Getting my feet under me

 Hi friends!

I am sorry for neglecting the blog again!  I daresay I don't have an enormous amount going on, craft-wise. There's the Final Fantasy IX cross stitch that I've been extremely single-minded on, and my couch knitting.

I noticed that I didn't even talk about my couch knitting last time, even though I had gotten quite a bit of progress on it, I suppose I was distracted talking about all the things.

If you can't tell, this is a sock.  And it's the only picture of the sock I have.  This is ridiculous and unreasonable of me and I'll tell you why.  I'm done with this first sock!  I'm on to the second sock!  I am almost to this point in the second sock.  But I haven't gotten another picture of the project.  It's all the way downstairs.

 Ridiculous.

 There's not actually a lot to talk about with this sock project, but I'll try.  It's for Hazel.  It's a 60 stitch sock, which is 4 fewer than my usual.  She's full sized now, I don't think she's growing anymore.  Good for knitting for.

Yeah, Hazel's maxed out at about 5'1" maybe 5'2"-- she's as tall as her grandmother.  She wears size 7 shoe.  Perfect candidate for hand-knitted socks.  Plus, she loves wearing them.  win/win.

 (If you wanted an update on her back surgery from a year ago, there's not a lot to tell.  She has her 1 year check up on Tuesday and everything is good.  No long-term pain, no issues)

Anyway.  That's my vanilla, mindless, project.  I actually haven't had ample opportunity to work on it because Zac has been working pretty much nonstop for a month.  He's had 1 day off since he went back to work after his 'move' vacation time.  Which, if you're not keeping track, was almost 4 weeks ago at this point.

Ideally, his work is supposed to be a 10 on, 4 off sort of deal, rotating around the different 8-hour shifts: days, swings, and graves.  Through this, the busy season, he's working a lot of 12 hour shifts, as well as overtime shifts on his days off.  A lot of people are using their 'use or lose' time.  Not to mention they've been working on hiring more people, but HR is sitting on their hands a lot and a few potential hirees have actually opted out of the opportunity rather than wait for a start date.  womp womp.

So, this leaves me alone a LOT, and I'm not really watching a lot of TV at the couch.  I'm more likely to cross stitch to youtube videos upstairs in the office.  So, vanilla sock is not getting any love. I also keep forgetting to bring it with me to school pick up, which involves a lot of waiting in a parked car.  Perfect time for knitting vanilla socks, but I have been neglectful.

If you're curious (and I know you probably are not), Zac actually has a promotion lined up!  This will make him day shift supervisor!  Starting end of February, he'll be on permanent day shifts.  Monday through Friday, 7-3.  IDEAL.  I'm so here for this.  Back at old job, back in New Hampshire, his rotating shifts were much easier to manage, he got a lot more time off just by the nature of how the rotating shifts worked.  At most, he'd have to work 5 shifts in a row before getting time off.  Here, as I mentioned, it's 10 on, 4 off. If you're paying attention, that's exactly the same as 5 on 2 off, just with more shifts in a row.  When they're 8 hour shifts, it's fine.  It's manageable.  Not ideal, not fun, but not terrible.  When half of them are 12 hour shifts and he has to work into his 4 days off, it, well, it sucks.

I've spent the past 3 paragraphs complaining about Zac's overtime.  And I'm sorry.  I just miss him a lot.  At least he has Christmas off.  for now.  DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN.

At least January is coming, and the use or lose stuff will be used or lost.  There'll be much less overtime then.

Anyway.  Cross stitch!

 

As you can see, I've finished Zidane, the moogle here, started Vivi.

Vivi was pretty straight forward.  When I finished him, I took a grand picture of the entire piece:

You can really get a feeling for the size of it here.

Eiko was a little more complicated than Vivi and Zidane.  The cross stitch program had a difficult time with reds.  It wanted Eiko's shirt here to be ruddy reds and oranges.  Her shirt is magenta and pink if you can't tell. A bit of coral, but nowhere is there bright orange.

I ended up laying out all the colors used in her top, and finding similarly valued magentas and pinks.  I think it worked marvelously.  she looks exactly as I imagine her to look.

Finally, I have Quina!  They're a non-binary character.  The game refers to them as s/he and I am not going to use that convention as it's outmoded and probably offensive.  They it is!

The trickiest part for Quina was just getting them in the right position.  In fact, this has been one of the most difficult parts of the whole thing, since the program I used for moving the character sprites I created caused the characters in the front row to be blurry.  Overall, having Vivi or Zidane or whoever a few stitches left or right of their intended space isn't a big deal.  But, setting Quina in too far to the left will make the whole piece be unbalanced.  I started by counting down from the title, to where they originally sat, but that actually put them too far left.  I think they got cut off in the original setting and I didn't notice.  I shoved them about 10 stitches (3/4" or so) to the right.  They'll be a bit more blocked by Eiko, but their left side will end within the width of the title.  Perfect.

I've gotten a bit more done on their left shoulder, and most of their tongue.  At least the top half.  They're a very wide character and I'm going left to right, top down.

If you're a fan of FFIX and wondering where Steiner or Amarant are-- I don't really like those characters.  Steiner, admittedly, has a great character arc.  One of the best in the entire game I would say, and very relatable to a person raised evangelical, turned atheist.

By the time I got around to drawing him, I was really tired of drawing the characters.

Amarant is a useless waste of space in the game.  He contributes nothing to the story and I can't stand his personality.

I was originally planning on putting in Beatrix-- the other military character who saw the light as it were. To be honest, when I was getting on these last few characters I was tired of drawing them. I wanted to move on to stitching them.  Also, the idea of drawing Steiner in pixel art was extremely daunting.

Anyway, I'm really happy with how this'll turn out.  I am thinking about drawing in the outline of Gaia to put in the background. I'm not sure.  I'll have to take a look at the space.

That really is all there is to speak.  Things are just normal now.  I'm waiting on Zac having some good time off before I start thinking about painting the house.  I have a landscaper in the wings, waiting on the HOA to approve the plans she made for doing the backyard.  And while things are waiting to happen, I'm settling into a good groove.  Getting my feet under me, as it were.  (THAT'S THE NAME OF THE BLOG POST!)

Till next time!