How do I entertain myself when I am an ocean (and half a country) away from my fiance? Well, I keep my hands nice and busy by cross stitching, of course!
I haven't cross stitched for quite a while, but while marathoning Grey's Anatomy episodes on Hulu, I needed to do something with my hands. After exhausting my enjoyment of FreeCell and a Care Bears coloring book, I thought I'd give cross stitching a go. But what pattern to make? Well, Megaman had been the topic of many a conversation of late with Rasmus, partially because Megaman X on Super Nintendo is pretty much the only game I've ever beat on my own, and mostly because Megaman is pretty freaking awesome.
So I found a pattern online and whipped him up over a couple of episodes of Grey's:
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| The Megaman cross stitch I made...sorry....I'm too lazy to rotate the picture... |
And then I caught the fever. It didn't take long to determine that our future apartment would be littered with cross-stitched 8-bit. Rasmus sent me a website filled with patterns of video games, cartoons, anime, and more (http://spritestitchpatterns.wikispaces.com/), which is where I found this gem:
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| Work in progress.... |
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| Finished! |
But I was whipping through these small patterns too quickly. i needed something bigger, more long term. The Sprite Stitch site had many long-term projects to undertake. Rasmus suggested this one, and it seemed just about perfect:
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| The Challenge |
I found the pattern for it on Sprite Stitch. It is 512x512, which equals 262,144 cross stitches!! The pattern has 26 colors, and with the type of cloth I'm using will end up being about a 37-inch square. Mom, Audra, and I went up to Lincoln to pick up my supplies, and ended up at three separate fabric stores, and finally found cloth big enough at the last one -- 5 minutes before it closed (there was an awful moment when I pushed on the door to go into Hancock Fabrics only to find it wouldn't budge.....and then I read the beautiful 'Pull' sign, and managed to make my way in somehow....).
We made it home, and I got organized (the pattern covers 60 pages!!!!). And then, I started!
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| So it begins..... |
I am now pleased to report that I am 0.1175% done. 308 stitches down, 261,836 to go. Well, don't those numbers sound daunting!? And they will for quite a while -- for months, possibly even years. How long before I get disheartened, or bored? Perhaps I will give up on it in frustration. But Rasmus has offered to lend a helping hand when he can, and hopefully, one day -- some day -- I'll stitch the last stitch of this project and look back in utter amazement at the blood*, sweat, and tears** that went into its creation!!
* I forgot to buy dulled needles, and I tend to poke myself with the pointy ones once in a while.....ouch!
** Over knotting threads, screwing up the pattern, and pricking my fingers with pointy needles
