Star Trek Cross Stitches, Part 1

A few weeks ago, my mother sent me a link to this Star Trek Cross Stitch book.  It was so cute!  I'm pretty stubborn about buying craft books though, or just books in general.  I go to the library a lot, and I looked at our library's website and they didn't carry it, so I gave up on it.  Six days later, out of nowhere, a friend of mine MAILED me the book!  Signed by the author, too.  I immediately got my cross stitch on, and began the Federation Seal.

Awwwww yeaaaaah.

My husband is a pretty big Trekkie, and being in proximity to that has made me pretty Trekkish myself.  A friend of my man's is expecting his first baby to be born this month, and he is a HUGE fan of Deep Space 9.  I don't usually like to make baby items for people because babies in my family have these giant heads and never fit into anything under 6 months old, and I don't like to gamble with unfamiliar genes and my knitting time.  I decided to make the DS9 space station for them to hang on their future cadet's wall.

The DS9 was super fun to do, it didn't have much mindless cross stitching like the blue in the Federation seal, but it wasn't too complicated to keep me from watching the Big Bang Theory.  When I went to the store to grab some extra embroidery thread, I wrote down the colors I would need, which included pink.  I came back home and was going through the pattern and saw the TWO STITCHES the pink called for.  Don't get me wrong, they are important to the makeup of the station, but I would have settled for something on hand if I would have paid attention to the lack of pink needed :)

I'm currently in the middle of my "thank you" cross stitch that I'm making for the friend who got it for me, and then I plan on making a Borg cube Christmas ornament (!!!!!!! I almost can't handle that one) and an excellent one of Wesley Crusher with the words "Shut up, Wesley" over the top of him.  More posts as this develops!

And can I talk about how much I love that cross stitching is such a cheap hobby?  It's bomb diggity.

In a giving mood

“It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” 

― Mother Teresa

As I have said before I love Christmas. Most years I try really hard to make a fair amount of my Christmas gifts, but I usually fall short on that goal. This year I found the secret to success: use nicer yarns. I lose steam pretty quickly when it comes to a project, doesn't matter what it is: hats, scarves, socks(always the second one... always!), even simple bags! But this year really nailed down the fact that if it's a soft luxurious yarn I will work on it as often as possible!

Earlier in the year I had made a hat and matching arm-warmers out of the Wurm Hat pattern on Ravelry. Bkins seemed slightly jealous and hinted several times that he thought the pattern would even be masculine, if made in the right color. Hint hint, amiright? So I went on down to Yarn Garden and bought me some more of the beautiful Chalet yarn I used on my hat. Obviously, a more Bkins color choice was made. 

Here it is in the sun. It's a really pretty blueish gray, that can almost look purple if paired with the right colors.

Or it'll blend into my couch...

Here are the ones I made for myself.

I love this Chalet stuff! The photos make it seem a little more white than it is. It's definitely a creamier color in person.

I also made Bkins a lovely Cowl (you can see it poking in on one of his hat photos) but that post will be shared with Twelve, as it was a joint effort kind of project.

And then... the big daddies. The gift that I could not wait for him to open. The pattern twelve just HAD to show me when I thought I was done with gifts. The perfect gift for the nerdy husband...

The Tardis Socks!

This last photo is a little more true to color. It's not quite that bright, but it isn't as dark as the above ones either. 

These socks were difficult. I had never tried fair isle knitting and I had no flipping clue what yarn dominance was, but if anything was going to make me learn it would be Tardis socks.

The first one was the roughest. I'm a tight knitter and for fair isle you want to keep things loose so that you're non-dominant yarn doesn't get sucked into the dominant color. In this case it was white nondom and black dom. On the top right photo above where I have it on my foot you can't see the middle of the B. I knit it too tight and had to go through and fuss the yarn up to show. It was tedious, but I had the hang of it by the second sock.

It went much smoother and it's the easiest to read. 

He loved them. It's so nice to have a husband that just loves these nerdy crafts. Right, Twelve?

 I'll have a post later of the stuff I made people that aren't my husband. Unfortunately I need them to send me photos... I kind of finished them and wrapped them. Whoops!

Happy New Year, internet!

EDIT: Almost forgot this guy!

Futurama cross stitches

Bender: "What's the matter, did somebody die or something?"

Leela: "Kif's dead, Bender."

Bender: "Nailed it!"

One of my man's favorite shows is Futurama.  I don't usually craft anything for him for Christmas or his birthday because I'm always knitting in front of him and just give him the thing I made him when finished.  I decided to plan kind of a big project for him to open up Christmas morning.

When I decided to do this theme from the episode I, Roomate, I discovered there was a shocking lack of Futurama cross stitch ideas out there (at least I couldn't find much!) so I created all these in Excel, and I found free 8bit fonts through Dafont.com (listed below each picture).  It was a little hard to photograph in the hallway I put them in.  Enjoy!

Font: LL Pixel

Font: Minecraftia

Font: Hachicro

I dyed this aida cloth blue (and, consequentially, about 1/5 of my kitchen in the process) with Rit dye.

Font: Brandi Alexander

Font: Pixeljosh6

Inspiration images:

Additional notes:  1) I messed up a little on the Water Fountain. I should have centered the words instead of putting them to the left.  2) Obviously many of the designs were rounded or had circles, and I had to make them more blocky.  3) I definitely took the most creative license with the Public Library, which was a pain in the tuckus.  I couldn't do the circle around the words without making it HUGE, and the open book in the design was nearly impossible with the small design of the letters (I went through about 3 ideas before landing on upright books with little Xs on the spines).  Also I had to outline the letters because the yellow I used was hard to read against the white.

Also, I use a technique I read on Young House Love when I'm planning to hang multiple pictures, where I cut a template with paper (leftover Christmas wrapping!) and put it up on the wall.  I hammered nails directly into the paper and just ripped them off when I was done.  Their post is right here.