Welcome to the Hellfire of Creation

I've long considered starting a blog to chronicle my craft pursuits and here it finally begins. 

I suppose I should start with a brief introduction of what I'm in to and thus what is likely to appear on this blog.  My mother taught me to cross stitch when I was little.  I still remember my first project.  It was a stamped cross stitch sampler to be made into a pillow based on the one that a character in an American Girl book was making.  The text read "Actions speak louder than words" and had some flowers in the corners.  I know that I finished the stitching, but never completed making it into a pillow.  I'm not sure where that project is at the moment (although I am rather certain that it is in a box...), but it will always hold a special place in my heart.  I remember hating that the pattern was stamped because I felt like it was impossible to line up the stitches exactly like they were supposed to be. 

From there I moved on to lots of little kits, mostly things with penguins as they are my favorite animal.  I tried to avoid stamped patterns and advanced to counting myself.  I did a lot of work with plastic canvas, enjoying how much faster it all seemed to come together.  I started a lot of projects but through moves and just being distracted by other things I managed to have far more things started than I did finished. 

After returning to the US after living in Japan for three years (I have a blog on that as well if it interests you) I began to find several of my old projects, many of which I had never even started.  I have gotten bitten by the craft bug again and am working hard to finish some projects.  I prefer cross stitch and needlepoint, but recently have branched out into latch hook.  I'd love to learn to knit and crochet, but I'm waiting on starting up those for a while.

This blog will mostly be me posting and ranting about my various projects, but I recently began charting a few patterns of my own and may post those as well.  The projects I post will probably be a bit of a disconnect from the blog title.  The title is a quote from an anime that I was watching while trying to think of a name for the blog and it seemed too good to pass up.  My current projects are far more cute than the title would suggest.  But I plan to eventually do more projects to the anime, manga, comic, video game theme once I make some progress on some of my backlog of projects.  I am not joking when I say that some of these projects have been in progress for years...

I've gotten into the habit of taking lots of photos of my works in progress and enjoy seeing the progress over time.  And now I have a place to share them!  So welcome any who wander here and I hope we will enjoy the journeys together!