A passionate cross-stitch love affair

I JUST HAVE TO DO 1/7 OF THE WORK I'VE ALREADY DONE

Spoiler

Incidentally, I think that's the first time I've managed to do the scattered squares as they were actually laid out in the original pattern

 

Guys. GUYS.

Spoiler: :3c

I still have to iron, glue, and photograph, but



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I have no idea how this happened XD

Spoiler: large

I knew it was going to be long, but I didn't remember it being THIS much of a monster XDDDD

Anyways, it's 165 x 221, as densely packed as I could make it, apart from the justified text spacing, and it theoreeeetically will fit on standard 14-count aida cloth, but it'd be tight enough that I personally would chicken out and do a bigger cloth or smaller stitch count. I thought about making a border for this, but once I condensed the text and figured out line breaks and justified it, and it was just a huge, huge wall of unrelenting karkat, I realized that it was perfect just the way it is :')

 

SO. Slightly off-topic, but if people have been interested by the projects I've been doing but aren't interested in learning to embroider, I found this cool neighbor craft that I'm enjoying a lot so far. I found it through facebook ads, but of course that's going through a site I don't recognize, and for prices that proclaim DEAL ENDING IN THIRTY MINUTES, so, nnnno. I went to amazon.

Spoiler: SHINY

(It's a lot more shiny irl when you can move your head and see the light shift on the facets)

Diamond painting is the name of the thing, then I think a 'full drill' is what I've got here, where the whole canvas gets covered. Some of the kits on sale are partial drills, meaning you only bejewel a part of the picture. Not my thing, I want as much sparkle as I can pack onto the real estate.

And I knew this was cross-stitch-y, so I went looking for the maximum complexity available, and checking out customer images because of course the base image is going to be hella pixelized when it's made into a pattern, so I wanted to be sure I was getting good resolution. But oh my god, when it arrived? Literally they're using the DMC floss color codes. I saw that the black was 310, and 3799 was a dark grey, and I was just ohhhhh my god this is SERIOUSLY just cross-stitch in a different medium.

So I'm having an AMAZING time, but need to relocate to a higher table, because I got lost in it (in my defense, I was listening to ancillary mercy and didn't want to stop), and it's been hours and I still can't uncurl without pain. I'm... prrrrobably not going to buy another kit, because I'm typically into the maximum complexity projects, and they're interested in being """accessible""" and """marketable""" or something, and don't want to do 75-color oversized monsters :PP

BUT. But. I just went to look on amazon, and oh my goodness, there are blank canvases for sale. I'd have to be careful picking a picture to fit on the paper they're selling, and I don't know how much it'll cost to order the plastic things, but I can pick a picture of my own and make it sparkly!!! I have pictures I'm already considering. I'm not doing this until I've cleared my other stupid robot project, which will take a while, but. Still. Oh my god. I'm going to finish this one and get it framed and all, but I'm already looking forward to sparkly robot time.

(SPARKLY WINDBLADE)

(SPARKLY WHIRL!!!)

 

Someone save me from myself

I still have an entire text file that's just full of song lyrics ;-;

Spoiler: radch radch radch

Also that last one is monstrously huge and a mistake that I couldn't bring myself to delete. I knew the font was too large, but I didn't think it would be that bad. God, I still have so many patterns I want to make, but I have an entire rest of my life that I'm supposed to be living XD

 

I'm not posting these to tumblr until I have a bigger batch, BUT, I'm not sure I'll get a chance to finish any more of these things before I go to Europe. So I'm posting them somewhere on the internet, not that I'll have reliable web access during the day if I lose my printouts, anyways :P

Spoiler: these need borderssssss

 

Oh god, i have borked my neck SO HARD, and it's been hours and moving my torso in any way is still a guarantee of blinding pain. But it was still almost impossible to stop working, and all i want to do is get back to this project. Why am i Like This

 

FOX IS DID!!!!

I don't know when I went to bed last night and don't want to know, but I FINISHED, BITCHES!

So before i left on my trip, I was... probably around a quarter done. When I got back on Monday, I started again. The amount of time I spent finishing this is equivalent to the runtime of the Ancillary Justice audiobook, plus three quarters of Ancillary Sword. I won't be buying another diamond painting kit, partially in sheer self-defense, but also because...... robutts..........

But I don't know which picture I want to do because I'll have to pixelate more than I'm used to and probably run a lower color depth than i prefer (that one windblade cover is a decent candidate to deal with both those issues), but estimating materials is going to be an absolute nightmare. I can find a skein >> stitches conversion rate, but that will result in a LOT of overbuying for the minor colors :T They're only 20 cents, but that will add up. And they ship from China, so if I run short, supplies will take aaaaages (2-4 weeks).

Anyways!!! Gotta glue and frame this sucker, because I love it. It's currently buried under a pile of hardcover tf books, because I want to be sure these things stick. I also took a gif of this, to show off how sparkly it is, but kintsugi and my phone are fighting me, so I cant even post the shitty compressed version from tumblr. I'll try to post that later, once I'm on a real computer.

Spoiler: large

 

Notes for meeeeee

First and most important note, if I do the big-ass patterns (and I don't see the point in doing something less than epic), I'm looking at potentially a cost of $75-$100. Which includes the plastic doodads and eliminates the step of converting from skeins to plastic diamonds, but I won't be in direct control of the pattern generation, I'll be trusting someone on the other end to select color depth and centering and such. I think it's my best option, but it's going to be expensive and I have to let go of a teeny tiny piece of control.

• Superion isn't going to work well with diamond painting, he needs to be cross-stitch (and probably on 18-count fabric), and needs minor photoshop work
• Waspinator and Sky-Byte will be better embroidery than cross-stitch, t b h
• **Metroplex's brain module would be kind of super stunning, but the panel is really, really long and narrow, and I don't know if there's a good way to balance aspect ratio and the detail I want
• **Windblade and Metroplex's brain is also lovely, but there are some big single-color swathes that seem mind-numbing and I don't know if I want to commit to that
• That one Windblade cover would work well, but it's also already getting cross-stitched and I don't like being a copycat :P
• The pictures of TFP Knock Out and Starscream would work well for sure, but the subject matter is a little... bland compared to the other candidates
• Ironfist would look good, but that's SOUL-CRUSHING amounts of flat red in the background, and I think he's better for cross-stitch with a red-on-red pattern

Right now, the current frontrunners are Optimus flashing the audience, and Metroplex punching out Trypticon, a space robot dinosaur city man. The Optimus picture is incredibly suited to a shiny-ass medium, and oh my god just read the description for the other one. Metroplex does need some careful photoshop work before I can do anything with it, because I can't find a clean version of that cover and I'm not cropping Metroplex's punching hand. For both of these, I'm getting decent resolution, but I'd want to do them as large as I'm allowed, which means.... paying oodles for a huge-ass pattern. If I do any of these, I'm getting them nicely framed. And they work up much, much faster than real cross-stitch, which means this is ready to be a massive, massive money sink if I let it get out of hand.

Anyways, my maybes and my frontrunners, approximately screencapped and lazily cropped to remind myself (though I won't be able to control color depth if I order a kit, aughhhh). I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with at least one of the frontrunners, but deciding which to start with is going to be AGONIZING, and I'm going to die from trying to make a simple-ass decision, as per usual

Spoiler: metroplex

Spoiler: windblade and metroplex

Spoiler: optimus

Spoiler: metroplex and trypticon

 

RAINBOW ACQUIRED

I am now ready to cross-stitch..... eggs..........

Spoiler

 

facebook and youtube have both noticed i have a diamond painting problem and are advertising *AGGRESSIVELY*

this isn't THAT much of a problem, but god does it tempt me into spending more money on another craft, which is something i really truly do not need ;-;

Anyways, I'm pretty resolved on getting a custom kit, because I'm weak, and I'm especially weak against shiny things. I still have to pick which image, but it's going to be one of those four. Leaning towards Optimus, leaning towards doing Metroplex and Trypticon in regular embroidery, want to do at least one Metroplex diamond painting before I abandon ship for a new craft obsession

AND. I also picked up my starscream project again today, and oh my godddddd, I forgot how much I loved doing this as embroidery. I meant to just like... see where I was, but I worked for a few hours instead, whoops. And I've been longing to go back to it all evening :B So that's going to disrupt my life but good.

BUT!!! That's not all. I need to write down my plans before I go anywhere with them, because otherwise I'm guaranteed to heck up, like I almost did with the eggs pattern.

• Eggs: outlined (slightly wrong, but a workable wrong), to be done in rainbow, switching off by row (start with red?)
• Varden's suppurating cuticles: currently being worked in navy blue on pale blue, needs some kind of embellishment at the corners
• Varden is your strength: to be worked in rainbow sparkly thread, on.... black canvas? I'm undecided. I can't quite imitate engraved gold plating, but it needs to be very extra. and the pattern probably needs something of a border

 

I LIKE IT!!!!

I think the main potential limiting factors will be how much of a nightmare sparkly thread is to handle and how large my cloth is. Finding a font small enough to make that whole invocation fit took so much work, and I don't think I have much available space left unless I jump to eighteen-count fabric. Which is an option, but it seems like every project right now is trying to do that and no no no more big projects is the opposite of what I need to be doing XD

Man, though, if size wasn't a factor, I even have an art deco font saved that I've never been able to use because it's so hecking tall :P

maybe i'll use it for an 'aatr's tits' pattern

Spoiler

 

The sparkly embroidery floss is the tricky thing, because to get it on the right thickness for the aida cloth, I need to pull each length of floss into six pieces :P As a unit, they hold together decently, but once they're that thin, they're ridiculously prone to fraying and tangling, and break a lot easier than standard floss. I've done one project with them before, another text thing for pixels a few years back, and I've also gotten a lot of cross-stitch xp since then, so I'm feeling cautiously optimistic! I just need to pick out the right background entertainment to keep myself patient and unfrustrated XD who am i kidding i'm probably going to listen to the imperial radch trilogy again