In Memoria

Hey there!

I'm back with more crafting to share and sadly, a tale of woe.

I suppose I'll give you a woe sandwich with crafting bread.

The final fantasy 9 cross stitch is starting off with a hitch, a half hitch!  I'm only kidding, there's no knots in cross stitch:

Here's a sort of idea of the design, I threw it into one of the pattern makers that I talked about last week, though I had to break it into pieces to get it to work.  This is not a big deal, I often work on multi-paged cross stitches.  this one is a little more complicated than that though.

The layering of the characters in the paint program I was using caused a few of the characters in the front row to get blurry.  None of them in the final design will be blurry.  I'm using the large picture as the template, for counting where to start the characters compared to the others and doing the title, which didn't get messed up by moving it around.  Then I'll print out each character's pattern (or use an app or something) for the actual colors and stitching.  I also added some depth to Zidane there in the middle, I outlined the top of his head a bit with some shading colors, which is in his character's pattern but not the big picture.

Well, I've started stitching the title!

And I got the rest of the flosses in the mail for continuing.  I'll probably need more white shades, though I'm only doing the white background in the title.  I'm also considering adding the outline of Gaia to the background in the middle behind Zidane et al, to give some more interest and detail.

Welp.

The tale of woe.

Background, Zac and I bought a car two weeks ago! Very Exciting!  His old car was dying, and in fact wouldn't go above 2nd gear without some major transmission work. Using it as a commuter for the past 18 months had been a bit too much for it.  So, while we were hoping to wait until after new house was finished and we had moved to buy him an electric vehicle, unfortunately, this just couldn't wait.

 So, we bought a hybrid Corolla!  On the day we went to pick it up from the dealership, I brought along my knitting bag with my handspun hat in.

I showed you guys the picture last time of the hat.

I didn't actually work on my hat while we were driving.  Sometimes I bring my knitting along as emotional support knitting.  As far as I remember, I didn't even take it into the dealership with me.  Zac left the dealership in new car and I took my car and we met at dinner and again, I didn't take my knitting out of the car.

I feel like you can see where this is going, so I'll just get you there.

I lost my knitting.

It went POOF!

As far as I can remember, I brought it into the house with my sweater that I had been wearing and dropped it on the couch, but then when I went to go knitting on it later, it was gone.

RIP mushroom bag.

I called the places we went, I checked and double checked the car(s).  It's well and truly gone.

And man, that is depressing.  Two pairs of needles (my karbonz sock needles just live in that bag), my handspun hat, those teeny mushroom stitch markers hanging off the cinching ribbon, and a little piece of my heart, gone.

Welp, back to crafting I suppose.

I could just let it be gone. Oh no.  I decided to make it again.  I mean, why not?  I love that bag, I'm missing that particular size and dimensions in my project bag repertoire. Not to mention, it was easily my favorite of all my project bags.

It starts with hexies:

No, it's not the same fabric, that particular charm pack wasn't available anymore.

I also ordered new replacement needles.  And I actually got into contact with the business whom I originally purchased the Rambouillet top from, Three Waters Farm.  She waved her 8 ounce minimum for custom orders rule, but I waved right back and got 8 ounces anyway.  4 are going to my crafting group as a prize next month.  4 ounces are currently on my wheel:

 

Unfortunately that's as far as I've gotten with that particular project. I have been busy NOT crafting in the last week or so.  I've been playing final fantasy 3 on my Nintendo DS.  Last time I tried to play (a decade ago) I was not doing too good, I was under leveled and lost and not having much fun.  This time I just used a walk-through.  It's fun though, I enjoyed finding all the things and following directions.  I like that, if you can't tell.

I did get to the final final bosses, and lost the first fight and closed it in a huff.  Well, I thought, that's it.  I tried.  I'm not redoing the final dungeon (an hour and a half worth of playing, there was nowhere to save!) in order to get my ass kicked again.

And then I read further and found out that I was meant to lose that battle and I closed the DS for no reason.  So, I'm well and truly done.

I do enjoy the retroactive call backs from final fantasy 9, they really did take the first few final fantasy games and boil it down to their essence when they made final fantasy 9-- the elements, the orphan-tropes, some of the monsters, the character archetypes. Course I'm probably talking out of my butt, I really have only played the two final fantasy games.  But I see what they did anyway.  I know that FF 6-8 were not like DnD as such, they were much more industrial looking.

Continuing talking about ff3: I was not such a fan of the jobs element to the game.  See, you have your four characters and you start off with just a few jobs to choose from (red mage, white mage, black mage, your basic mele characters, or monk) and as you go on through the game, you get more jobs to choose from.  These jobs have different features, there are good and bad things about each, and you try to find some kind of a balance in order to be the most effective.

All that is fine, the only thing is, regardless of what level your actual character is on, the job levels are a different animal.  You start off level 1 if you decide to pick a new job for the character, and there's a bit of a negative temporary effect for a number of fights after you switch jobs.  So, at the end of the game when you get the last set of job options (it's literally in the last dungeon when they appear) you give your characters the beaucoup best jobs there are, and they're a little bit negatively effected because of the job switches, and they're on level 1 of these jobs!  It's confounding.

I just had a difficult time with that in general, I had to look up exactly what was important about the jobs like 10 times throughout the game.  I honestly just wanted the walk-through to tell me what jobs I should be focusing my time learning and which were interchangeable, etc.   And mostly the walk-through was like, I have four dragoons for this battle! and they're all on level 20+ of their jobs.  Like, how much time did that take? I am not the biggest fan of grinding for nonsense like that.

Based on everything I was doing and how I was playing, I honestly think I could have gotten through the final bosses no problem, but quitting when I did took the steam out of me.  Anyway.

 I am going on, aren't I?  I'll finish off with another piece of crafting bread:

 There's been a little bit of knitting after the kids go to bed:

The top are new shiny self-striping socks from Must Stash yarn.  They are my usual 64 stitch sock. There's not an awful lot to say about them, except I love the colors.  I'm also to the heel flap now, about 6 inches down the leg to the uninitiated. The stripe pattern is really interesting, too.  After the long blue part here, the pattern repeats from the top, but it's continually mirroring the red-orange-yellow pattern, and it's lovely.

The bottom picture is of the vintage t-shirt with sleeves finally attached.  I have the raglan shaping to go and then I'll have a new t-shirt.  I worked the very short sleeves flat and joined them after binding off under the arms of the body of the sweater.  I calculated the number of rows I have for the length I want to bust to be before the neck, and calculated how many decrease rounds I needed to get to the neck size that I want.  All that's left to do is knit the darn thing and hope that it's right. ^^

(realistically that's any knitting, let's be honest!)

And I have gone on for entirely too long today.  Lots of stuff to cover though, I think I did OK.

There is a bit of life news:

We went to the frog jump fair air last weekend!

It was super fun, kids had a blast.  The actual frog jumping was a thing that I saw.

Our house is finally framed:

And lastly, I decided to withdraw my application for para educator.  I don't know if I mentioned it, or if it even happened at the time I last posted, but I got a call about the job a few weeks ago.  They wanted me to come in for a last paperwork thing and to get a physical next month, and I was going to do it, and start working beginning of next school year, but.  But I really don't want to.

For one, we are moving.  That is a fact. For two, I have a lot of responsibilities here with the kids and the house and stuff.  I know it looks like I just sit around and do nonsense all day, and I do, but I also am there for school pick ups, doctor appointments, the laundry, and assorted other nonsense.  For three, we are privileged enough that I don't *have* to work, and Zac even got a bit of a raise last month, working toward a promotion in the next few months, we really do not need the money.

And lastly, I really don't want to.  I am not bored here, I get an enormous satisfaction with what I am doing in my life, and I don't really need to rationalize it.  So, I'll stop.

They did ask why I was withdrawing, because I'm pretty sure they're desperate for help in that capacity, and I told them about the move.  But honestly, if they're that desperate, they should be offering to pay more than minimum wage.  There I said it.

And I'm done.

I'll hopefully see you guys in a few weeks with progress to show for it.  I hope you enjoy your long weekend if you're in the states.

cheers!