The Other Sandy

Pattern lifted from the Captain America 2 Sampler by Lpanne.

Apparently stitching on black fabric until I go blind is a thing I do now.

Pattern by Tereena Clarke of Artecy Cross Stitch.

This was one of their free patterns for August. The pattern calls for white aida, but as soon as I was holding the skeins in my hand I thought the colors would look really good on a darker fabric. I chose navy blue because I have four other projects in my queue that need to be stitched on black and there's only so much my eyes can take.

Pattern by Violetark on Etsy.

I may not be posting Supernatural episode reviews anymore, but I haven't forgotten about the show or Chibi Dean. He's finally finished!



He's looking a little blue because it's very overcast today.

The backstitching on Dean was even more of a nightmare than it was on Sam. At least Sam had a white shirt and a tan jacket. Backstitching in black on dark grey and darker grey was giving me fits. Ultimately I wound up cranking up my lamp as bright as it would go, using my LED headlamp, and using my 10X lighted magnifier while wearing my glasses all at the same time to try to see what I was doing.

Only one more project in this series and then I never have to use this horrible, horrible fabric ever again.

Yes, I made another thing. I actually finished this two months ago, but it was looking really dingy due to ten years of sitting partially stitched in my closet and about a year and a half of actually being worked on, and it took me this long to give it a good washing and pressing. I’m very happy with how it turned out, except that maybe I should have used two strands for backstitching, even though I don’t like to.

This is the spot where I normally link to the pattern and give credit to the pattern maker, but in this case I genuinely can’t. I bought the pattern from File 40 (a Man from UNCLE fan club) as part of a kit at MediaWest back in 2002 or 2003. As far as I know, it’s never been offered on the Internet, and the pattern doesn’t credit the pattern maker anywhere, although I assume it was a member of File 40. Just know that it wasn’t me; I just did the stitching.

WGN has the worst timing. Season finale? Preempt it. Game changing episode? Preempt it. Return from hiatus? Preempt it. And they used to at least run the preempted episodes sometime on Saturday when I would be awake to watch them. Now they run them very late on the same night, which I can't stay up to watch because I have to be at work at 7:30 a.m.

( Spoilers )

And now for the grand unveiling. I finished Sammy!




Pattern by Violetark on Etsy.

I already have the supplies I need to make Dean, so I'll be starting on him next episode.

Pattern by KRGoetz on Sprite Stitch.

So, I may have cross stitched Rorschach from Watchmen.

I'm starting to see why I gave up cross stitching all those years ago. All the pro patterns at craft stores are of inspirational sayings or flowers or fluffy animals and such. That's not really my thing. Tumblr has been both a blessing and a curse for pointing me at all the geeky patterns ever.

Pattern by F.P. Molina.

This is the angel ward from Supernatural. I used DMC 815 because it was the darkest, bloodiest red I already had in my thread box, but it turned out to be a good choice. It's much bolder than the photo makes it look.

And I stitched it while watching the annual Severe Storms Seminar at Fermilab for maximum geekiness.

I plan to make the other two patterns on that page, too. The tattoo will be easy because we know what color it is, but I don't think I want to stitch the devil's trap on black aida cloth. My eyes aren't that good, and neither is the lighting in my apartment. Hasn't the devil's trap been drawn/painted with whatever's been handy? I'm pretty sure we've seen them in white, black, and orange at one time or another. Anybody have any suggestions for what color would look good on white and would go with the red in this angel ward and the black of the anti-possession tattoo?

P.S. -- The angel ward was still in the hoop when I took the photo, so I was trying to crop the hoop out. You would not believe how not at all intuitive it is to crop a photo into a circle and stick it on a colored background in GIMP. Thank goodness for online tutorials, because GIMP's help menu was the most useless thing ever.

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ETA: There's nothing like posting pictures of your stitching all over the Internet to make you see where you screwed up your stitch count. I just noticed it today (Apr. 8). Fortunately the errors were in the very last 2 rows, so I only had to pull and redo 9 stitches. Which I did. I'm not re-taking/editing/posting a photo, but I did fix it and rest assured the error was mine and not the pattern's.

This magnet-making thing is addictive. I’m going to have to fight off the temptation to keep going though (I have a pile of little patterns that would make cute magnets and a boring metal bookshelf at work I’m tired of looking at), because I’ve been ignoring the big project I’ve been working on that I really want to finish.

Pattern by Starrley. I didn’t make any changes to it, but if I had to do it over again, I think I’d go one shade lighter on the dark grey.

Have you ever had one of those days where even though you’ve been stitching for years, possibly decades, you suddenly can’t find the holes in your aida cloth? And your stitches are all lopsided, and after giant swaths of tidy stitches, there’s suddenly a section that looks like an 8-year-old’s first project?

Sigh.

Yeah.

I just tripped over all the fannish cross stitch patterns ever on Tumblr, DeviantArt, and Etsy. I really need to work on the projects I already have before I acquire any new ones. But some of them are free! And they're awesome! There's even a Sleepy Hollow character set already! How am I supposed to say no to that?