jocko Willink & Leif Babin)

I'm really glad he's joined a bookclub at his work!  He seems to be enjoying it too, even though they only read one chapter a week of their chosen book. I often feel like we're holding library books hostage but the librarians are great at encouraging keeping them until they're finished.  :)

owned media - why yes, we DO like Asimov, have you noticed?

Because we've gotten a healthy collection of books, one of my goals whims for 2018 was to sort of organize them so I wouldn't wind up with duplicates.  I think a lot of people might use GoodReads or something similar to track their books.  My solution was simple and less elegant: a Google spreadsheet!  We had already started one for our CDs ages ago (we have as many CDs as books -- we love music!).  It eventually grew to have separate pages for manga, movies, and video games.  I like this method because it's easy to search on my phone whenever I accidentally find myself in a bookstore or at a thrift store.  According to the sheet, we have 275 books (excluding manga, my craft books, and some miscellaneous items).  It sure felt like a lot more when we moved...

I think this year I will tackle my craft books.  I really like vintage craft magazines and books.  Ravelry is a great place to log them but not all of them are listed and I have no scanner to contribute.  I think it will be easier to have everything in one spot anyway.

thread stash

On a stitchy note, I also have a spreadsheet for my floss.  :)  I think we just really like spreadsheets (I also have them for sewing machine attachments and my Corelle set, and my husband has several for his things too).  If you're interested in this stitchy one, you can find a copy here.  You'll need to save it to your own Google account if you want to use it.  She has since updated it to contain the fabric calculator and floss availability, but the newest colors are not in there.  They're easy to add if you have basic spreadsheet knowledge.

Okay, that's all the recap posts for me.  I've already started on 2019's list with a whopping three finishes.  They're children's novels though, so nothing too extreme. :) There's still a little time to enter the first of 2019's Year of Giveaways, if you'd like!

June GG ~ Side #5 is a Finish!

Allo there, folks~  Thank you for all your reassurances last post that "appy" is quite fine where it is!  I am currently waiting for the sparkly red floss to finish the fireworks.  I could not find it in any store, anywhere!  I was going to order it online but they wanted four times the price of the floss for shipping -- lol no.  I am patient and attentive to sales so I know there would be a free shipping coupon at some point.  Luckily within the week!  It took quite a while to ship as I just received it yesterday.  I haven't even found time to bobbinate it let alone use it.

Anyway, on to the giftedness!

click for more info

before

after

Hooray! The fifth side of the Husband Cube is finished!  Narg wound up with a lot of pleasant-to-stitch colors but really seemed to take forever.  I guess because there weren't any little patterns in his large blocks of color like the others had.  And the tail was suitably a pain in the tuchus just like in-game.

Technical Details

• "Nargacuga" glyph from Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, pattern charted by me.
• 2 over 1 on 20-count light tan jobelan fabric.
• Finished size: 3.50 x 3.50" (9 x 9 cm).
• Started: March 29, 2018, Finished: June 8, 2018, unknown hours.  

and then there were five

Next up, the final side!  It will be Ceadus which wasn't originally planned for ???? reason.  Poor guy, he's even a flagship monster in the game; dunno why we didn't immediately think of him.  His pattern is a little creepy but looks really interesting to stitch.  As a bonus for a cube finish, it won't matter which way Ceadus faces -- he's an underwater battle and goes whichever direction suits him best hah.

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★
Not for GG, but I wanted to squish in a little progress on September's Aster somewhere. It may be September before I finish this one hah.

before

after

At least one flower (and bud) is finished! Maybe the other will bloom a bit faster.  I think I've achieved acceptance on the orange center.  Or at least laziness.  :D

Re: Blogger Comment Fiasco --  I will be doing the "Notify Me" version of the comments on my blog.  If I don't have/can't find your email address, I will reply directly to the comment.  I didn't have this set up on the last post so if you haven't received a reply from me, it's because none were sent!  This whole thing is really silly and I hope that it's soon fixed.

Next up will probably be for the Smalls SAL if I can rummage up another little piece out of my digital stash.  Still not quite feeling Christmas!  See you folks next time for another edition of Iskabibble Babble~  \:D/

April GG ~ Bat Cats and Skillets

Hello there, world!  I hope this post finds you joyfully productive with your Gifted Gorgeousness.  I've kind of had a slow crafting month so far.  The weather had moderated for a bit and I spent a good portion of my time outside cleaning up the yard, spring cleaning windows, and prepping the lawn mower for another year of working out on the slopes!  I am so happy to report I have daffodils this year!  YAY!  \:D/

I also made brownies because brownie sundaes. That is a Very Important because.

click for more info

before

after

For this month's GG, I give you a bit more on the 5th side of the Husband Cube; it's starting to look like the bat cat!  Or possibly like a bird of prey at the moment.  Also there is an awful lot of that particular dark blue; 53% of the piece will be that color and I would suppose I'm about halfway through using it here.  I wanted to move on to another color for variety's sake!  So far so good, even if it's a bit sparse this month for other crafty things to show.

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★
This last part isn't for GG unless I bring out the Almighty Shoehorn Power of which I am so fond.

I really like cast iron skillets. Whilst out and about one day, I found one that had been "gifted" to a thrift store. It wasn't old but it was large and I was on the lookout for one that size.   It needed some reseasoning so I took advantage of this absurdly cold spring and ran it and a couple other pans that needed some love through the cleaning cycle on our oven.

I hate glass-topped stoves.

Don't they look scary!  I always question my choices when I see them like this haha.  The one on the bottom left is the new-to-me one, a 10" Lodge from...?  I cannot seem to find info when Lodge started stamping the assist handle with their logo (this one does not have a stamped handle), but it does have the egg in the pan on the bottom so it has to be from at least the late 80s.  I would guess it's from the 90s.  The smallest one on the bottom right is a Wagner from at least the 60s (has the "Made in USA" stamp).  It's a fantastic egg skillet!  The top one is another Wagner, a #9 from the 1890s-1910s.  It was abandoned in a house we rented.  The inside was okay to use, especially at a time when I had no skillets!  The underside, however, is VERY pitted most likely from being used on a fire.  It is why I was on the lookout for another large skillet.  It sure cleaned up nice though!

old Wagner crud

old Wagner cleaned up

second layer of seasoning

Much better!  I wound up baking four layers of seasoning on these.  They are now ready for their bacon baptismal! :D  I will probably be retiring the old Wagner, though...  The underside is so, so pitted and slightly warped (but not cracked).  It's a shame though because it is as smooth as silk inside.  I love the old stuff!

Okay, enough from me.  I will see you on the next edition of Ishkabibble Babble, probably for the Smalls SAL!

Gifted Gorgeousness: MH3U, Baby Blanket, Speaker Cozies!

Aloha! Here we are with another installment for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness.  I feel like I have a lot of giftedness to show today so I will just dive on in!

click me!

before

after

Brachydios Mio!  Another square for the husband cube!  I so very much enjoyed working on this guy.  The pattern was great (tooting my own horn there), the colors were great, and he's just all around great.  I'm already thinking I want to make a little case for either my DS or games or something, just to have an excuse to stitch him again!

RGB

Three down, three to go! I have yet to decide on the next square. I am going to guess either Nargacuga or Zinogre. Or maybe Lagiacrus.  Or the pickle.  I'll let the giftee decide and absolve myself of difficult things.

Edit: He decided Zinogre!  I've tweaked up the image into a chart but I am not happy with the colors (again).  We shall go floss diving!

¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸

image courtesy of finishing madam!

Next up, here is the finished baby blanket for the lady who set up our knitting group at the library! Sorry these colors aren't quite optimal; they were taken under the library florescent lighting and at a rather weird angle. I like the way it was finished up but I do not envy the lady who finished it! All of our squares were different stitch counts and tensions haha. But she did a great job with what she had and the blanket is so soft and snuggly. :)  My squares are the top middle white (tiles) and the bottom right yellow (triangles).

¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸ . · * / ` \ * · . ¸

gears?

 
Next-next, also for Mr. Husband, I worked on a few more motifs for the speaker cozies... finally!  It really seems to fly when I work on the individual little bits before putting them together. Plus it creates a nice sense of accomplishment having little parts done.  This particular cozy will be for one of the towers and will be 4x5 motifs.  I will need 10 of each color of these little inner parts... and this little inner part is only 1/3 of a full motif... and I will need four 4x5 motifs......  I'll kindly let you do the math as I'd rather not think about how many more I will be making LOL.  (They really are enjoyable though; especially the delft blue.)

Whew!  Gifts are fun.  I have another gift to show but it has yet to reach its giftee so maybe the next GG~

I do have a question for you all before I scurry away.  Assuming a miracle happens and you manage to not lose your needle for many projects, what do you do with the needle when it gets tarnished and "squeaks" through fabric?   These are just basic non-gold needles.  I assume pitching them but it seems a waste?  And a bit dangerous to put needles, even blunt tapestries, in the garbage!

Gifted Gorgeousness: More MH3U Goodness

Hello again! It is time again for another Gifted Gorgeousness, hosted by Queen Serendipity herself. Jo "warned" me to not have any more disasters regarding GG posts! It does seem that this year is conspiring against me. However, this post was safely typed up ahead of time so while we are indeed surrounded currently by flooding (we're safe, just very soggy), the show will go on~

click me!

I have continued to work on the MH3U piece that is destined to become my husband's gift.

before

after

Finished his other pounder!  I love the colors in this guy... and I'm loving stitching him. Apart from having a fabulous palette, his attacks are neat and his armor is fairly awesome (except the alien helmet) and his weapon is hands down my favorite.  We're getting close to his battle in the new version.  wiggling intensifies

This is not part of GG but I completed my hat for the Ravellenic Games! :D

nyaa~!

I found the pattern free on Ravelry and I thought it'd make a good newbie hat. And it is! Knitting in the round isn't that hard but I still need a bit of practice with the initial join.  I know with the hat flat like that it doesn't look like much but when one puts it on, the corners perk up into ears.  It's very cute.  They yarn is the same as the ever-growing Kitty Prints scarf and, yes, I made it to match. Turns out this lovely soft yarn is not quite sturdy enough to hold up the ears so I put a cottonball in them before tacking them down. Perhaps the floppiness was also because I used a larger needle than was called for; I have no smaller circulars.  I added the embellishment as an afterthought.  What do you think?  Should I keep it or leave it plain?  Maybe make the nose pink?

Technical Details

• "KitKat hat" pattern by Andre Sue, found here on ravelry (free).
• #9 29" circular, one #8 DPN for bind off.
• Yarn: Yarn Bee Soft Secrets, aqua.
• Cast on 92, did 2" of ribbing - 9.5" wide, 7.5" tall.
• Started August 5, finished August 10, approximately 8 hours.

Lessons Learned
(hopefully)

• How to knit in the round (not magic loop)!
• 3-needle bind off - LOVED this. 

I definitely see more hats in my future!  They're surprisingly simple to make.  I thought about making another one of these kitty hats in black and white.  I don't know how to change colors while knitting and I feel this is a big gap in my education!

Okay, that's enough babble from me. Thank you for reading~ :D

Update: Just One July

I'mma just dive right in here before August teleports away.  This is the next side for the Monster Hunter cube, filled with toxic green goodness!  This pattern cleaned up rather quickly once my computer parts stopped catching on fire and worked like they should(?).

endure the punches

I wound up not using a single one of the preliminary floss toss colors. Super Husband to the rescue picking colors! I love turning him loose in the store with the instructions to pick good colors haha. Maybe it's a bit silly to have him pick stuff for his own gift... oh well, he does a wonderful job of it.

hey there

Rather short on the update.  Of course we have over 60 hours in the new Monster Hunter game so progress ground to a halt.  Imagine the things I could accomplish if I didn't spend that time gaming!  But, gaming comes first, especially co-op gaming.  Then, the last part of July was spent on vacation down in Alabama and Georgia.  The Georgia Aquarium was really neat, even the gift shop with the silly fish faces.  Driving in Atlanta was horrendous.  Exit only lanes pop out of nowhere and speed limits are mild suggestions.  Nope, nope, nooope.  But all the stitchy progress was vacation stitching, that's a win for me!  I made sure to prep my fabric in advance; that helped a lot.

Oh!  And I decided to participate in the Ravellenic Games this year.  I will be knitting a hat for the first time and maybe making something else if the hat finishes faster than expected!  Having never done one before, I have no clue about time frames.  It's not a huge goal but it will teach me to knit in the round (normally; I was taught magic loop first) and do a 3-needle bind off, woo!

Gifted Gorgeousness, Maybe

Well! Hello! This silence went on for much longer than intended. It was time for a new computer build and of course it decided to be the Build from Hell. Long story short: Skylake and Windows 7 do not like each other.  Windows 10 is currently installed and I'm still trying to figure out how to get my soul back from it because boy-o-boy does it have a lot of invasive privacy defaults.  There are still some hardware issues to work out but at least I'm up and (sorta) running again.  Of course all my blog follows are still on the old computer which I am going to rebuild for my mother.

click me!

I figured I'd try to get a GG post up though I haven't much to show for it.  I'm sad that I didn't get to post last month; it really bugs me to skip out on things I sign up for which is why I don't sign up for much!

before - with bonus parked string

after - with different bonus parked string

I'm not going to beat myself up too much. The stand this project is on, while appreciated, is very uncomfortable to sit at for any length of time. Add the heat of summer arriving and I practically want nothing to do with it.  I am trying to be particular with the second leg of the cross stitch as there are only four colors going from green to blue.  I want the transition to be as unnoticeable as possible.  I hope I've succeeded so far!

Oh!  Remember those baby afghan squares that I gave away before taking a picture?  A lot of you cheeky people admired my invisible projects.  Well they are invisible no more!

such soft much wow

At our next get-together, I asked for my squares and took a lovely(?) shot of them in the library under perfectly ideal(?) lighting. :D They hadn't been blocked yet so they look a little squirrely around the edges.



Our teacher has started piecing them together which she says has been an adventure! I suppose that's what happens when you have many people with their many tensions.  Mine were fun because, you know, tight. :D

I received a wonderful RAK in the mail during the Computer Crisis which made grey skies blue again!

huck towel and bonus!

After hearing about my plight with Hancock Fabrics shutting down and the ecru huck towels vanishing into the world of darkness, Tiffany at Tiffstitches a Blog offered to send me one she got in a "job lot" (new term for me!) on eBay!  Yay!  Thank you so much!!  I'm determined to have the Flower of the Month series completed before I'm 80 haha.

bonus goodness

And look, a bonus! I'm tempted to display the skein on the wall, it's so lovely.  It's a Jodyri Designs hand-dyed thread in Alaskan Beauty.  I have not heard of this dyer before Tiff's blog so I went exploring their site; so many beautiful colors.  I am still a bit afraid of hand-dyed threads because they are not colorfast.  I think this particular skein would look wonderful on some sparkly Silkweaver fabric I picked up last year.

Welp, that's all on this edition of Ishkabibble Babble.  I think.  The heat has fried my brain.

Gifted Gorgeousness, TUSAL, and the Usual Rambles

help yourself

Hello, hi, howdy~ I hope y'all had a suitably romantic Valentine's Day, or do as we did, and mostly ignored it because we were in for some snow, yay!  I did find it a useful excuse to make cookies. :)  My husband loves sugar cookies and I have found this recipe to be just the perfect softness.  I do have to bake at a lower temperature but that's just my Specific Oven Persnickety.  They are glazed with this recipe.  I make these several times a year as I have quite the collection of cookie cutters; almost every holiday is covered. :D  And since it was a decent amount of snow (finally), I stocked up on snow ice cream again!  It's so nice to fish out of the freezer in July after an afternoon of mowing!

click me!

before

after

Here we have my contribution to Gifted Gorgeousness -- progress on Rathian, yay! I am glad to have done as much as I have on her, especially now that I'm past all the color issues. If you're new to my blog, this is part of a little gift for my husband.  It was originally just going to be the Mr. and Mrs. but silly me mentioned how cute a cube would be... and "doomed" myself as my husband's eyes lit up at the thought. :)  I enjoy making the patterns and stitching them up though!

growing, growing

I have also worked more on the speaker cozies, also for my husband. I seem to keep putting it off to do random other things (luckily he's such an understanding guy who knows the draw of books... video games... computers... something sparkly over there...) but every time I come back to it, I wonder what kept me away! They're such simple motifs and the pattern is pretty much engraved in my mind at this point. Here we have several little inner sections completed.

click me, too!

February "strings"

And here is my TUSAL update, completely untimely (didn't want to give it its own post). I must have a talk with the Moon.  It is being most unhelpful this year by falling squarely halfway between my normal posts.  I realized as I uploaded this image I hadn't taken a picture of the yarn ORTs.  There weren't many even though I did do something yarny!

guess how I took this picture

Tada! Here we have some fingerless mitts, completely finished no less! The lady who runs our little knitting group/class wanted to teach us the magic loop method. This is a way of knitting small projects on a single (long) circular needle. It's very handy but it does. Not! WORK! on super tiny things... like thumbs.  Perhaps if the actual needle parts of the circular would be only 1" long...!  I struggled through it on the first glove but decided that was for the birds and bought some double-pointed needles (DPNs) to finish off the second glove.  That was an adventure in itself as I have never messed with DPNs before.  I am one step closer to becoming an octopus.

At first, I wasn't too thrilled with the design of these gloves and originally intended them to be just practice and then they'd go off to the donation bin.  But they are absolutely amazing for cross stitch!  I always have cold hands and these provide enough warmth while letting my fingers be free to deal with the needle.  They're even great for sitting at the computer.

Technical Details

• "Uno" pattern by Annika Abbott, found here on ravelry (not a freebie), very well written.
• #9 29" circular, #8 DPNs.
• Yarn: Red Heart Classic Solid, light berry.
• Small size (6-7"), did a shorter starting rib (calls for 8 rows; I did 6). 
• Started February 1, finished February 8, 11.5 hours for the pair.

Lessons Learned
(hopefully)

• How to make cables, they're remarkably simple (C3F, C3B)!
  
• How to make a thumb gusset (M1R, M1L)!
• How to cast off with ribbing -- this totally baffled me, more than the gusset!
• Magic loop -- PULL THE STITCHES TIGHT ON ENDS! (!!!)
• DPNs - grow a couple extra arms for the first round!

Have I talked enough yet?  No?  Here, have one more item of interest.

bobbin case and hook assembly completely removed

I have been slowly puttering around with my Singer find.  On Saturday, I took apart the bobbin case and hook assembly down to the base and gave it a good cleaning using this great tutorial.  Only 65 years of gunk!  And quite honestly, not nearly as bad as some of the horror stories I find with Google image searches!  I used rubbing alcohol (carefully, as it will apparently do nasty things to the finish of the machine) and about five million Q-tips.  There's still a little bit of fuzz but it's noticeably cleaner around the hook assembly hole!  There's actually an uncoated surface down there!  It got fresh oil to make it slide around happily.  The bobbin case was a bit fiddly to get back in as one of the clips refused to slide over the little groves on the retaining clip.  Luckily I am (mostly) patient and eventually wriggled it into place.

all shiny and clean

And the feed dogs!  Oh my goodness gracious I was a bit grossed out by how much crud was in the little grooves.  It soaked in the alcohol for a while while I cleaned everything else and then got multiple passes with toothpicks.  It looks much nicer now.

One part done!  :D  I think I will next brave the tension assembly.  It's a scary part to me.  The machine stitches very well as is but the thread take up spring thingy is not quite positioned right.  I don't want to mess up a lovely stitch but something needs done so I'll spend some time reading up on how to disassemble and tweak it.

Hopefully your eyes haven't glazed over! :b  I think I will stop rambling now and let you get back to your life!  Have a lovely day!

Gifted Gorgeousness - Rathian Update, and TUSAL

Aloha!  Thank you for your lovely comments!  It was quite a surprise to see the emails as I honestly meant to disallow again for that post.  But, it was a happy surprise and since the holiday season is over I feel a lot less pressured to Do All the Things.  :D  I will slowly be getting back to commenting on blogs, though admittedly at a reduced capacity.  Last year I found myself overwhelmed with leaving comments.  I suppose it's because I talk too much.  I just can't leave a "looks great!" comment and move on.  Because of that, I was spending about 3-5 hours per day commenting (and trying to get blogs to load) and I burnt out.  This was also partly the reason I disallowed comments last year.  Why should I accept comments when I can't return the favor?  Is this silly?  I don't know!  My brain does what it does and sometimes what it does makes absolutely no sense but I can't always tell when it's not making sense.  Nonsense is a way of life for me or perhaps you have already noticed that~

Well, have you had quite enough of me rambling yet?  I'll get to the actual post now and ramble some more. :9

click me!

floss!

yarn!

Quite a bit more in there this time around. I've been plowing through the June Rose, finally figured out some Rathian colors, and found some scraps from the little Airou ornaments I made last year.  As I was admiring the layers it occurred to me that the thick dark blue band is a good indicator of time.  It was from my first crochet projects so the tail end of 2014!  Maybe I should put another yarn in to end 2015.  I'll have to steal one because, look!, a yarn ORT jar! Sorry it's so cloudy. It's an older jar and sat in the old food shed for untold years. I like the design on it though.  Those are the ORTs from the Rudolph square alone.  I think this jar will fill rather quickly!

click me too!

Next, the first GG of 2016! I made a small button to use this year from Jo's Mill Hill photo (it made me smile to see that as this year's GG image -- I gifted that! :D). I needed something smaller to fit on the sidebar without scrunching it up so I hope you don't mind, Jo!

before

after

But yessss, Rathian starts to see the light!  Turns out those avocado greens in the flower-of-the-months lend themselves quite nicely to her colors. Design-wise, I find myself preferring Rathalos but I prefer fighting him too. :b  If you're thinking the colors don't match the chart, they don't!  I made the chart with KG-Chart LE which is not known for matching colors very well.  I don't usually have my boxes of floss with me either so I couldn't compare -- which is hard anyway because monitor settings vary, image quality varies, blah blah blah.  But she's on her way after stitching/picking out what felt like every green I own.

That will be all from me for now!  I think this weekend is supposed to be IHSW but I don't know if I'll squeeze in any work on FFIII.  We'll see~  I'll post about it if I do, though it may be squeezed in with my next update for the FotM.  I decided to keep posting at the end of the month despite the FotM SAL no longer being held on blogger (it has apparently moved entirely to facebook, thanks again for the update Mini!).  I do not like facebook groups (no offense, it's just not my thing and they wind up overwhelming my feed no matter how many times I tell the page to STAHPPPP) so I will just plug along here.  :)