Your own... Personal... Pizza

 Morning Friends!

I'm absolutely Flying on my cross stitch, but I thought I'd stop for a minute and share progress since last time!

Page 16 progresses:

Here we see I've gotten carried away with this brown color. I'm glad I didn't lose count, cause it would have been disastrous. (or tedious!)

Psyduck and that cat thing make an appearance underneath Abra, Kadabra and half of Alakasam.

And I finished off page 16 with red spots.

Page 17 started out downright ROUGH.  I lost track in the yellow of that fire pony guy, and had to stitch and rip a few times.  It was hell. I was distracted, or tired, or something.

I did end up finding my way after a whole day of negative progress.  I got a bit carried away with the black here, but I was done with the black on this whole page after this.

I secretly love watching the characters come through when I start with the black.  It's a little bit of magic.  It reminds me of games where you watch something come into focus and you have to guess what it is before the picture is clear.  Of course, I know what it is, I have the picture right there in the pattern.

But YOU don't.  haha.

But also, despite asking Hazel to tell me the names, I forgot all of them for this page.  So, I suppose I don't either.

On this day, I made a video!  It's the one I hinted at last time.  I had Zac hold my camera while I stitched a row of stitches using my two-handed technique. 

If you can't watch it, here's a link to my instagram post.   Some people found it interesting, hope you do too!

It was around this point where I realized that this absolutely has to count for some cosmic purpose.  Here I am, a person who knows next to nothing about pokemon, stitching a seemingly endless, fully patterned Gigantic cross stitch.  If I believed in such things, I'd say it's my own personal purgatory.  I don't know what's coming next, I haven't actually seen the finished picture, err, studied it.  I've seen it briefly.  but I don't know what any of the creatures are called.  And it's literally going on forever.

But I don't believe any of that. And Here! Look! Progress!  page 17 is done!

Page 18 started off without a hitch.

And here it is as of this morning!

I did spend a few hours the other day duplicate stitching noses and eyes on Toby's Fox sweater.  The mornings are getting so chilly here, and it's making me want to get a move on on finishing things that the kids will soon grow out of/will be useless when the weather turns again.

I've definitely talked about duplicate stitching before.  It's also called Swiss Darning, but I don't know that there's anything particular about the technique that's Swiss, and 'Swiss Darning' doesn't describe what the thing is the way that "duplicate stitching" does.  Anyway, this is a technique where you use a needle and yarn, following the line of stitching, you can effectively change the color of stitch.

I opted not to knit with the black in the faces, because it would mean holding four colors at once.  Last time I knit this sweater I did that and it was a nightmare, honestly.

Duplicate stitching can take a bit of time, but it's much less of a headache than four color stranded knitting.

Et voila! The foxes have faces!

And yes, it got relegated to 'sock knitting' after I finished this.  It's strictly vanilla knitting now that I've gotten past the sleeve separation. So, it gets some love in the evenings while I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm and Reno 911 with Zac.

Speaking of socks!  I do have a finish sock, that I mentioned last blog post.  The sock is still All the Way Over There and I don't Want to Get Up.

And I've been continuing doing a bit of hand spindling while I wait for the kids after school, that cop is probably 25% larger than last time, and yes it's also All the Way Over There and I Don't Want to Get Up.

I'll Definitely get off my ass next time I do it, but for now, I take my leave.

Cheers!