A mysterious project appears! Shrouded in secrecy!

So, after finishing my last project I tried to keep my positive momentum going and picked up another project.  This one has been waiting around a while to be stitched with materials bought but simply no progress made.  And finally we have a cross stitch project!  I tend to think of cross stitch as my main craft, so its really odd that I haven't posted a cross stitch project here until now. 

I won't be giving out too many details on this project, since it will be a gift for a friend and there is a slim chance that they might find their way to the blog and see it and I don't want to ruin the surprise.  But this picture is mysterious enough that I think even if they find it, they will have no idea what it is. 

Again I've done most of the work while watching Criminal Minds.  It helps that I've seen most of the episodes before, so I know when to pay attention and when I can be a bit more distracted.  I don't get as much done when an episode pops up that I really like (usually involving Spencer Reid) or when one I haven't seen comes on, but it still lets me get a lot done. 

There isn't much else to say in this one since I'm keeping quiet about most of it.  Feel free to guess what it is, unless you happen to recognize the actual pattern, then please don't say anything.  But general guesses are fine.  Happy crafting everyone!

Kanji Completion! Happiness for all!

So here we have another finish.   The kit is by Dimensions and its appropriately called Happiness. It's on 14 count mesh canvas.  I knew this one wouldn't take too long once I got going on it again.  I'd say it probably took me less than a week of actual work, but it was actually about twice that long to finish as I kept getting distracted from it, much as I did for the years I had it in Japan.  I did a lot of the stitching while watching Criminal Minds, which makes me really happy, despite what a depressing show it can be, so I felt that was appropriate. 

As I said before I really hate mesh canvas.  It was really hard for me to keep my stitches even, and to me (and probably only to me) parts of it look really bad.  Apparently I need some sort of frame, but its such a small project I wasn't going to go out and invest in something just for this.  I do have two more needlepoint projects that I really want to turn out well, so I may have to look into something.  I much prefer working on plastic canvas to this stuff as it is stiffer and easier to work with. 

This was also my first time working from a pattern that was not exactly charted.  I'm used to cross stitch, where every stitch is carefully mapped out and you count and make sure they go in the right place.  With this kit the background pattern is stamped on.  The only precise pattern I had was for the black stitching of the kanji and the letters.  The rest of the pattern didn't have a grid.  It looked more like a color by number pattern.  It gave the general area and shape that each color would make.  So instead of counting a lot, I just had to eyeball the stamped pattern and stitch accordingly. 

I found this much easier to do in natural light.  After doing the kanji in the center I did the red borders and then started with the darkest yellow which was the easiest to see.  I kept going to lighter shades until I got to the last two and then switched to the lightest color since there was less of it.  Telling the last two colors apart was almost impossible in artificial light.  They were just too close. 

I actually changed a few things with the pattern in regard to the back stitch.  I decided not to backstitch the kanji.  In the picture that came with the pattern it just looks messy in some places where the stitches don't line up exactly.  It doesn't look fluid and beautiful like kanji should.  I thought it looked just fine without the back stitching, so I didn't do it.  Also, they only wanted me to use one strand of thread for the backstitching on the corners and the border.  I did one corner, and hated it.  You couldn't even see the detail.  I showed it to my fiancé and mother and neither of them could even tell I'd worked on that section till I told them.  So I ripped it out, added another strand and started again.  It looks so much better. 

Since I didn't have to count, or even consult the pattern much I think this went together much faster than I'm used to with cross stitch.  But the lack of precision also made it frustrating in different ways.  Overall I'm just glad to have another project finished.  I'm not sure what to do with this one, so I might just try to find a nice little frame for it. 

I'm also a bit curious about what to do with all of my leftover thread.  With all of the projects I've finished I have some stuff left over, and each company seems to have their own special color code, so its not like I can just add it to my DMC stash.  I will keep it of course, but I have no idea how to lable or store it other than to just have a bag of leftover scraps.

Frustrating happiness! A work in progress!

So I'm totally still alive, and have in fact been crafting some more.  I have a WIP picture to share with anyone who reads this. 

This is yet another project that got started in Japan, but then got forgotten and never finished.  It's a needlepoint kit that has the Chinese character for happiness.  It's my first project on mesh canvas and I kinda really hate the stuff.  I'm sure I'll ramble more about that once I finish it, but I just can't get my stitches to lay evenly without being able to put it in a hoop.  Also, I hate not having an exactly charted partern.  This stamped-on-general-area-pattern is not for me. 

Anyway, here is where I am at the moment.

When I left Japan I wasn't even quite finished with the reds on the border, so I've really come a long way.  It stitches up quickly which makes me feel rather productive.  I have only two colors left to stitch and unfortunatly they are very close.  It's hard to tell where to stitch each color on the canvas unless I have natural light, so rather than my normal habbit of stitching at night, this one will need to see some serious progress during the day.  But once that is done I'll just have the back stitch and then I can put this one to bed as well!

I have some plans for this blog.  In order to attract more readers and share the craft I love I'm hoping to post some patterns I have made.  They are mostly anime and Japan inspired.  But those are things I like and I know other people enjoy them as well.  I'm currently fighting with my pattern program to figure out a presentable way to post the patterns.  I'm a little nervous about sharing my patterns, as I know there are so many great patterns out there on similar things, but hopefully I can share some unique things that aren't too terrible looking that other people might enjoy making.

But for now, that is all!  Happy stitching!

A crafty shout out! Geeky plushies sure to make you smile!

So I haven’t updated for a while as I was busy with a wonderful trip to Japan immediately followed by a trip to AggieCon, a convention I helped run while I was a student but enjoy immensely more now that I am not responsible for it.  So while I haven’t worked on any of my own projects I do have something from another crafter to share with anyone who happens upon this blog.

So the vendors at AggieCon carry a wide range of items from swords to comics to board games.  There are also several vendors selling handmade items like art sketches and jewelry.  And for the past several years I have purchased some wonderful products from one particular vendor named Chelsea Smith who makes adorable crocheted plushies. 

It all started about three years ago when I just had to have this adorable little Robin.  She had a good number of cute comic inspired dolls (I seem to remember a Rorschach from Watchmen and a Harley Quinn), but for my money, it doesn’t get much better than an adorable huggable Robin. 

Last year I bought an adorable little Kaylee of Firefly fame.  I saw her while casually browsing the booths and knew that she just had to come home with me.  She’s just too cuddly!  She’s a good bit bigger than Robin, which allows for more detail and huggableness.

This year I bought both Batman and a fox.  Batman was the first to catch my eye this time, and I just had to have him.  And as I stood at the booth and chatted with the lovely artist I found the fox and just couldn’t say no to him.  Both are about the size of Kaylee and make me smile just about as much.  She also had several Pokémon, a Yoda, an amazing Wookie, and an Iron Man among many other wonderful creations.

On top of the wonderful goods she sells at conventions she also does commissions.  I plan (once I have a bit more money to play with) to commission a Nightwing and possibly even a Batgirl to help fill out my Bat family.  She clearly knows a lot of great geeky characters and if she doesn't know the character you want I know she is more than willing to look them up in order to create something great for you.

And what’s more, she is really looking for commissions right now, as she is trying to raise money to travel to the Cannes Film Festival for an internship (which you can find out more about here).  You can see some more examples of her work on her deviant art page, and I wholeheartedly recommend these little guys.  They are well made and obviously super cute and cuddly.  If you have a younger brother or sister, niece or nephew, or kid of your own this is a great way to get them something geeky and cute and made just for them!  Or yourself!  So help an artist out and pay her to make you things!

Another photo finish! A useful present!

This will be the last finish for a while.  I didn't expect to get it done before my trip, but we went to Hobby Lobby today, so I was able to get the last thing I needed to finish it.

Today's achievement is a plastic canvas tissue box cover featuring everyone's favorite depressed donkey, Eeyore.  The kit is by Janlynn and the price tag informs me that I purchased it at Hobby Lobby.  I bought this kit two or three years ago, intending to make it as a gift for my fiancé, as he is particularly fond of Eeyore (I personally prefer Tigger).

So I worked really hard on it at first and got a lot done.  I got everything except some of the back stitching and the French knots completed.  But I ran out of white yarn, which meant I couldn't put it together.  This was frustrating.  I got some more, but one thing led to another, and I got stalled again for some reason.  I know I wasn't particularly motivated to finish as there wasn't much use for it in Japan since tissue boxes don't seem to come in this size there.  They come in the short rectangular boxes rather than the taller square ones. 

But then we came home and unpacked some boxes and I found it again, and told myself that it needed to get done now that it could be used.  So, after being stalled by another project that ran out of materials, I got going again, finished up all the back stitching, did all the French knots (which I really, really hate), and tied on the cute little bows all in one evening.  I was all ready to put it together, then I noticed that only three of the four sides had the dark green stitching along the top.  I got about halfway across and ran out of thread.  *cue rage*

This was the second thing I ran out of with this kit and I am rather annoyed with it.  The directions gave the color of the thread, so I wasn't too worried about being able to find more, it was mostly just that I really shouldn't have had to go out and get more.  I paid for a kit with materials to complete a project and I did not get what I paid for.  And unfortunately the color given seems to be mostly an approximation as it didn't match as well as I had hoped.  I ended up ripping out the half I had done on the last side and just doing that one side in the new color.  I don't think you can really tell the difference on the finished project, so that's a relief.

All four sides are the same and they turned out pretty cute.  The backstitching isn't as precise as I'm used to with cross stitch, but it gives it a kind of charm.  I like the combination of the thread details with the basic yarn stitches.  There is a clear difference in the thickness of the materials and I like the visual variety it provides. 

The instructions were really easy to follow and the pattern was clear.  I moved the peach stitching along the bottom of the sides up a line since they weren't laying flat very well without the overcastting on the bottom edge (which was the very last step) and I'm happy with the decision.

Assembly was pretty basic with all straight edges.  This project was on 7 count plastic canvas, making it a larger mesh than the previously posted penguin coasters.  I like working with plastic canvas as it is very sturdy and makes for projects that are not only decorative but functional.

While this project has not been a surprise for quite a while (and I'm not even entirely positive if it ever was a surprise...) I am very happy to have it finished so that my fiancé can enjoy it.  He has lots of allergies, so a tissue box cover is very useful for him.  I hope that whenever his allergies make him miserable and he reaches for a tissue he can smile a little when greeted by these cute Eeyores.  He deemed the project "Awesome," which may just be because he loves me, but I'm okay with that.

Kitty Completion! It's finished, you fool!

I'm sure everyone thinks that I am a liar as I said that I never finish anything and here I am, posting my second finished project.  But perhaps that just means that having this blog is encouraging me as I hoped it would. 

Anyway, I am happy to say that my latch hook kitty cat is finished!  I’m quite pleased with how quickly this project went together, less than two weeks from start to finish.  I really wanted to get it done before I head off on a long vacation and thankfully all went smoothly.  Assembly was tricky, and I did a few things wrong, but I learned quite a bit doing it, had fun, and am pretty happy with the result.

The project is a M.C.G Textiles latch hook Huggables kit called Pretty Kitty.  It's on 3.75 mesh canvas and the kit included everything except the latch hook tool, the stuffing, and the thread for the whiskers.  And unlike other kits I've recently been frustrated with, this one had more than enough of everything I needed.  I could have used a tiny bit more white assembly yarn, but it really doesn't detract from the finished project.

Here's what I started with today. 

Here's a look at some of the seam work.  I wish I had taken a picture when I was putting the feet together as it would have probably turned out better.  Most of the pieces are stitched up with the right sides together and using a back stitch.  The example below is one side of the body being attached to the tummy.  For most of the smaller pieces that meant stitching up three sides then turning it right side out to stitch up the last side with a ladder stitch, which was used for those places where you had to stitch with the right sides facing out. 

It was pretty hard to get everything to line up right.  I had to redo at least four entire sections while working today.  It was frustrating, and I figured out that I had done a few things wrong that were too late to fix, but that hopefully I can hide and no one else will notice (I did some of the seams on the wrong square so that you can sorta see the mesh at the seams if I don't hide it right).  But after fighting with it all evening and stuffing it to the brim I had a completed kitty!

I am NOT happy with the nose, but I really don't want to redo it, so it's going to just have to stay that way.  It's kinda off center and I'm not completely sure what I should have done differently, but I am just going to chalk it up to being overly critical and try to ignore it.

The kitty is about 12 inches long, but I do wish they had given it a longer tail. 

Despite all the little problems with it (that I'm not even sure you can see in these pictures thankfully) I'm happy with it.  I'm not sure I'd be happy enough with it to give it to someone, but I am confident that if I do another stuffed animal (and there are a bunch more in this set) that it will be much better.

The instructions for this kit were pretty good, although I am almost certain that there was at least one mistake.  At least there was something that I deemed impossible to do as directed and moved the point that should match up and it worked.  Some of the numbered points that you are supposed to match up during assembly are a little unclear, but I could follow along for the most part.  I am really happy that I stuffed up the legs before I attached the head though, as I'm not sure that the gap left for stuffing would have allowed me to really maneuver the stuffing into its proper place.

In case anyone was curious, I randomly decided to make all of my blog post titles excited titles (be warned that following the link may leave you lost on tv tropes for the rest of the day).  And today's title is a reference to this:

Crafting a Kitty! Slightly creepy progress!

So before the penguin coasters got finished I got stalled by, not one, but two separate projects that came as kits but did not include enough materials.  I'll rant about each of those in their turn, but for today we'll talk about something that, for the moment at least, is actually getting closer to being done. 

I'll give the full details when its finished, but I'm making a latch hook kitty cat stuffed animal.  I was thrilled when I found this kit in the store as the only things I knew you could make with latch hook previous to this were rugs and wall hangings.  I've long been tempted by the Amigurumi books in the knitting and crochet sections of the craft stores, so this was a pretty close project with a medium I was already familiar with.  My "plan" is to buy many of these kits to try to get a grip on how the patterns come together so that, eventually, I can try my hand at making my own.

That's still a long way off though, and for now I'm working on this black and white kitty.  I'd say I'm currently about 2/3 of the way done with it, and am moderately pleased with my progress.

Work began by hooking all of the kitty pieces.  I finished that in just under a week.  This went so much faster than the rug I was working on before this, probably because there are only two colors and there wasn't much counting needed.  I designated this as one of my "downstairs projects" so I work on it mostly while watching TV.  I discovered that marathons of Criminal Minds make for much latch hooking progress.  I traced all the lines I would need for cutting, which was a bit more difficult than I expected it to be, since all of the corners are in empty space and my brain was having a hard time transitioning between the two.

Then I cut out the first few pieces and began assembly.  I've never really done anything quite like this before, so its been challenging but fun.  I had to stitch up some darts, and a few I had to do twice because they didn't lay right the first time.  Some pieces, like the front and back of the ears, go together pretty easily as they are the same shape.  Others, like the muzzle, were challenging because they are not the same size as the piece you are attaching it to and thus you have to ease it into place.  It's supposed to give the animal more shape and definition, but I'm worried it will end up crazy lopsided.

I finished the head last night after fighting with the ears for far longer than I would like to admit.  I think the muzzle is a little crooked and the ears are not quite balanced.  This made placing the eyes an interesting challenge as they look a bit lopsided, even though they are even with each other.  Hopefully I'm just being overly critical of my own work and it doesn't look too bad.  I may be able to squish it around a bit more once I stitch the body together and stuff him.

Today I worked on the front and back left legs.  The directions were actually mislabeled at one point, so I was really confused until I figured out what I was supposed to do.  Tomorrow I'll be repeating the process with the right side of the body, then I'll be able to stitch on the belly and tail and it should start looking more like a kitty and less like some disassembled body parts.