It’s funny how it goes, isn’t it? You start working on something and the next thing you know, you’re pinning and pinning and pinning… instead of actually working on your project. Okay, maybe that’s a little exaggeration, but only a little one. In truth, I’ve been pinning cross stitch stuff (patterns as well as images I would love to make into cross stitched items) for a while now, but only off and on. Until, that is, I picked the craft up again.
It’s gotten so bad that I just took the time to organize my pinterest boards a little more. Instead of the wholesale “craft ideas” I had them under, they now have their own board: Cross Stitch. You know, to make it a little easier for me to find them again. Go ahead and take a look, I’ll wait right here.
So, can you guess what a few of my favorite things are? Granted, some of what I’ve pinned is more for other people, but the cats and bears? All me.
Speaking of cats, once upon a time, I had a program that would let me convert pictures into patterns. I lost it when my old computer died (mostly because I can’t find the disc it was on for back up purposes) so I’ll need to figure out something else, but I made myself a promise. No idea when I’ll manage it, but at some point I want to go through all the pictures of my cats and pick two (maybe more, depending) and make them into cross stitch patterns to hang up on my wall. It’s been about a year since they passed away and I miss them terribly and I figure this way, I can have something special to remember them by.
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Doubt that these’ll be the ones I’ll end up going with, but there’s a lot of pictures to sift through and see which would work best as a pattern. Still, I’d love to have these faces stitched out in some form or another. Some day.
What about you? Have you ever made anything to remember someone special by, be it a fur-baby or a person?
Another Piece of Me 
I love that first photo! I could see it taking a huge color palette to translate the details to stitching, though.
I’ve done one memorial project. (The project is rectangular; a weird photo angle makes it look tapered.)
To steal from my notes on the project: This is never going to reach its intended recipient. I started it for my partner John, who was a marine biologist. He saw the chart in my stash and asked me to do it for his office. He died in a car accident about a month after I started it. It took me a month shy of two years to finish it. I took several long breaks, including the time I worked on Women of Tewa; when I just couldn’t handle it any more, I stopped. In that time I considered not finishing it, giving it away, and burning it. I put it in storage for a while, and eventually gave it to John’s brother, who knows all that went into it.
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oh lordy, Maia, I’m actually sitting here in tears. I’m so sorry for your loss *hugs*. That piece is beautiful, though, and I’m so glad you finished it and that you found it a good home. I can only imagine how tough that particular project was to work on.
I love the picture of Pippin, too, and I don’t doubt that it’ll take a lot of colors to do either one of them. Definitely not going to be an easy project, no matter what picture I end up using for either one. There are just a lot of pictures to choose from. I have to find a good program first, and then play with them before settling on one, I think.
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It was very hard for me, and I nearly gave up entirely on it a few times, but it was healing work, as well. I think sometimes all the counting kept me sane.
I’ve had a hard time finding a good charting program, too. There don’t appear to be any free ones for Macs to start with (which is strange), and my poor laptop is 7 years old and can’t run the current OS, and therefore most current programs, either. There are some free online ones, but not surprisingly, they’re not much good for very detailed charts.
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I can imagine so. It helps you shift your focus some, at least, it does for me.
I have an old PC laptop which is on its last legs, so I feel ya. Kind of surprised there’s nothing out there for MAC, though. I had PC Stitch, and I thought that was available for both PC and MAC? But that was years and years ago, so I might be mis-remembering. I haven’t even started looking at alternatives, yet.
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There’s plenty of expensive stuff, including one I really like, but I just can’t justify spending so much right now (especially given the to-do list I already have, and the fact that I don’t do rotation, so I have a backlog of about 40 years *laugh*). PC Stitch seems to have dropped Mac entirely.
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Oh dear lol. Yes, that would be a tad problematic, then.
Strange that they dropped it
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The jump to OSX made a good number of developers drop Mac development because the change and the accompanying processor changes rendered everything for 9 obsolete. It would be pretty much starting from scratch to produce a new X version. It used to be that only happened between full releases; things that worked on 9.0 would also work on 9.x.x. That’s no longer true, and it’s about to cost them at least one long-term Mac user (we’re talking since 1987 here). The machines are expensive already; jerking us around on the operating system isn’t cute.
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Oh geez! That’s crazy!
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Yeah, it is. I’d have lost patience years ago but for one thing: Macs are ridiculously reliable, sturdy machines. My backup/storage machine is a Smurf Tower G3. It’s 17 years old and still works fine, if incredibly slowly.
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Wow
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