Someone call me butter, cause I'm on a ROLL

 hey there!  I hope you're in the mood for more epic pokemon cross stitch progress pictures.

I also have a new knitting WIP!

Last time I posted, I was working my way through Mewtwo on page 4.  That page felt a little slow going.  There was a day or two where I didn't stitch much due to various obligations.

but, continue to plug away, I did.

I finished Mewtwo and Dragonite, and I started to fill in the gaps and do the rest of Aerodactle.

 

Then I worked on Snorlax's belly at Hazel's bequest.

In this time, I actually managed to finish the first half of my May socks:

I don't actually know that I'll be able to finish the second one.  At this point, I'm most of the way down the leg, but Zac's on nights for the next week and after that there's only 4 stitching days left of May.  It's possible.  Especially considering I found out that as well as dryer sheets, I'm also allergic to nail polish.  So, no more painting my nails, and therefore more knitting time.  I suppose there's a silver lining to everything.

I took a picture of the back of my work, too.  For posterity.  A lot of people when they talk about embroidery and cross stitch will talk about their favorite stitching relative whose backs were as neat as their fronts.  Even when I went out to Joann to get more floss the other day, the clerk talked fondly about her aunt whose back was as neat as her front.

 

I do try to keep a neat backside.  This time is especially good for me, I actually have no knots there.  Usually there's a strand every few dozen strands where a knot will form.  Usually it's a slip knot that can easily be released.  But sometimes, it gets pulled and tightened and to save time and effort, I'll leave it in.  Possibly tugging it through a hole or seven until it is flush on the backside and hidden from the front.  This time, I've made a concerted effort to not do that at all. As soon as a knot that I can't release is formed, I cut it off and start the strand over.

 

Here I've worked the other half of Ditto, Evee, and the start of Vaporeon.  I think missed taking a picture one day due to lack of very much progress. Speaking of Evee, I remembered Hazel's current favorite Pokemon.  It's Espurr.  It's a cat who is psychic.  E.S.P. PURR. I'm halfway convinced she only likes it because of the punny name.  haha.

Finally I finished page 4!  And I got a picture of the whole thing.  One more panel for the top row!

It was this day that my hoard of yarn came in the mail.  A few Mondays ago I had a very bad day. And in the vein of self-care I ordered some yarn.  More than a little.  I ordered yarn to make the Painting Bricks Shawl, by Stephen West.  This is no easy feat.  It features a main color: two skeins of fingering yarn, plus 8 mini skeins of contrast colors.  I wanted it to match the sample.  Because Why not?  also, It's so happy and lovely and gorgeous.  It reminds me of stained glass.  As a result, I ended up ordering a few extra mini skeins, because there wasn't just a single pack of mini skeins labeled "These are the mini skeins you are looking for that are conveniently packaged in one package"

And I immediately wound yarn and casted on:

This is actually how the project is sitting because I have since gone back to stitching Pokemon.  I did want to stop and chat about the pattern.  It's by Stephen West, one of the more Avant Gard knitting designers of today.  His stuff is wacky and wild, but charming.  I've knit one other design by his, the Exploration Station.  It's usually never the sample that calls me to his patterns, because the colors are usually way outside my wheel house.  But this time was different.  If you follow the convenient link above, you'll see how absolutely gorgeous the sample shawl is.

The pattern itself is ingenious.  I love West's pattern writing style.  He's definitely an advanced knitter, and advanced knitters have ways of doing things that are oftentimes more streamlined than, say, someone following the "rules" of knitting, if you know what I mean.  There's often tricks and tips that West takes advantage of when he designs, but not only that, he makes them accessible and easy to follow by even more beginning knitters.

In Exploration Station, for example the beginning of the shawl are wedges that are shaped with short rows, which often leave holes, and rather than hide the holes he uses them as a design element which simultaneously makes the pattern that much easier to knit, follow along, and memorize.  Ingenious.

Here it is a bit more subtle.  It's a half-pi shawl. In a more traditional half-pi shawl you have increase rounds where you double the number of stitches in mathematically significant rounds.  Here, he put the increase rounds in the black stripes, but it's more than just increasing willy nilly, it's relevant to the pattern itself, so it's easy to memorize as you knit.  So more subtle than incorporating into a design element, but it's still a really high quality thoughtful design.

I've never regretted purchasing one of his patterns is what I'm saying.  I'll stop being a commercial.

But anyway, like I said, I went back to stitching Pokemon after that.

Page 5!

That top corner there on the right is THE TOP CORNER.

and all that blue took somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 hours.

That was where I stopped two nights ago, the day I did all that blue. It's Mew!

 

And finally, this is how it sits right now!  Last night I finished Arcticuno (OMG, I was so tired of stitching blue at the end of that bird, you have no idea) and I started on the rest of Snorlax!

There's one more pokemon underneath them, but you'll have to wait till next time to see who it is!

I hope you enjoyed reading my stitching shenanigans.  I'll hopefully be back next time with more shawl progress.