Nothing about crafts today...

Instead I need to vent. My mom has chemo so I am home in Indiana for a few months, no big deal except I just found out my husband has to have surgery on his jaw on the 23rd of this month. WHY oh why can I not be in two places at once right now. He is all the way in Tennessee and I really want to be there even though he says he will be fine. They both need me and this was the dilemma I was worried about when I decided to get married and move away. I feel like no matter what choice I make I am letting someone down that needs me. I dont even have any siblings to help out with mom while I go take care of my husband and all our family is here in Indiana. Maybe his mom will drive down and help  my husband out for awhile since she is retiring this week. This has been a really bad year and I am sooo glad its almost over. I started the year out in March with an emergency surgery for crohns, Kyle had surgery in June for his ankle and then September comes and we find out my mom has cancer and now this... I mean really WTF. Scientist get on it and make a teleporting machine for me by the 22nd please.

Been a while...

Been a bit since I posted anything, sorry about that. I was spinning but I am back to cross stitch now. Unfortunately its super secret stuff that I cant show yet because its for my first mini swap at Sprite Stitch!!!! I have all my patterns made up and all my supplies. I started on a couple of the things I'm making and when my swapee gets their stuff when I am finished I shall post some pics. I did make a few little cases to hold needles, scissors and thread. They are made completely of felt and come in really handy. The pattern can be found here. I love my case and made a second for a friend. The only thing I changed about the case was I added a piece of elastic over the scissors to help hold them in as mine were ALWAYS falling out.

Spinning Wheel Fixed...YAY.

My spinning wheel is fixed now and once the part got to me I had no problems. Schacht is fantastic and  they were so nice even though I felt like I was being a pain ( I was basically crying when I left my message to them and was freaking out) and asked tons of questions.

Just because my wheel is fixed doesn't mean I won't be using my spindle (and my trundle when it get here). I joined a spindler group for TdF so have to spin on it anyway plus its way fun.

This has totally nothing to do with crafts but is on a personal level, my DH had surgery and it went well but he won't let me help him and keeps trying to go down the stairs alone (its his right foot that is in a splint now) and he almost fell down the stairs today. He is either going to break his neck or give me a heart attack before this is over.

Spinning

Ok so I have taken an break from cross stitch. I went to embroidery for a week or two and now I am spinning. Its time for the Tour de Fleece almost. I have only been spinning since January and only a bit of my time has went to that. I have a Schacht Matchless and a Schacht Hi Lo Spindle. I will spin on both for the Tour de Fleece. The Tour de Fleece runs the whole time the Tour de France runs so thats almost a whole month and you set your own goals. Mine are so far to spin every day on either the wheel or the spindle and just get better at it.

I actually got a wheel first and then a spindle. Spinning on the spindle for a couple days has made my drafting so much better I can't wait to see the difference when I get back on my wheel, which is waiting on a new T-knob because the old one was defective.

If you're interested in spinning Ravelry is a great resource to get you started and point you to other resources.

Disney Dreams Collection: Snow White

I tried really really hard to enjoy working on my pikachu project but I just can not do it and if I try to keep working on it I will get to the point where I don't even want to cross stitch at all. So to not get burned out on cross stitch I am working on the one I really want to work on which is my Disney Dreams Collection: Snow White. I had about two days work put into it before I tried working on the pikachu pile and now I have about three days worth of work into it. I plan on doing weekly updates every Sunday starting today even though it hasn't been a whole week.

I am also posting my progress here and on Sprite Stitch. Over at the Sprite Stitch forums there are two girls that are also working on the Disney Dreams Collections. One is working on the Beauty and the Beast one and is almost done and it looks spectacular. She has been working on it for 21 weeks. The other is working on the Lion King and they are on week three I think.  Hopefully with two other people working on the Disney Collections I will stay motivated. I am hoping I do because I would love for this to be my first large finished project.

So I've Been Thinking

I really really want to participate in the next mini swap at Sprite Stitch. I think I could handle a mini swap especially since the last mini swap was for Sept/Oct and they gathered the info in July which would give even me plenty of time to finish and I would be determined to finish come hell or high water. But I am not confident in my creative ability to make gifts that would stand up to the other peoples. There is a ton of awesome talent on the Sprite Stitch boards and I wouldn't want to disappoint whoever I got for the swap. Ugh I feel so torn. I think I will pm BMH about it and maybe that will help me feel better.

Blog Under Construction

My blog will be under construction for a bit as I get used to using the CSS code to change it. Hopefully its still readable and viewable. I almost contemplated switching my blog over to LiveJournal because its just feels more customizable, but I am going to work on this one instead. If you encounter any errors just drop me a comment and I will try to fix it.

In the mean time here is a couple pictures of projects I actually finished.
Oh and any suggestions for color schemes are welcome, I am horrible with color.

Wal-Mart...

Now carries cross stitch stuff!!!! They have a pretty good selection of DMC floss, a few aida fabrics and a decent selection of kits. The kits are unfortunately not to my taste but that is not the point here, the point is that they have it at all. I was browsing through the craft section and I walked right by it and did a double take and then just stared like an idiot for a few moments. My husband was with me and he asked if that meant fewer trips to Hobby Lobby lol.

Disney Dreams Collection

It is my new found goal to get all 7 of the cross stitch kits. I know I already have enough on my plate but they are so gorgeous I must have them all because I am crazy about them.

Post of Shame

This shall be my post of shame. I have already told you all the projects I have started and now its time to show you how sad my progress truly is.

First we have the Whole Lotta Latte. I haven't even finished one cup. This poor kit has been neglected for years. I feel kinda bad for it. Oddly enough I still have the charts and its actually with everything. Now if only I would start working on it again, however since its on black aida its most definitely a daytime sitting in front of the window type project.

Pikachu Pile has got to be the cutest pattern I have started. I have a good amount of work done on it but like I said in my previous post the fabric is barely big enough for the design let alone to frame it. The husband really wants this one though and our five year wedding anniversary is just around the corner so maybe if I work on it while he's at work I could get it done. If I don't make it for that maybe his birthday.

Next we have the Haunted Mansion. I was farther along on this originally but when I realized the fabric was to small I restarted. The reason all the string is hanging in the front is I was trying my hand at parking. Good instructions for that can be found here  and here. The second link is just crazy, I would never be able to keep track of all those threads. I started to go insane on this mansion one because of the four greens some are super close to each other. This is another daylight project.

 The Happy Halloween Pumpkin half his pumpkin face is done but the fabric was cut to small so I lost my motivation. However theres some vines along the edges I have thought of cutting out if I have room at the top and bottom still. Both these Halloween ones were started because the husbands favorite holiday is Halloween. Mines Christmas and I want to make some stockings but after realizing how many projects I have going those stockings are going to wait.

 Epic Pokemon Gen. I. Thats Blastoise but you can't really tell. Its done on 22 count fabric and the fabric is much larger then shown i just have it all folded up. This bad boy is huge. Its crazy to think that I ever started this and had never even finished a project. I was way to ambitious. If I ever happen to finish this its getting professionally framed.

 This is two days work on the Snow White Discovers the Cottage. Its on 18 count and doesn't look like much work but it seems like I have worked on it for hours. I do take a lot of time double checking the chart though.

This is my restart of the Frog Pile. Once again not far and I was trying parking again. To be fair I had a bit done on my first go around but I messed it up, I was taking it out and ripped a hole in my fabric.  I rather like the parking technique as you get to see the picture come together quicker but as far as I know its best used from top to bottom.

Tree Frog Trio. A small project nice and colorful but still haven't managed to finish this one either. I was doing pretty good on it but I got distracted and went to another project. In all fairness the project I went to  I did actually finish.

Barley any work on this one, you can't even tell what it is but its the Kitty Litter one. This one has a lot of detail and if ever finished shall be given to my mom.

This is the beginning of the butterfly from Twisted Stitches. This one I am actually doing for me. I plan to make appliqué it to a bag when I am done with it, more likely if I get done with it.

 A little black blob. What oh what could it be?? Its the silhouette of the boy and girl with balloons that looks like a skull. I can hardly even tell what way it goes. It does have some stitches so it counts as started.

This is going to be cupcakes. Two cupcakes to be exact and theres only 7 colors in the whole thing. I made the pattern off a picture I found on the inter webs and since I didn't get permission I won't be sharing the pattern unfortunately because I don't wanna step on anyones toes, gotta keep my internet rep ( what little there is) in good standing.

Technically theres at least three more projects I didn't include but they are small ones that can be done in a day or two and I am much to lazy to get my camera back out right now.

So there you have it inter webs pretty much every X I have ever stitched. Sad kinda but hopefully this post of shame will motivate me some to actually finish something. Now to choose what to work on....

The Many Unfinished Projects of Cross Stitch

In my last post I said I would show you all the projects I started and never finished from books, magazines and the interwebs.There's quite a few so be prepared.

The first one I started on my own was a Halloween cross stitch, two actually. I made a very beginner mistake of not cutting the fabric larger then the design dimensions. I got fairly far on one of them before I realized my mistake. I need to do some math and see if there is anything I can cut out to make it work. The other one luckily I hadn't got to far into and used the cross stitch calculator found here to determine the cloth size. I use this calculator to determine the size of my cloth ALL the time.  It saves me from having to worry if my math is correct or forgetting to add in the border or what gets folded behind the frame. The only picture I have of these projects is a poor one but I shall post it anyway.

I was also working on a Pikachu Pile for my husband but it has the same problem as the first two, the fabric doesn't have extra room around the edges. The husband refuses to let me restart it and insists its fine. I disagree and hardly work on it even though its close to being done. This is the picture the pattern is based on. Its super cute and I  would love to finish it but the fact that the fabric isn't large enough to frame it properly upsets me when I work on it.

The MAMMOTH project I mentioned in the previous post was Epic Pokemon Generation I. This project is HUGE but so EPIC. Believe it or not there's actually people on the spritestitch boards that finished it granted it took about a year but still. I haven't even finished one Pokemon yet.

Twisted Stitches by Phil Davison is an awesome cross stitch book with awesome patterns. Now I don't have any pictures of the patterns i am working on because I couldnt find them on the interwebs and I am not going to be the one to put them there. However I shall explain them to you slightly. The first is a picture of what seems to be a skull but upon closer inspection is the silhouette of a boy and girl with balloons on a dock. The second is a butterfly in purple but upon closer inspection there's a skull in each wing. The third is a book mark that looks like a headstone. The bookmark is mostly back stitch but luckily I don't mind it to much.


OH I almost forgot I cross stitched the cutest little gnome for my uncle from Cross Stitcher. I don't remember the issue off hand however.

There I think that's a complete list of all the projects I have going. Ridiculous yes!!!  Between being a slow stitcher and having the attentions span of a gold fish I shall be lucky to have them finished before I die. This should give you an idea of what I like to stitch though especially with the last post, and think this is just ONE of my many crafty hobbies, but I do think its my favorite.

Cross Stitch Kits and Goodbye Thomas Kinkade

 I love cross stitching but when it comes to finishing a project I am HORRENDOUS at it. I start one project only to go out a day or so later and start another. These pictures represent the kits I have now that are barely started, they do not include patterns I have going from books, magazines or the Internet. Its funny some of these are a couple years old maybe even a few years old and I still remember the order I got them in. The newest one is the Snow White one and I must say it is GORGEOUS!! Lots of work though. However I think I am most determined out of all of them to do this one, at least for the moment. That may be because its my newest kit though.

The first kit I ever bought was the "A Whole Lotta Latte".  My progress on that one seeing as how I have had it longest is pathetic, so pathetic I will not even post of picture of my work. Although I will admit working on black Aida is harder for me then the white or off white colors.

 The reason I started to cross stitch mainly was because I had met one of my husbands good friends wife and I thought we could do it together seeing as how she already cross stitched. Alas it didn't work out because they got cats and she gave up her craft.

After that I quit for a bit and went on to one of my many other crafts but something pulled me back to cross stitch. Of course in my mind I had to have a new fresh clean kit to work with. That led me to "Frog Pile" Apparently I love colorful projects. While the first was stunning on the black the frogs were too cute plus I believe the kit was on sale at the time. I had some progress on this one when recently I went back to it only to notice I had lost the chart for it. I contacted the company and they were nice enough to do me a one time favor and send it out to me. Once I received the chart I noticed some mistakes and that I had used the wrong color. I decided to cut a new piece of Aida and try a new technique I learned about called parking which I will explain and post links to later.

Once again after the frog kit was old I thought I needed a new kit yet again. This time I looked at ones that I thought my mother would like. She LOVES her cat so I got "Kitty Litter". Its super cute and I know my mom will love it IF I ever get it finished.

For awhile I worked on random projects that didn't come in kits. They were of various sizes and of different things. I shall post some of those in my next post. With one I was rather ambitious and would still love to finish it some day but its a MAMMOTH project.

In the middle of cross stitching again I ran into a slight bump, I ended up in the hospital for about 9 days after having emergency surgery. Oddly enough this big of a change didn't stop me from stitching. After I was coherent enough I wanted my husband to bring me some of my projects to the hospital but he refused. Good choice on his part really.

My mother came down to help me after I got out of the hospital because when your stomach has been cut open from basically under your breast bone to almost your pubic bone your mobility isn't the greatest. The first thing I remember going for  after I got home was my cross stitch.

Once I was moving about better we went and you guessed it bought some more kits. This time with the advice of my mother I got smaller ones. I got one of a little mouse holding a flower with a buzzy little bee around it, one of a hedgehog holding a balloon and a "Tree Frog Trio". The little mouse one I stitched up in just two days and gave to the surgeon that basically saved my life. The other two still aren't finished.

Browsing on SpriteStitch.com  I saw that someone was working on one of the Disney Dreams Collection kits. I had seen them at my local Hobby Lobby but never bought one. After seeing how exquisite hers was coming along I ended up picking one up when they were 30% off. I got the Snow White one at the top of the page. Even though I have just begun on it I already want the Lion King , Peter Pan and Beauty and the Beast ones. They are all so beautiful. and are all done by Thomas Kinkade. He does or rather did beautiful work. Unfortunately he passed away on May 6th, 2012. I may have just discovered what great work he does but that just makes me more determined to get more of the kits based on his work. If you cross stitch I highly recommend that you take a look at the kits based on his work they are all detailed and spectacular.

Paper Beads

My mom likes to do beadwork, well right now its more like she likes to collect beading things. She has tons of beads, tools and findings but has yet to make a single thing. So whats more natural then for me to make her some paper beads? I saw a video on youtube about how to make paper beads, it looked fun so I decided to try it. Now I am addicted to making them. You can make multiple shapes if you know how to cut the paper but the really fun part is decorating them, at least for me. I like to make the diamond shaped ones and its fun to cut them out, color them, and roll them up to see what you get and glaze them. I could explain the process to you better but instead I shall post the video.

This video is really helpful. Now that I'm making paper beads I vaguely remember my mother buying me a kit to make them as a kid, but I am having way more fun now then I did then.

Kumihimo

The kits came with "weave wheels" those weave wheels let you do kumihimo. Kumihimo makes a rope like bracelet and you can do some really cool things with them. The picture shows my in progress one that has a cupcake design on it. Now the weave wheels that came with the kits have designs printed on them but you can use them to do any design you want really. The cardboard ones do fall apart eventually and I personally had a hard time getting the string in and out of the slits. If you don't like the cardboard ones or want one without designs you can get blank ones like in the picture. I found them at Hobby Lobby near the plastic lanyard lace. You can buy them either in a set of 4 or as a kit of one and some lanyard lace. I bought the pack of 4 because I have now use for the lanyard lace.

The essentials for making a bracelet are string, a ruler, scissors and some way to anchor the bracelet down. I have a few things that I find helpful when making my bracelets, these include a clipboard, small scissors, an ID clip, binder clips in various sizes, a ruler, tape, and coil less safety pins. Now you don't need all this to make bracelets but it is all useful in different ways.

I use coil less safety pins to undo knots if I have made a mistake or to pin the bracelet to my jeans to work on. The reason yo want coil less ones is so that the threads of the bracelets don't get stuck in the coil. If you don't want to pin it to your jeans thats where a clipboard comes in. You can use the safety pin and clip it to the bar on the clipboard or just hole it down with the bar. My bar is bent in the middle so I have to clip it to the bar. I like to use ID clips to clip it to the bar personally but a safety pin will also work. 

Binder clips are handy for if you make your own clip board out of cardboard and duct tape. They act as the bar on a regular clip board. For beginners a homemade clip board would actually be best because yo can cut slits in the bottom to put the strings in so they stay in the right order and you don't get confused. You could even mark off inches on the clipboard so you always have a ruler with you.

Heres a few awesome videos for people who are beginners at making friendship bracelets. This first video shows the four basic knots you need to know to make any and all bracelets. Knowing these four knots is all you need to make any pattern.

The second video shows you how to make the most basic of bracelets, the candy stripe. To make this you only need to know the first knot shown in the first video.

Beyond Bracelets makes fantastic videos and she explains things really well. I hope her videos help you and believe me she has tons more to watch. 

Current Workings

Sweety Turtle

Well I am still working on friendship bracelets as hard as that may be to believe. But of course I can't work on just one bracelet at a time. I have ADD and while my medicine helps its not one hundred percent under control. Here are some pictures of what I am currently working on. I won't bother to show you the alpha pattern one I am working on as its just green for now and very boring. I will however include the most adorable little turtle that I made following a tutorial. I will admit that I had some trouble understanding the tutorial but with help from the comments on the tutorial I made my way through it, although my first one didn't turn out as good as the one in the picture.

The cupcake bracelet has a little red speck on the top but it doesn't show up very well at all. My favorite one I am doing is the rainbow one. I love bright colors and this has them all in my own personal rainbow and the black really makes the colors pop.

Friendship Bracelets

Another craft I enjoy doing is making embroidery floss bracelets. They can be as simple as diagonal lines to pictures and names. When I first started making them there wasn't the wealth of info about them that there is now. I think I saw then made on some PBS show went to the website and got the instructions, which weren't all that clear to me at the time and didn't include photos or videos.  After figuring the instructions out I was hooked.

One fantastic site for friendship bracelets and tutorials is friendship-bracelets.net. As far as I am concerned they have everything you could ever want to know on that site and its all FREE!!! Stop on by and check it out if your interested.  Once you get the hang of making the bracelets you can even design your own on the sites generators and post them for others.

Another site that has some basic patterns for free is myfbm.com but they give the directions a little different. They sell this and the embroidery floss inside actually comes with it. Its not a lot but enough to get you started. Each slot is numbered and they tell you how to tie the knots according to slot number. However if you don't feel like buying their product (because you don't really need it) use a piece of cardboard and make and number the slots. Tada you now have your own bracelet maker.

 Now you can buy a book to teach you how to do this but I'm serious all you need can be found at friendship-bracelets.net and pleas let me repeat its all FREE!!! So whether you want to make them yourself or do it with a younger family member to teach them its actually a lot of fun and really simple to get started.

Heres a bracelet I am currently working on. Its from myfbm.com  but if you look the same pattern can also be found at friendship-bracelet.net.  Sorry for the bad pictures D:

 One other thing is that you don't have to use embroidery floss only for these. You could use yarn or craft thread etc. Yarn would be a great way to make one fast.



I hope you find this info helpful and have fun crafting!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter! Today I have two more pictures and some of my favorite sites for you.  The pictures are of a Gypsy Romance Tote I made. The pattern is free and can be found here. I opted to not put on the pom-pons. I think it came out pretty good since I've only sewn a few other things.

As far as sites go spritestitch.com is a great video game cross stitch site. If you click on the link you're taken to the blog which posts all sorts of awesome video game crafts. The forum has great tutorials and friendly people. Even if you don't cross stitch check out the blog. The forums also have pearler bead crafts too.

Intatters.com is where I have been spending a lot of time lately. I have taken up tatting again. For those of you who don't know tatting is where you use either a special needle or a shuttle to make lace with knots. They have different sized thread you can use and it comes in tons of colors, both solid and variegated.  The picture to the right is a picture of a tatting shuttle. I prefer the clover ones like this. I bought a metal Boye one and the sides were sharp and slit my thumb open. The one thing I do like about the Boye shuttle is that it takes interchangeable bobbins so if I need the shuttle for a new project i just pop out the old bobbin and then pop in a new one.

Currently I am attempting to tat a beautiful doily pattern I found online. I saw the doily on pinterest and did some hunting for the pattern. I am using different colors but I love the ones in the picture. The pattern for this doily can be found here. Its not actually written out and it doesn't give much info like where to start so I am just going to wing it as I haven't really followed a diagram like this before. I will post some progress shots when I get the middle flower done. I swear I've done the middle like four times now but I always mess the end up when I try to do the magic thread trick.

Hello World

Today I am starting this blog. I don't know how often I will update it or how long this will last but for now it seems a good idea. The reason I called it "The Crafting Adventures of Shaina" is because I do many many crafts. I scrapbook, knit, crochet, shuttle and needle tat, spin, cross stitch, embroider and sew. I tend to do one craft at a time and jump randomly between them. Sometimes I finish things sometimes I don't. Here are a couple pictures of things I have done. There would be a few more but I always forget to take pictures and right now my camera has to charge.