Crossing the Needles; Pokemon Cross Stitch and a Knitting Update.

What's going on everyone? Did you enjoy your weekend? Well today's Monday this means the start of a brand new week! So before I started knitting four weeks ago I already had a bit of experience with needles in the form of cross stitch. I learned how to cross stitch earlier on this year, as well as learning how to hand sew and using a sewing machine but I gotta admit that I need to do more of it. I don't actually have a finished cross stitch project yet but here's what I've been working on, it's a bookmark.

Look's awesome so far, right? The whole thing was designed by me on graph paper before I brought it to life using cross stitch. In the beginning this was just me testing out cross stitch, learning how to do it by making a little sample but I had this pretty awesome idea to make it a Pokémon themed bookmark. Because cross stitch is just like making a pixel sprite I used graph paper to make the Pokeball and Pikachu patterns. 

My favorite part I made on this bookmark has to be the Pikachu and it took me a bit to complete it, there was a lot of unpicking and reshaping involved to get him to fit right in the middle of the cloth. 

Now I don't know if you've already noticed but if you look you can see these orange/brown spots on the white cloth. This is actually rust and apparently when you leave your needle, or at least the needle I'm using I guess, it puts rust on the cloth. I have no idea how this happened really but I recommend you do NOT EVER leave your needles in the cloth for long periods of time. It's lucky that I'm covering all of it up so it won't show but if this was something I was leaving blank I would be in trouble.

My mum actually was the one to teach me cross stitch as she's done it quite a bit in the past. She prefers embroidery though and you can see some of her embroidery work on her blog. Cross stitching was a bit tricky in the beginning, I still have troubles remembering the way you have to move your needles through the cloth but after I get a few stitches done I get into a rhythm which makes it much easier. All I gotta do now on this bookmark is add variegated blue thread to make a sky like background and it'll be finished, I'll keep you all up to date on this and any new cross stitch projects I start up.

Now let's cross the needles (This was not an intentional Ghost Busters reference but I'm running with It.) and talk about knitting! You know that Christmas Dishcloth WIP I've been talking about the past couple of blogs? Well guess what I just finished...

It's finished! That's another WIP finished and I absolutely love how this turned out! (I actually posted a blog post on the day I started this right here) It ended up being rectangle instead of a square, I have no idea how this happened, it looked square before I casted off then once it was off the needle it turned rectangle. Regardless I love the mixture of colors from this yarn (I talk about the yarn on this blog post); it made it look perfect for Christmas and the Holidays. I had some difficulties on the cast off, I accidentally dropped a stitch while I was casting off which was a little scary. You can actually see me working on this dishcloth slightly on my very first ZAK Knits video! You can view it here. So yeah that's another project completed! I'm doing really well at completing my knitting projects, here's my entire collection of completed projects so far...

It's growing immensely and I'm already working on some new projects such as my new beanie, which is coming along nicely...

I'm calling this a Chocolate Vanilla beanie because of the colors I picked, they reminded me of... Well Chocolate covered Vanilla Ice Cream. You can see how I began as well as the yarns I'm using and pattern on Friday's blog post so go check it out if you want. I've gotten quite a bit on the colorwork and it wasn't as hard as I imagined. My yarn does get twisted around a lot though because of the switching of the colors but all that takes is a couple minutes of untwisting and I'm up and running again. 

My mum actually started up her own beanie with the same pattern so she could knit along with me but as you can see mum has gotten a tad bit ahead of me, this is because she's done colorworks quite a bit in the past, two of my beanies Mum knitted for me over the years are colorworks actually. So yeah I'm doing good on the beanie and I'm still adding more to Chrissie's baby blanket.

I have a new project I'm going to be starting within a day or two; I'm going to be knitting my first pair of socks! They will be just plain vanilla socks so nothing too crazy, I'll be using this yarn right here:

Copper Colors (57510) Patons Kroy Sock FX Sock Yarn

Mum recommended this next project to me because she believes it will be a great learning experience for me to at least make one sock as there's a lot of different knitting techniques and stitching you have to do in a sock (Mostly the heel and the toes) so I'm excited to start on them, I'll let you know on Friday about the progress if I begin the project. (Or Wednesday if I start the project today, who knows.)

So yeah that's about it on the needle work, I'm having lots of fun with these projects and hope you're having fun reading about them.

Before I wrap up for today I'm still playing the Pokemon Sun and Moon demo and there's still new things popping up every day so don't forget to pick up the demo when you can! Can't wait for the full versions though this demo was supposed to help me wait... But I think it's making me even more impatient. I'm still playing through my Zelda games as well, I've not been playing as much because of knitting and some busy things during the week but I'm still progressing. On Ocarina of Time 3D I just beat the Water Temple (The most confusing temple in the entire game might I add.) so I'm heading to the Shadow Temple now... Well after the well of course. On Twilight Princess I'm heading towards the first boss of the forest temple in the big tree, and on Skyward Sword I'm still after the Song of Hero pieces, I've been taking a break from that game for a bit so no progress there.

Anyway hope your Monday is awesome and hope you enjoy the rest of your week!

See you on the next blog!