The good and the bad.

I go through crafting phases. In case you haven't noticed. :) Last week it was wallets and cozies. This week it was embroidery.

I started on my new Jane Austen-inspired cross stitch project. {You can buy the pattern here or here.}

Let me talk about cross stitching for a minute. I'm just now getting interested (unless you count the very little I did when I was about 10). At first, I thought it looked a little too 80s/90s country home-decorish for my taste...then I thought that it was too video game-pixelish (this was probably influenced by some awesome Mario cross stitching I came across). But a month or so ago, I started to like it.

So I bought a kit. It didn't go so great. {See photo below.} It's hard keeping up with so many colors, so I try to do all of each color as I go along. Of course, sometimes there will be a lot of that color all together. Then there will be like three little squares of that color way off randomly somewhere. And I'm not used to having to use a guide when I'm embroidering. I was almost scarred for life from cross stitching.

But...then, after a break, I started this new pattern. And I love it! One color at a time, or two at the most. Very simple and methodical. I'm a person who likes symmetry and order. I like counting perfect little squares and seeing the picture coming together quickly.

And I love Jane Austen. And Emma Woodhouse, though most people don't seem to. Emma is actually my second favorite Austen novel, after Pride and Prejudice. I like Emma. She's spoiled and misguided, but she means well. :) I think we would be friends.

And this, someday...hopefully, will be a picture of Pinocchio. I don't even like Pinocchio, to be honest. I only bought this one because I had big crafty plans to buy the large kits for Cinderella and Snow White after I finished this one. Ha. I don't see that happening anytime soon. So I wish I had bought the small kit for a Disney movie I actually liked.

Go ahead and laugh. I did. This is why I share not only my crafting successes, but also my crafting failures. Sometimes things just don't turn out like you planned. If you want to see what real progress on one of these kits looks like, check out Ruth's incredible Cinderella one. I might just send her mine to finish. :)

If you squint a little, it sort of looks like a baby with big eyes and a pacifier. Or not. That light brown on the left side is actually part of a tree, and the dark green half-circles are mountains. And I think the light brown in the bottom left corner is the inside of two rabbits' ears.

Yesterday, while watching movies, I also worked on these. I did the entire tree one yesterday, from a little drawing I've had for over a year now. And I finished up the ruby red slippers, which I had started on several weeks ago.

Filling in those slippers took forever.

And the backs. These two will be available in the Etsy shop soon- I've just got to take real pictures. :)

Until next time,