the_other_sandy: Kaleidoscope (Kaleidoscope)
Some of you may remember my occasional posts about cross stitching. I'm sure you think I'm making it all up at this point because I haven't finished a project in something like 8 years, including the project I started and posted about 2 years ago. But now I've actually made something! I even made two somethings!

I was highly motivated. For those who don't know, I'm a librarian. Our craft book collection isn't circulating like it used to, so the staff was issued a (completely voluntary) challenge last August to pick a craft book out of our collection and make something from it. The resulting craft item would then be put on display along with a color photocopy of the cover of the book the craft came from so that patrons would know that they could make whatever-it-is too.

I needed to pick something small because I am the slowest stitcher in the entire world, so I poured through our cross stitch pattern books, of which we have about a third of what we used to, and picked this from 501 Cross Stitch Designs by Sam Hawkins:

Cross Stitch Father Christmas


But it wasn't until after I'd bought the supplies and started on the design that I noticed the copyright date on the book was 1993. I thought I should probably promote a newer book, so I did a catalog search for cross stitch pattern books and discovered we hadn't bought a new one in 4 years (and started to see why maybe our craft book collection isn't circulating like it used to). I hit up the selector in charge of that collection and got her to buy about half a dozen new books.

Most of the new books had some really cool designs in them, but I needed something small again (seriously, slowest stitcher in the entire world). Fortunately one of the books was right up my street and I made this from Makoto's Cross-Stitch Super Collection by Makoto Oozu:

Cross Stitch Space Shuttle


Both are now being framed. The display goes up next Tuesday and will run through the end of November. Meanwhile, now that I don't have a deadline anymore and have rediscovered how much I enjoy doing this, I have 3 more patterns that I photocopied from the new cross stitch books. Of course, I also have 4 or 5 projects in various stages of completion in my closet, so maybe I ought to work on one of those, since I already have the supplies for them and don't need to buy anything.

Date: 2011-10-27 03:39 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] bookwurm.livejournal.com
Oh, those are cute! I'm going to recommend the second book to our selector if we don't already have it. Thanks for sharing the pictures!

Date: 2011-10-27 08:38 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] samazon13.livejournal.com
Very cool! Congratulations on finishing a project. This is not something I can celebrate very often, either. :)

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