The swatch I knit is probably bigger than the finished objects are going to be.

They’re going to be baby booties made from Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Bulky in Persian Peacock, and they will be for my new cousin who is unborn as of yet, but slated to arrive sometime next month. I did not exactly get gauge, and they’re probably going to wind up being slightly too big for a newborn baby, but I don’t care. If they were going to be slightly too small, now that would be a problem (unless the baby has a small dolly with chilly feet), but (s)he will grow into them, so I’m staying with this needle size (5mm).

Except for the French knots, which are the bane of my existence, I finished the Pooh Bear cross stitch three or four days ago. I am not going to use beads for his eyes, damnit. I am going to learn how to do a French knot. Technically, I did learn how to do a French knot. I have made several. I haven’t yet learned how to do them consistently, though, and I’m going to practice on scrap fabric until I get better at them before I do his eyes.

I’ve started the Live Simply design from Dimensions, and although I haven’t done much on it yet, I think I’m going to put it on hold for a few days while I work on a small video game sprite cross stitch.

The other day, I borrowed The Cross Stitcher’s Bible by Jane Greenoff from the library. It’s really useful — the beginning sections of the book have all sorts of little tips (often the kind of things that you read and say, “Gee, I wish somebody had told me that before!”), the Stitch Library section explains thirty-nine different stitches (although not all are counted-thread embroidery), the pictures are clear, and everything is very detailed.

You probably shouldn’t read it right before you go to bed, though. Because I did, and then I had this dream that my dad was trying to do Hardanger embroidery.

I told my boyfriend about my dream, and he said, “Does your dad do any kind of stitching?”

“You’ve met my dad,” I said.

“Well, I don’t want to stereotype,” he said. “I mean, I know that there are gruff, macho guys out there who knit.”

Not that my dad is necessarily gruff or macho. He is a typical beer-drinking, hockey-watching Canadian guy, but then again, he also knows how to tap dance.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Frustrations, Reading, WIPs, X Stitch WIPs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.