Cross Stitch: A New Obsession

Crocheting is my usual go-to when I want a repetitive craft using my hands. It keeps my brain busy without overloading or allowing me to overthink. And it goes great with audiobooks! Recently though, crochet has been frustrating. I’ve attempted more complicated patterns and have found that the concentration required is too big a task. Thankfully, it was about this time that cross stitch came into my life.

A new hobby

I had not even contemplated cross stitch, but to earn a merit badge in the Proper Mountain Woman summer session, I would give it a shot.

To my delight, I really enjoyed it. I found a bookish pattern that could be displayed in my office, which gave me motivation and a bit of a purpose. It wasn’t just for the badge anymore, it was also an addition to my personal space.

It wasn’t a perfect transition. I still messed up the counting on a section which skewed the circle. I spent a lot of time undoing (if you have ever tried to undo a cross stitch section — it is nearly impossible!) and redoing, but finally came to to realization that my circle would just have to be a bit lopsided. The overall mountains of the Night Court emblem still looked pretty great.

I earned my badge and figured I’d return to my puzzles and crochet, but kept thinking about cross stitch. It was then that I started messing around and figured out that I could upload a picture into a website like www.flosscross.com and it would turn that image into a cross stitch pattern.

I spend a lot of time trying my hand at design on Canva and a specific purpose had my creative juices flowing. I was hooked.

Granted it wasn’t the easiest. There was a lot of back and forth with fonts and images. Deciding which styles lent themselves to cross stitch and would translate accurately.

A first cross stitch pattern

My first successful pattern came about as a homage to our boxer Loki. He is old and sick so won’t be with us much longer. I watched a lot of tutorials on how to mask in Canva and eventually settled on this design:

Which then translated to this pattern:

I love it so much and enjoy seeing my idea come to life on the fabric. The flowers are done and I am now working on the body. Loki knows that he can’t go across the rainbow bridge until I’m finished, so I’ll be taking my time.

I’ve already begun playing around with designs for my next project. Maybe I’ll put Loki’s on hold — as an incentive for him to stick around a bit longer – and start on a new one!

Currently Reading

I am still reading while cross stitching. This year’s Throne of Glass re-read is coming to a close. I’ve been listening and am loving the different format. I especially enjoyed doing the tandem read on audio. It was a bit cumbersome, but worth it. I’m currently in the first quarter of Kingdom of Ash, and am ready to have my heart broken.

The beach is calling my name, which means I need to pick what books I’ll be taking (you can’t take too many, right?). I can’t wait to read on the beach – it has been too long!