Yeah, sorry about that

 I have been missing for awhile.  Things have been happening, pokemon have been stitching, and I took a short break to make a gift for my mother-in-law.  And I finished socks.

Without further ado, back to the pokemon.  Where I last left you, I wasn't quite finished with the first row of pokemon panels.

Well, in case you're curious, I did finish that row.

It was Jolteon!  Man, that was a lot of waiting for you all.  Also, I kind of fell off the memorizing these monster's names.  I have learned them of course, but keeping them all in my head is turning out to be rather more difficult than it was when I only had 20 of them to contend with.

So, with the entire first row done, I was 20% done with this thing!  Way to motivate!

Here you can see I've finished the bottoms of Pincer and Tauros.  I have started Goldeen and her evolutionary destiny, Seaking.  The entire time I was stitching on Goldeen, I had Jolene in my head, except it was Goldeen.

And this is the part where I had to take a break.  Some yarn came in for a birthday shawl for my mother-in-law.  She's a fan of Outlander, and saw a nifty pattern on etsy for an intarsia shawl.  I've actually done very little intarsia in my life, and this was actually pretty straight forward.  Well, it was after I organized my yarns

So, here you can see it looks like maybe I did teal and then black and am continuing with the taupe, but what is actually happening is I'm working on all of these simultaneously.  The taupe is growing into a grand square, and I can't carry the black and teal across the back or else it would get, well, it would get stupid.  So, for intarsia style colorwork, you keep each color having it's own source of yarn, and at each juncture, you twist the yarn together, to avoid a hole.

I know those aren't the *best* pictures, but you can see where the yarns have been twisted.

If you're curious about this technique, I do recommend looking up a better source.  I was kiiiind of not in the mood at all to be knitting, so I completely rushed through the project so I could get back to stitching pokemon.

The shawl was formed by making a large mitered square (that is increased by two at the center every other round, maths and geometry turns it into a square) and then each side is worked separately, decreasing one stitch every other row to make a triangle:

Unfortunately I did not get a picture after blocking, which is unfortunate.  It grew quite a bit, and turned all smooshy good, the way that garter should.

Somewhere in this time, I also got my hair chopped off!  Which has nothing to do with crafting, but made me exceedingly happy.  Went from waist-length, almost to my bottom, to my chin:

woohoo!  happy bouncy curls!

The shawl mailed off, I had nothing to do except bury myself in pokemon once again!

Here I finished SeaKing and worked on Wheezing.

Coughing made an appearance, followed by Eggsecute.  I keep wanting to call this one Eggsterminate, but it's only cause I am a Dr. Who fan, and I can't help it.

Page 6 is finished! There's electrode and... that other one.. dammit. Voltorb??

Page 7 started with staryou

And starme

Then there was rideon and the beginnings of rihorn?  I'm starting to lose them, you guys.  I did a big mid-term with Hazel to test me on the ones I've learned and I completely forgot the name of kibuto and kibutops.  boy.

I started the fronds of eggsecutor

And the rest of eggsecute

And finally page 7 was finished!

Page 8 is in progress still:

There's the finishing touches on quite a few of these things, and Mr Mime?  Is that his name?

Followed by scissor and the beginnings of a blue one that I cannot for the life of me remember his name.  It's bad guys, it's very bad.

That is, in fact, how it's sitting right now.  Today I have an appointment with the kiddos, but I should be able to work on that mysterious blue pokemon and start on the large pink one that's in the middle of this page.  Whatever its name is.

I am hoping to be back sooner than almost 3 weeks next time.  Time really did just get away from me.

SO much so, that I nearly forgot to post my finished pair of SOCKS.  Why, yes, in between all that cross stitching and shawl knitting I finished my May socks.

Why, no, I did not finish them in May.  I finished them last night.  All that 'four stitching days left' from last time fell out the window because husband had to work overtime for a few of those nights.  :shrugs: what are you gonna do?

Well, for me, I'm not planning on casting on June socks.  It's just not going to happen.  I have a sweater that you all may remember that is actually fairly mindless.  Every 6th round is a cable round, which is just a step up from vanilla, but I would like to see it completed eventually.  It will never get that way if I cast on socks.

Anyway, I hope your Junes are going well.  I am looking forward to summer and the kids being off school.

Cheers!