Nothing to show today, but I'm planning to spend the long holiday weekend crafting. So I should have something by next week. I've been working on some new patterns and have hit a wall with one of them. The text is done and I've chosen the colors I'm going to use but it needs something else and I haven't been able to figure out what that is. I'm waiting for my "a-ha!" idea moment so I'll know what to do with the pattern. I did finish one pattern that I'd abandoned months ago so I'll at least have something to work on this weekend.

Waaaay back when, I stitched this little number for my bf. A couple of weeks ago I came up with the idea to do a stitchers' version of it, minus the binary because frankly, I didn't want to stitch all those ones and zeros again.



I'll be adding the pattern in the next few days, depending on my level of laziness.
(Edit: Pattern for this and l33t crafter on the Patterns page now!)

I also started a new crafty thing- spool knitting. I used to do it when I was a kid and somewhere in my mom's garage is my original stuff. I decided to start up again to give myself something relatively simple to do while watching tennis or golf over the summer. Particularly when I'm not stitching something. It worked nicely while I watched the final round of the US Open on Sunday.

It's been awhile since my last lyric stitch, mainly because I haven't been able to finish the patterns. I probably wouldn't have stitched another National lyric, but I thought this would be a good one. The design is partially inspired by the ever-popular Keep Calm and Carry On posters.

Right now I'm working on some new patterns. There's a geek one, a music one, and a subversive/naughty one, and possibly something for my mom.

After stitching almost every day for 3 months, it feels weird not to be working on anything. However, I was finally able to read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which was really really good. Now I've started on Her Fearful Symmetry, which is good so far.

One of my friends got married a few days ago, so for a wedding gift I decided to stitch up a wedding sampler.

It's the biggest cross stitch project I've taken on. It took me over a month to finish the pattern (I am a notoriously slow pattern maker), and 3 months to do the actual stitching. So that's what I've been doing with most of my free time.

The finished product!



Close up view...



For the pattern I didn't want to do something traditionally wedding-y, because that's not what I do and that's not what the bride/groom are about either. I did some info gathering and found out favorite colors and other stuff I could use in the pattern. Their wedding colors were eggplant and olive green, so I wanted to have a lot of those colors in the sampler, along with the colors they said they liked. I incorporated elements from their invitation, the bride's necklace (which she ended up not wearing, oops) and a secret message in morse code. For the text, I used the groom's favorite font since he's a font nerd.

The boring stuff:
Size: approximately 9"x11"
Count/Fabric: 36 ct antique white Edinburgh linen (I've never stitched on 36 ct or linen before)
stitched over 2 squares
Colors: 17
Bands: 20

Below are the progress pictures I took along the way, there are also additional progress pictures here











 

Sorry for no updates in a while, but I am making up for it today. I was up in Seattle for a friends wedding. But before that, I was frantically finishing up some things for her. She is crafty like me and made tons of things for the wedding. Along with a cake, they had fancy cupcakes and I came up with the idea to cross stitch some simple signs for the different kinds so people would know what they were. She loved the idea and let me take care of them. So the random stitchy bits I've been posting...that's what I was doing.

Here's all 6 of the signs together framed. I used the $1 frames from Joann's which are awesome for small projects.



And the individual signs. The pictures (as usual) aren't great because they were taken very quickly and in the evening as I was frantically trying to get all my junk done the night before I left on my trip. Seriously, I don't recommend this.

The colors are purple and green which were their wedding colors.











Slipped Lakers colors into this one :)



Here's the signs in action at the wedding. The guests didn't eat much of the cake because they filled up on the cupcakes which were yumtastic, particularly the lavender ones. The stands were made by the bride from vintage plates.