Just One Gifted Gorgeous in July

Hello! Thank you all for drooling over my sugar cookies. They were dutifully inhaled as is Proper Cookie Etiquette. I wondered if I would miss another Gifted Gorgeousness post this month. Why? Remember that I had a new computer build? Well, the battery backup/surge protector for it caught. On. FIRE.

ಠ_ಠ

I think I set a new world record for the speed of shutting down my computer. Luckily there was no harm done to the computer and only minimal smoke to the house. I won't use my computer without adequate protection so I had to wait for a new backup to arrive. Ugh. It arrived yesterday, whew!

currently on: MH3U Rathian
click me!

Anywhoodle, you are here for some gorgeousness, not things catching on fire! This is a c-c-combo post for both GG and JOJ.

before
after

YAY! Madame Rathian is done! :D  I had a lot of issues with her.  First trying to pick the colors.  I went with the avocado DMCs for their brightness.  The olives would've been more "true" perhaps.  The original glyph had her eye blue like Rathalos (see below) but at no point does she have blue eyes in game!  They're golden!  So, I picked a drab sort of brownish yellow that I still don't know if I like.  Another issue was the lack of symmetry.  I wish I had made the pattern better!  Her tail came out well though, and that's her annoying important part. Her only goal in life is to poison you with it.

together forever

Technical Details
  • "Rathian" 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: February ??, Finished: July 8. 9+ hours, not including infinite floss issues.  

I intended to continue on with these glyphs as part of Just One July but seeing as I needed a computer to make the next pattern, that didn't happen.  I unfaithfully worked on knitting in the meantime.  Of course once I set things up again, the next one just fell into place!  If you know your monsters, perhaps you can guess by this (preliminary) floss toss:

best weapons ever

This one will be fun.  That is assuming I will have time to stitch.  This post is going up on the day Monster Hunter Generations is released here and of course two copies were pre-ordered.  I am going to bet my guy flies home from work and we'll never be productive again.  \ :D /

Just One (4th of) July!

Hooray, the 4th of July! Go America, escape from those silly Over-Puddlers who sought to tax our tea! Shame!

via Google Images

Yes, I like the 4th. It's probably my favorite holiday. The town puts on a lovely fireworks display... and so do our neighbors. The neighbors might even do better than the town. We will attempt to grill fancy burgers and hot dogs and otherwise stuff ourselves silly. Hopefully we will not be rained out; this has been a very soggy, stormy weekend!  Of course I had to make some cookies, but I was good and sent most of them into work with my husband on Friday.

need all the sugar
Just One July
So, being the sucker I am for one-focus projects, of course I had to join in when Justine suggested Just One July! So, what have I decided to work on? I bet you're thinking FFIII since it's so close to being finished! Welp, you are... wrong! Buu, buu! I have to admit to myself that I really need a good amount of mojo to work on that piece and I am currently lacking the required mojo. So I am not going to force myself into it and wind up hating it.

before

So, Rathian will get some love this time!  She hasn't been touched since early February, which totally shocked me, even more than the idea of this being July and the year half over soon it will be Christmas again o my goodness.  ahem.  There's not much left on her so I will content myself with a possible finish.  I will count working on the next pattern as part of Just One July as well since it's all one project.  I'll leave it to my husband to pick who the lucky monster will be.

Knitting

swimming on the kitchen table

I needed something new to knit and decided that since all of our bathroom washcloths are completely functional and boring, I would make a new one that would be functional and less boring!  It was my first time knitting moss stitch (the border).  I love how it looks but I could happily live my life without ever knitting it again!  It requires more focus than I want to give but it does help me with "reading" my stitches.  I also added the little loop because I didn't want to totally forget how to do an i-cord.  It was good practice.  Small steps. :)

Technical Details
  • "Dolphin Dishcloth" freebie pattern by Kelly Daniels, found here (ravelry)
  • Yarn: Unknown cotton, best guess would be Peaches n Creme in bright blue
  • Size 3 (3.25mm) needles, size 2 (2.75mm) DPNs for i-cord
  • Approximately 8.5" (21,5cm) square, 3" i-cord
  • Started June 22, finished June 27, about 7 hours.

It helps when there's a two-hour knitting meetup, twice! After the first meetup though, I did wind up ripping it back several inches. I wanted to try knitting on the purl side to see if I could make it reversible but it made for a rather wonky looking dolphin.  At least it boosted my confidence in ripping back and putting stitches back on the needle correctly!

Okay, that's enough Iskabibble Babble! Hope you have a great 4th of July (holiday or not) and if you're in America, give your pets a safe place to hide from the fireworks!

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.

currently on: MH3U Rathian
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.

Faithful April and a Bit of Kindness!

Here we are, April done and over with, whatever is the world coming to! Thank you for all of your lovely and snarky comments on my last post about my invisible squares!  I suppose I could have all manner of things completed if they were all invisible ahaha~ :b  Please feel free to join me in my Invisible Escapades and we shall take over the world with our imaginations!


First up!  If you haven't heard of Kim's 60 Random Acts of Kindness, it is her awesomely crazy way of celebrating life this year!  It's so fun to give during your birthday!  But! I can't believe I am RAK #2 and lookit the exclamation points the mail brought!

the goodies

A STONEY CREEK PATTERN!  Yes, I squeaked.  I really like Stoney Creek patterns.  She also sent some lovely fabric!  This is my first new fabric in eons!  And those little squares down on the bottom?

home is where you are ♥

Eeee!  They are so tiny and adorable!  Each block is ~1.5" square (I measured them at her suggestion haha) and they're stitched on perforated paper.  I've worked with perforated plastic but haven't been brave enough to trust myself (or cats) to paper!  Eeee! :D   They reside on my geeky shelf, not because they are geeky!  It's just my space for stuff I love. :)

Thank you so much, Kim!  :D :D :D

Now, since it's the end of April (egad, pt. 2), Faithful April, Justine's brainchild! It was so nice to work on just one thing again and I continued on with Final Fantasy III, letting it shoehorn its way into Gifted Gorgeousness along with invisible squares. Here's what happened!

before, start of April

after - with bonus parked string

Eee. I am so close to a finish. I hope the subject is more apparent to those who have not seen the final image.  I imagine the WIPs looked rather odd!  I feel like I'm in the area right before the final boss battle. I'm still free to roam around the map (chart), doing all the side quests and gathering all available ribbons (putting in backstitching and filling in the other leg of the cross).  But the boss is still there, waiting.  

I am going to continue with Faithful April right on into Faithful May and have. This. DONE(???). Two years, shameful! I've already started daydreaming about which one I'm doing next.  It will be the "easy" one haaaaaaaaaah.

Thank you for tuning into this week's edition of Ishkabibble Babble!  wriggles away

Gifted Gorgeousness, Faithful April #1, and Some TUSAL

Well, hidey ho~ Thank you for all the well wishes for finding more huck towels! I did manage to get two -- the only two they had. I don't know if more will trickle out from back stock but here is hoping! Three more to go so please share all your well wishes again haha. :D

currently on: MH3U Rathian
click me!

Now on to the crafty things! I have joined in Justine's Faithful April, where we devote our time on one project. I have shoehorned it as "finish one project at a time" as I really wanted to join in but the local knitting guild decided this was the month to knit some squares for a baby afghan! These will also work for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness as they are not baby afghan squares for me (thank goodness not ready for that haha :b). They needed to be done this month and I got the boss-lady's approval since knitting doesn't count anyway LOL. :D

Here are my two squares!

Well, here is where my two squares WOULD be but I completely derped out and didn't take a picture before taking them in to the lady finishing the blanket!  We decided to make a sort of sampler afghan with different 8" x 8" squares in yellow and white as the baby gender is unknown. Some of the less adventurous knitters will make some stockinette/garter squares for the corners. My squares are a triangle (yellow) and tile (creamy white) stitches. I am well known in the group for being a tight knitter (if you knit please be amused/horrified that I cannot slide my stitches on aluminum! needles without great effort!) so I was asked to do the tile square after one of the ladies brought her completed one in and was unhappy(?) with it (I thought it looked fine). She had four repeats of the stitch to my six.

I am unsure about the yarn. It was my first foray into using a merino/acrylic blend. The white in particular seemed to be prone to slubs (I haaaaate slubs). Otherwise it's very, very soft and lovely to hold the finished product. It splits like crazy.  At $8/213yd skein, I am not sure how comfortable I am using for baby items though it does make for a lovely gift. I would not recommend it for a beginner yarn unless one is willing to not stab people with needles after all the splitting and slipping and slubs.

Technical Details
  • Baby Afghan Squares, tile stitch (example pattern here), and triangle stitch (example pattern here)
  • Yarn: Cascade Pacific, 02 white and 12 yellow
  • #7 (4.5mm) needles
  • Finished size blocked: 8" square (20ish cm square)
  • Started: March 31, Finished: April 10, 11 hours.

before

Also for Faithful April and GG, more progress on Final Fantasy III, YAAAAAAAAAAY.  When I was originally planning to just work on this (pre-baby squares) I was thinking how to squeeze it in for GG as I wanted to remain faithful to that too!  So, how did I plan it?  Well, FFIII is the only project I have that is stitched on the floor stand -- gifted to me by my mom.  The needle minder (my very first!) solely for this project is the adorable Chii from Justine!  The fabric for this piece was found in a thrift store, "gifted" by some random stranger, how nice of them!  So, there you have it.  I am Faithfully Gifted Gorgeousness-ing.  tucks away shoehorn

still not curved

As you can see, not a huge amount of progress but the squares had to come first. Since they are faithfully finished, I can devote the rest of the month to this! It's nice not having to put away the stand after every session haha.  Also, I swear this is the hardest thing to take a picture of!  If I'd take it off the stand (not happening until it's finished), I imagine the images would be more consistent.

safety first

Here is something I saw shared on Stitching Lotus; how one organizes WIPS.  I absolutely adore these plastic folders.  They're large enough that patterns don't have to be folded and are clear so I know what the heck is going on in them.  I keep the DS case from FFIII in there too so when I run into a weird spot on the pattern I can refer to the original (though tiny) image and make adjustments if necessary.

click me, too!

April strings

And lastly, TUSAL! There's a healthy layer of black in there this time. I find that DMC 310 is somewhat of a pain to pick out if a mistake is made. It always seems to fray and break no matter how careful I am. I usually don't like Sullivan's floss but black is the one color I prefer, though 310 is much more readily available.

Mkay, I have rambled enough and didn't have enough pictures. Shame!  I'll continue working on FFIII for the remainder of the month, ignoring my other projects and a crochet pattern that presented itself in a completely untimely manner and DEMANDED to be made.  An army of them, really.  I was really excited when it was uploaded to ravelry, and just as excited when I saw Snowflower Diaries May freebie.  I admit I squeak delightedly at the computer at any given chance.

Have a good'n!