Symbolic Forest

There are still numerous craft projects somewhere in mid-flight at Symbolic Towers, and I keep slowly gathering plans for more that I haven’t even started yet. I have enough crochet patterns to keep me crocheting for several years, probably; a very large cross-stitch under way, and several other cross-stitch kits ready to start—and that’s to say nothing of the Lego or the model train kits. None of these things, really, have been posted on here, largely because I think “I’ll save them for YouTube” and then never video them either.

Despite all that, I’ve just started yet another cross stitch project!

What’s exciting about this project, the reason why it’s using up most of my crafting energy at the moment, is that: for the first time, this isn’t a kit. It’s not even a pattern I’ve bought and then found my own materials for, like most of the crochet projects. No, for the first time, this is a pattern I created myself. I saw something I thought would make a good cross stitch project, turned it (with the help of software) into a chart, and got started.

Because this isn’t something that was designed specifically for cross stitch by a specialist cross stitch designer, it does use quite a lot of colours, and it’s going to be a bit more complex than pretty much all of the cross stitch kits I’ve tried so far. Because of that, for the first time, I’ve actually started crossing off each of the stitches on the pattern as I do it—it helps that I know I can always print another copy off, of course. It is definitely going to help the further into this I get, though, especially when I get to the parts of the design which include lots of small areas of different colours, or the parts with lots of confetti—the cross stitch term for single isolated stitches scattered one-at-a-time across the background. This project will have a lot of confetti.

It will be some months before the whole thing is finished, even though it’s not full coverage, and even if I did deliberately avoid including any backstitch as part of the design. For now, though, new project energy is carrying me bowling along at pace. Only a week in, and already I’ve done a good chunk of the pattern’s central, focal point.

That’s quite a good chunk of stitching for one week’s spare evening moments. What is it, you ask? Well, to know that…if you don’t recognise it, you’ll just have to wait and find out.

Keyword noise: crafting, sewing, cross-stitch, current projects.