Dork Stitch

Two Requested Sprite Patterns of Girls in Blue

2012-01-24T13:54:00.000-06:00

Hello! Today, I don't really have that much to post, but after reading all of the nice comments left here over my International Hermit and Stitch Weekend for the month, which I really appreciated, and visiting a ton of other blogs for the event myself, I feel very enthusiastic about doing some sort of blogging. I do, however, have two patterns that were requested by RebelAngelRin last week all finished and ready to go, though, so I do have some sort of excuse to write here. The two characters from this request are Mint, from Tokyo Mew Mew, in her waitress outfit, and Misty, from Pokemon, in her gym leader outfit from the Gold/Silver games. Both of them were a bit difficult to do, but I think that both of them ended up being recognizable and ought to be fun to stitch. In Mint's case, I tried to keep as many aspects of her color scheme from her magical girl outfit intact as I possibly could, which I think turned out pretty well, while the Misty pattern was different enough from her Pokemon cartoon one that I wasn't quite as worried about that sort of thing with her. Their outfits were both interesting to pixel, too, with Misty's jacket providing a bit of difficulty, even though I think it worked in the end, and Mint's heart shaped apron being the most difficult point of that design. Without any further typing, though, here are today's two patterns!

Now that I have today's two patterns posted, I have another entirely unnecessary photo of my work on Noel, a cross stitched version of a sprite from the fighting game BlazBlue, to post, with her not looking very different than she did when I posted one on Sunday! Most of what I've done was filling in the light bluish gray spot at the front of her dress, which isn't too visible, but on a positive note, I did get the skin on this page stitched in this morning, which is at least not blue. I was sort of hoping to get her page that I'm working on done by the end of the month, and it's starting to look like I'll be able to do it!

With those two things all written about and posted, I guess that I'm done here for today, though I plan to go through all of the comments I've gotten and write down a list of requested patterns, both for sprite patterns and more detailed portrait patterns! I might be slow about getting them done, but if you have any pattern requests, I'll do my best to get them filled and posted, since it's sort of fun to see if I can make what you guys ask about. I'm also planning on doing a post of featured work from this blog's patterns at the start of February, and I already know of tons of cool stuff that I get to write about, including a DeviantArt user who, at last count, did perler versions of over a dozen of the sprite patterns! It won't be too long until I'm back here and typing more nonsense, but, until then, have a nice day!

IHSW January 2012- Three Photos of Stitchings of Girls who Kick People in Video Games

2012-01-22T23:44:00.000-06:00

Hello! It's Sunday night at the end of an International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, as hosted by Joyzse of the blog Random Ramblings, so, since I'm going to be subbing for a math class tomorrow, I thought that I'd do a quick blog post to sum up my stitching for the weekend now! I didn't do any of the hermit stuff at all, seeing as I went and watched two of my siblings at a six hour Scholastic Bowl tournament on Saturday and went to see Haywire today, but I feel like I was pretty productive with my stitching anyway, and on more than one project. Part of that is because I dragged my folder of sprite patterns to the Scholastic Bowl tournament, allowing me to work on my plastic canvas sheet of fighting game characters. I'm not very fast about making them, but I was there for long enough that I finished one I'd started on Friday and got two more completely made. My process in making them was not terribly interesting, so instead of typing two much about the three sprites, here are the photos!

These two sprites are of Kyo (in gray), from the King of Fighters games, and Talim (in poofy shorts) from Soul Calibur, both of whom were stitched during the morning hours.

This poor sprite, though, stuck in her own image because she started a new row (she's actually the 7th on the sheet, which I'll post all of when I'm done with it), is B. Jenet from Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves. I actually quite like this one, since she's the first of my sprites with a tattoo, but she's really not that complicated, either.

The other half of my stitching for the weekend was my continued work on my giant, non-simplified fighting game sprite, featuring Noel from the BlazBlue games. I really didn't think that I'd get any of her stitched this weekend, but a steady stream of television, including reruns of The Big Bang Theory, the middle hour of Inglorious Basterds (which I've seen enough times to not be bothered by watching the middle hour), an episode of Once Upon a Time, and The Trip, which my family watched on Netflix, allowed me to work on her quite a bit! The page of the pattern that I'm working on is covered in colored pencil scribbles, marking off the pages that I've finished, and I think that the ruffles of her skirt are really starting to look like they fit the overall image. Here is a slightly crooked and poorly lit photo of my project as it currently stands, though, so you can see it for yourself!

With that, I think that I'm done with about everything for tonight, since I'm really tired and ought to go to bed. I hope that the rest of you had productive IHSWs, though, and am about to go see some of the other people who have already posted! I'll be back with a more normal post very soon, but until then, good night!

Sprite Patterns of Pokemon Girls That Are of Some Relation to Koga

2012-01-19T15:03:00.000-06:00

Hello! It's been a long time since I last posted here, since I didn't feel my best last week, but today, I'm hoping to get back to blogging normally! I have two new patterns and some totally self-serving photos of my own work for today, and am hoping to make yet more patterns and do a dedicated features post pretty soon, too, which doesn't seem like such a bad plan as far as getting back to blogging goes.

Before I go any further, I also want to say in response to an anonymous comment, which I'm pretty sure is from the person that I sort of labeled as Pokemon Trainer in my head, Pokemon Mondays have stopped here lately. I really like making Pokemon patterns, since they're fun to work on and I enjoy stitching them, but making them every Monday ended up not being much fun at all, since I'd get a bit stressed out on Sundays about making patterns for it that were good enough to post and of interesting subjects. Since this made me kind of hate Pokemon Mondays, I decided to scale back and just post Pokemon patterns when I made them or when people requested them. Even though this will cut the number of Pokemon patterns here by a bit, I think that, as a whole, what does get posted will be spiffier, so I hope that it works out.

With that said, today's post does feature two new Pokemon-themed sprite patterns, one of which was requested by NinjaWarriorTenten! Somewhat appropriately, she asked after a sprite pattern of Janine, Koga's daughter who runs the Fuchsia City Gym in Pokemon Gold/Silver. It was a fun pattern to make, especially trying to get her scarf to look neat, but when I first read the request, I imagined Aya from the TV show, who was Koga's sister that ran around in a hot pink dress and tried to kill the main characters with traps and stuff. The reasonable thing to do probably would have been to just forget about that and focus on the pattern of Janine, but instead, as a part of my plan to make all of the minor characters from the Pokemon anime, I ended up doing patterns of both of them. I hope that you enjoy stitching these brightly colored ninja girls!

With those posted, I guess I'll type about my stitching rubbish for a while, though it's not very exciting. My giant cross stitch project, of Noel from BlazBlu, sort of got ignored while I wasn't feeling great, though I have gotten a little more done on her. It's not as much as I probably should have stitched, but either way, here is today's WIP photo! I'm hoping to get quite a bit more done over the next few days, since it's one of Joyzse's International Hermit and Stitch Weekends.

What I have worked a lot on lately, though, are my dinky sprite patterns, with my Robotech set of them finally complete! I still need to post the patterns for Claudia and Roy, if any of you guys are interested in stitching these, too, but here's with the complete set looks like, before being cut out as standees.

With this done, I've started in on a new sheet of plastic canvas for these, dedicating the whole thing to characters from fighting games. I have three sprites out of eighteen that'll fit stitched so far, so I have quite a bit more to go, but so far, it's fun! I'm making a ton of new patterns for it, too, several of which will probably never be posted, unless you guys are also excited about the prospect of stitching a miniature version of Ryoko from World Heroes. If there are any fighting game characters that you'd like to see as sprite patterns, though, let me know and I'll try my best to make them! If I'm going to be making the patterns anyway, I might as well see if there are any requests while I'm at it, right?

I think that I'm done posting here for now, but I hope to be back soon with more patterns, since I have a list of requests to get through and am always taking more alongside all of the stuff that I make otherwise, and some extremely spiffy features on work from readers! Until then, though, I hope that all of you are having nice Thursdays and good luck with your own stitching!

A Brief Post For a Semi-New Black Butler Pattern

2012-01-07T16:53:00.000-06:00

Hello! Today, most of the stuff that I'm doing on the computer is taking a lot more effort than usual, since I keep doing things incorrectly and wondering why this computer doesn't like that very well, so my post for this afternoon is not going to be very long. Last night, however, Topcho (the writer at bla. bla? bla!) requested a cross stitch pattern of Ciel from Black Butler/Kuroshitsuji that I'd actually made last May, so it got to jump over the rest of the request queue and get posted today. It was actually a little strange, since I hadn't even thought about Black Butler for months until finding the paper I'd drawn the pattern on earlier this week, with Topcho asking about it right when it popped up again. I guess that it was more of a case of good timing than anything else, though, so here is today's pattern, with Ciel going undercover at a ball in his lovely pink party dress and designed to emulate the style of some of the motifs that I've seen in late 19th century DMC cross stitch pattern books! The preview image on this chart is from a version of it that I stitched last year, on 10-count plastic canvas with craft thread, so if you want to stitch him on white fabric, some more backstitching might prove desirable.

Now that I have that posted, I'm going to close out today's post with my latest WIP photo of Noel, as it looked right before I got online today. I'm not quite done with her for today, but I stitched more than my goal for yesterday, so it's not too bad of a jump in progress. Plus, now all of the boundaries of the page I'm working on are set, which is nice. It shouldn't be too long before I have this page done!

With that, I'm done for today, but after I've finished at least another request pattern and asked some people about work to feature, I'll be back with another post! Until then, have a nice day and all of that, and good luck with your cross stitch projects, too!

Another Clannad Cross Stitch Pattern, A Finished Lucky Star Stitching, and My Slowly Progressing WIP

2012-01-05T23:10:00.000-06:00

Hello! On my last post here, with all of the features, I stated that in a couple of days, I'd be back here and posting again with a new pattern. Because of that, I started work on one this afternoon, featuring Sunohara from Clannad, since he was requested before the advent of Sprite Patterns December and had been left waiting for a long time. It had been quite a while since I'd made a portrait pattern, though, so I was going really slowly and didn't at all think that I'd get done in time. After a couple of hours, though, I had what I think is a nice pattern of Sunohara done and ready to post! I probably should have done this blog post then, but since I felt like getting off of the computer and doing other things at that point, that's what ended up happening.

This pattern is a little different from portrait patterns that I've done in the past, regardless of the character they depict, since the outline for most of it isn't all that dark. For Christmas, my dad got me the artbook for The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross, by Arina Tanemura (which I haven't read and now would like to), and one of the things that I really thought was cool about the art in it was that none of the outlines were black. It took me a bit to think of a good reason as to why that looked nice, but I decided that, since all of the drawings were filled with ruffles and flowing hair and giant stereotypical manga eyes, the lighter outlines allowed for more detail without the drawings starting to look dark and messy. Since detail clutter seemed to be a big problem working on the Clannad portrait patterns in the past, I thought it might be helpful to give that a try on this pattern, which I think worked out for the best. It might be a bit of a pain to switch outline colors according to the object, but it makes it look less intense and more like the source material, which is always nice for cross stitching fanart. I hope that you guys like how it looks, too!

Now that I have today's pattern posted, I have a spiffy new piece of stitching to show off from avid cross stitcher Kamryn! Even though a lot of this blog's Lucky Star portrait patterns have been stitched in the past, with Konata being the most popular choice, Kamryn is the first person that I know of to stitch Miyuki's school uniform portrait, and it looks excellent. Her stitching is, as always, extremely neat and orderly, and, if I understand properly, she stitched Miyuki really quickly, too. Here is a photo to commemorate her new stitching accomplishment!

That's my last bit of new content for today, but before I go, I want to post another WIP photo of my cross stitch of Noel from BlazBlue! I don't feel like I added all that much since the last time I posted a photo of it, but the fact that I started working on the black floss makes it look a lot bigger than it was before. Hopefully, it'll help when I get some of the new outlines filled in, too.

Anyway, I am now done blogging for tonight, but I'm yet again hoping to post some more new patterns in the next couple of days! There are a lot of sprite pattern requests that I'd like to work on, including some more Naruto ones and Janine from Pokemon Gold/Silver, and working on new portrait patterns is always fun, too. If there are any characters you'd like to see done in either style, let me know and I'll do my best to make something nice in regards to your request. Until then, have a nice Friday and good luck with your stitching!

A Pile of Lovely Work From Readers and a Gratuitous WIP Photo

2012-01-03T23:10:00.000-06:00

Hello, everyone! I don't have any new patterns for tonight, though I plan to have something within the next couple of days, but I wanted to get 2012 started on here with a nifty feature of some finished versions of patterns from here! I have work to show you guys from four different and spiffy stitchers, all of whom have their own blogs that I'll link you to when the time comes, but, to save myself paragraphs and paragraphs of text about how nice everything is, I'll just say now that I think all of the stitching I'm about to write about came out looking excellent! All of the stitching is extremely tidy, with cute finishes and borders and trim added all over the place. With all of that said, I'll start in on the images now!

The first piece up for tonight, chosen as such because her blog is first in my list of tabs, is by Topcho at the very entertaining blog bla. bla? bla!. Her set of newly cross stitched sprites, shown above, includes Kyoya and the Hitachin twins from Ouran Host Club bookending Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh. Her post about these is a lot of fun to read, if you visit her blog, and I also have to congratulate her on finishing stitching each member of the Ouran Host Club (or, the whole pattern set except for Renge)!

Tonight's next photo comes courtesy of Tiki, from the blog Tiki Stitches, who stitched this lovely version of the Monkees sprites that got posted here a few months ago. Her finished set looks really cute, and on her blog, where you can also see a full-sized version of this image and another finish in the form of her stitched sprite of Leonard from The Big Bang Theory, she says that she's hoping to get her daughter to backstitch "Hey, hey, we're the Monkees!" on the bottom of the piece. It would be a very nice touch, so I wish her luck in working it out!

This photo is of a stitching by Reaper, of the blog The Stitching Reaper, and it features a stitched version of one of the Christmas sprites that I posted last December as the decoration in a coaster that she made as a gift. When I originally posted this pattern, it was in weird and poorly chosen colors that I currently question, so I hadn't thought that anyone would ever stitch her. However, Reaper's color choices look excellent, with blonde hair and a variegated red floss that worked quite well for her Santa suit! I also have to say, having made a coaster for my mom with what looks like the same base coaster, that they last a pretty long time, meaning that the gift should be long lasting, too.

The last photo of the night comes from the brand new and snappily named blog Bouncing Bellies and Flashing Fingers, kept by Tazzy. The finished sprites shown above, featuring her renditions of this blog's patterns of characters from Saiyuki, Black Butler, and Final Fantasy VII all look great, especially as bookmarks, but the amount of photos of these she had in her last post was unbelievable! Over on her blog, besides this, she also has photos of finished versions of a couple more Final Fantasy VII characters, including a nicely modified version of Sephiroth's sprite, a full photo of what these bookmarks look like in their complete form, and some cute chocobos from a pattern at Anime Stitching.

With that, I'm done with featuring work for today, though I do want to post another WIP photo of my Blazblue sprite before I go! The blue blob that currently makes up Noel is getting bigger, but I'm really looking forward to when the image starts to make sense. Hopefully, though, that won't be all that long from now!

Thank you for reading today's post! It's always really fun to write feature posts like this, and if you've stitched any of the patterns previously posted here and want to be included, just let me know! I'm hoping to work on some patterns and post again very soon, so until then, I hope your new year has started well!

Sprite Patterns December Day 31: The Month Ends With Two More Naruto Patterns

2011-12-31T15:23:00.000-06:00

Hello! Today is the final day of Sprite Patterns December here at Dork Stitch, so, along with all of the other blogs I've been reading this afternoon, I want to wish everyone reading a happy new year! Now that all of those holiday wishes are over with, it's time to get on with the standard stuff for today's blog post, which includes two new Naruto cross stitch patterns. I just used characters from the request list today, so there are really no surprises, but today's victimized characters are Gaara and Rock Lee! I think that both of them worked out well, though Rock Lee in particular is fairly backstitch heavy. I couldn't very well make him without the eyebrows, though, so it seemed like a decent tradeoff. Gaara's backstitch eyeliner is pretty cool, too, especially since that's not a design feature that I get to use all that often. If you'd like to see it for yourself, here are today's spiffy new patterns!

Now that those are posted, it's time to move on to some reader work, courtesy of Eyani Ryou of the cross stitching blog Stitchy Stitches. Earlier in the month, she'd asked after the Yu-Gi-Oh patterns that I ended up posting a few days later, and though she's been done with them for a while, she stitched Yugi and Kaiba for her card playing brother's Christmas card! Both of them look really cool, and, seeing as they got to be stitched on hand-dyed evenweave, they're also very classy. If you'd like to see a full sized version of Eyani's Yu-Gi-Oh stitching, along with photos of all of her other fancy and impressive cross stitched images, visit her blog, which I linked to above. For now, however, here is a thumbnail image of her spiffy versions of Yugi and Kaiba!

Before I quit blogging for today, I have another WIP image of my cross stitch of Noel from Blazblue, though it isn't too different from yesterday's. I thought that it might work out nicely to post a photo of how far I am on the project every time that I post here, which should go pretty well, considering that I won't be posting on a daily basis again for a while. For now, however, here is how my blob of blue cross stitches is shaping up!

With all of that posted, I'm done with this blog for today, and for the year, too! I'll be back in a couple of days with some sort of nifty new pattern, but until then, enjoy the start of 2012 and all of the crafts that you're working on in the final hours of 2011!

Sprite Patterns December Day 30: 3 New Robotech Cross Stitch Patterns and Some Other Stuff

2011-12-30T15:01:00.000-06:00

Hello! For today's post here at Dork Stitch, I decided to take a break from the current set of Naruto patterns, which I should have one or two more of tomorrow, and post a few more sprites in my set of Robotech patterns. I'd like to eventually have the entire cast of the Macross storyline charted and stitched for my set of cross stitch standees, so today's three patterns, featuring Max, Miriya, and the suspiciously 70s looking Lynn Kyle, the last of which I made because I was going to have to eventually if I wanted to finish the entire cast, aren't the end of the set, though I'm not sure how many more of these I'll actually post. It isn't exactly the most in-demand set of patterns I've ever worked on, but I think they're fun to make, so I hope that some of you guys like these, too!

My next order of business for today's post is to write about a very cool piece of reader work from the lovely Tiki of the cross stitching blog Tiki Stitches! She's been working on the patterns of the Big Bang Theory cast that were posted here earlier in the month, and, as of her last posting, had Sheldon and Penny finished and looking very nice! For the sake of this blog, I have a thumbnail image of her work that, coincidentally, looks like it would make a fantastic bookmark, though I'm not sure Penny would love being stuck on it with Sheldon, but if you visit Tiki's blog, linked above there's both of them in a bigger image to behold, a WIP of Leonard, and tons of detailed and pretty stitching that she's always posting about!

Since I just got done with all of the normal stuff to write about for today, I should probably quit, but instead, I have my first WIP photo of Noel, the sprite I was writing about yesterday, to post! I decided that if I add at least one length of floss to her every day, I'll make some sort of steady progress on the project, even if it is slow, so right now, the project is a blob of bright blue in the middle of a piece of fabric. It's a very lovely blue splotch, though, so here it is! Hopefully, by the time I post tomorrow, it'll be either slightly larger or more detailed.

I'm done posting here for today, but I'll be back tomorrow for the last day of Sprite Patterns December with a couple of new Naruto charts! That certainly won't be the end of my sprite patterns, though I'll be glad to get back to working on portrait patterns and stuff again, too, so I'll keep going with all of this rubbish into 2012. Until tomorrow, though, I hope you guys have a good evening and prepare for New Year's Eve with a minimum of stress!

Sprite Patterns December Day 29: More Naruto and Yapping About My Own Stitching

2011-12-29T16:33:00.001-06:00

Hello! Today I sat down to work on another group of patterns for the Naruto set, and though I originally intended to sit and work on ones that people had requested, it seemed to me that, before I got too far, I should probably make the three main characters. I am not sure if anyone wants to make them, and to be fair, it isn't like anyone requested characters like "the one guy in the sweater who pops up in the background of the fourth episode of the fifth story arc and says hi to that one chick," and before anyone points it out to me, I do realize that the person who I just described probably isn't actually a character. For the sake of this set of patterns, however, it seemed like it might be a nice idea to have the titular character and the rest of his team available for anyone that wants to stitch them. The patterns for Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura are the simplest in the set so far, since there's no backstitching on any of the sprites, but I think that they still look fairly detailed and are recognizable as the characters that they're supposed to be. Here are all three of them, for your cross stitching or perler beading pleasure. (Don't worry, I'll be back to requests in the next set of these.)

With those three patterns posted, I feel like I should have something else exciting to type about here, but instead, I'm going to post about stuff that I just finished and am working on, because that seems like the thing to do. The other day, I completed another one of Gatchacaz's Pokedex 3D AR markers, which can be found on her lovely stitching blog, but this one is much fancier than the last two were. I used a pattern from a needlepoint book for each stitch, to blow it up to four times the size of the previous ones, and stitched it in craft thread to guarantee that enough of the fabric would get covered for the 3DS to read it. Since the thread was a bit heavy, the fabric got a little warped, but luckily, the machine still recognized it, giving me an AR card for Oshawott! Here's the photo from the game (taken with a floss bobbin in frame, to give an idea of the size) and a scan of my finished stitching by itself in case you're curious, awkwardly edited together in Paint.NET.

Now that I have that done, I'm planning to start a rather large project tonight, which is the other thing I wanted to write about! As some of you may have seen in my IHSW photos, I really like cross stitching sprites from fighting games, but I wanted to try and make something that was really unnecessarily elaborate, since it seemed like it could be fun. After a bit of deliberation, I decided to work on a sprite of Noel Vermillion from Blazblue, which has a few over 30 colors and will measure 22 inches tall when complete. It's more ambitious than any of the ones I've made before, so I might post WIP photos on here in order to keep on track with it, but I think it'll be cool! Here's the sprite that I'm using for the pattern, as a frame of reference for what's going on when I post a photo of the stitched corner of her skirt in a few days.

Now that I've done all of that typing, I'm done for today, but will be back tomorrow with more patterns and more chatter, which should be fun! Have a nice evening and good luck stitching!

Sprite Patterns December Day 28: Two More Naruto Charts

2011-12-28T21:25:00.000-06:00

Hello, everyone! Tonight I'm watching a ton of sitcoms, so I'm not sure how coherent or well done today's post is going to end up being, but I do have two more Naruto cross stitch patterns to post. Working on this set has been fun so far, since I've got a list of requests (that's still open for people to add to, if there are any characters that you'd like to see) that I can work through and feel like I'm actually making progress on something. Plus, everyone has neat outfits and I get to add a lot of backstitching, which is also sort of spiffy, since it makes things look fancy and needlessly elaborate.

Anyway, before I got to work on the patterns for tonight, I had a list of seven requested characters, which seemed like quite a few to pick between. Because of that, I decided to be a wuss about the whole thing and just finish up Kamryn and NinjaWarriorTenten's requests from the other day with patterns of Shikamaru and Tenten. Both of them were nice to work on, though I have to admit that it was the most fun to see how poofy and round I could make Tenten's hair look.Either way, though, here are the two new patterns for today!

I was going to post a little more tonight, but my computer's functionality is starting to give out on me, with hour glasses popping up when I try to draw pixels and freezing browser windows, so I think that it's time to go for now. I'm going to post again tomorrow, though, and hopefully get through a few more of the Naruto requests! Have a nice Wednesday night and good luck with your stitching projects!

Sprite Patterns December Day 27: Tiny Naruto Cross Stitch Patterns, All of Supporting Cast Members

2011-12-27T15:42:00.000-06:00

Hello! I don't have much fancy to post or write about today, other than the patterns that I've just finished, but I'm pretty sure that it'll be enough! Over the past couple of hours, I was able to start on this blog's new set of Naruto sprite patterns, featuring three of the characters that you guys requested! At first, I thought that not watching the show nearly as often as someone who really likes it does would be a major handicap in designing these patterns, but, luckily enough, one of my brothers very much enjoys Naruto, so I was able to use him as a consultant. Most of my questions to him were simple, like seeing if he could tell who the patterns were of, but I also got quite a bit of useful information about Itachi's headband from him, which I don't think I would have ever thought about on my own. Other than that, I think the biggest thing to say about these patterns is that they're rather heavy on backstitching, since Naruto has a lot more detail in terms of clothing than I'd realized before working on these. I think that they'll still look nice without that, if you prefer to do perler beads, but for cross stitching, they're a little fancier than the standard sprite patterns. Instead of posting another paragraph or two about these patterns, though, here are the first three cross stitch patterns in the Naruto set, featuring Itachi, Iruka, and Neji! If you had other requests, don't worry, since I plan to post more tomorrow, and if there are any other characters you'd like to see, let me know and I'll try my best to make a nice pattern of them!

Now that those patterns are posted, I think that I'm done for today, though I'll be back tomorrow with more tiny patterns of anime and video game characters and possibly some other nifty things to write about. There are only a few days left in sprite patterns December, so I'm hoping my computer doesn't explode or anything before the end of it!

Sprite Patterns December Day 26: A Very Brief Pokemon Monday and a Photo of a Spiffy Finish

2011-12-26T16:48:00.000-06:00

Hello! I feel a little out of steam in regards to today's blog post, which is probably because I was dumb enough to stay up until 1:30 last night, playing King of Fighters XIII, so I only have one sprite pattern for today. Like I said last night, though, I plan to start a set of Naruto sprite patterns, and since I got tons of requests for characters, it should be fun to work on! I won't be able to do all of them on the first day, and in the interest of getting a good sized set done, I'll probably end up working on it past December. All of that is a bit immaterial today, though, since this is a Pokemon Monday! I've been doing a lot of stuff from the older anime episodes this month, since that tends to be what I like best, but today, I wanted to do something related to the newer games. Because of that, I sat around and looked at all of the characters, trying to figure out which one to make, but ended up picking Elesa, since she was brightly colored and had those weird Chobits/Vocaloid ear things that seemed like they'd make her easily recognizable. I'm not sure how successful that was, though it's certainly good enough for my stitching purposes, but here is Elesa's sprite pattern, so you can decide for yourself!

Now that I've gotten that posted, it's time to write about some extremely cute keychains that were stitched by Kamryn, who some of you may remember from all of the Clannad patterns she's made! Earlier in the month, I did two sprite patterns of characters from Nichijou at her request, and she stitched them quickly and as niftily as ever. Both Mio and Professor look really nice in keychain form, and I'm impressed by just how close she cut the plastic to her actual stitching! If I tried that, I'd end up mildly depressed and holding a cross stitch of some character from an SNK fighter with her head dangling by a thread. I've also been told that these were backed by felt, which is cool, too. Anyway, here is the photo of Kamryn's work!

I think that I'm done with all of this rubbish for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with more sprite patterns and more massive blocks of text! There's only a few days of sprite patterns December left, so I'm hoping they keep going well!

Sprite Patterns December Day 25: A Lovely Christmas Pattern Dump

2011-12-25T23:43:00.000-06:00

Hello! I'm not going to post much text tonight, since I'm running out of time before midnight and am a bit sleepy from it being Christmas and all, but I do have four new sprite patterns for you guys, all from different anime and games! Before I post them, however, I just want to say that though tomorrow is a Pokemon Monday, I got a request from NinjaWarriorTenten for some Naruto patterns and will be starting that set on Tuesday! Neji and Tenten have already been asked for, and I'll definitely be doing the three main characters, but if you have any favorite characters you'd like to see as cross stitch sprite patterns, let me know!

With that said, I'm going to go ahead and post the four charts for tonight, which feature Fuu from Samurai Champloo, Flonne from Disgaea, Lucia from Pangya, and Whip from the King of Fighters games. I've made Flonne and Lucia already, so I know that those two patterns stitch up nicely, and I can't imagine that Fuu and Whip would be mysteriously disastrous. I hope that you guys like these patterns!

I should probably just leave now and go about my evening, but before I do, I have to show all of you something really spiffy that can be done with the help of a 3DS and the lovely blogger Gatchacaz! Over the past few months, she's posted some cross stitch patterns of the AR markers for Pokedex 3D, which can be found on her blog that I just linked to, so when my family got a 3DS for Christmas, one of the first things that I did was download Pokedex 3D and set to stitching them! One of them was for a Pokemon that wasn't in our Pokedex yet, so it didn't show up properly, but I did get a really cool photo of a Snivy with it, which I will now proceed to post! It's very nifty when technology and crafts combine to create fun time wasters, so I plan to stitch many more of these! (This was stitched on 14-count ivory Aida cloth with dark colors of generic embroidery floss.)

After that, I think that it's probably time for me to go, but I hope that all of you had an excellent day and are looking forward to the last week of 2011! Merry last-twenty-minutes-of-Christmas!

Sprite Patterns December Day 24: More Sailor Moon and Ghost in the Shell

2011-12-24T17:42:00.000-06:00

Hello! Last year on Christmas Eve and Christmas, I messed up a bit by trying to write my Christmas post on Christmas Eve and ended up accidentally posting twice in one day and, because of that, missing a day of Sprite Patterns December! This year, in order to avoid that, I'm just going to do a very brief post on both days. It's probably a bit of a ripoff, since the patterns won't really be parts of sets and I'm waiting until Monday to post photos of finished work again. Hopefully, though, these patterns will strike someone as spiffy, which is why I'm posting them in the first place!

Today's patterns are both ones that I made this summer, with one of them featuring the human form of Luna, from Sailor Moon, from the movie about the moon goddess and all of that, and the other featuring Major Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. The characters have very little in common, aside from their hair color, but I wanted to find one really frilly character and then a no-nonsense one, which I think worked out well. I think that they'll both be fun to stitch, though, so here are the patterns!

With those posted, I'm leaving this blog for now, but I'll be back with a couple more sprite patterns tomorrow, though I couldn't at all say who or what they'll feature. Merry Christmas, and have a very nice holiday evening!

Sprite Patterns December Day 23: Chrono Cross Patterns, Set 3

2011-12-23T15:33:00.000-06:00

Hello! Today I've been typing words with the letters in the wrong order and forgetting to switch from Pattern Maker to Word Pad when I want to transcribe the keys for my patterns, so I think that, for today, I am going to save everyone a lot of trouble and keep this post short. I have, however, done three new Chrono Cross sprite patterns, after yesterday's relative success, so I hope they prove to be sort of cool! I'm already getting a bit stuck as to what order I should post them in, but today, it seemed logical to start on the two branches you can pick when the game asks you if you'd like to save Kid after she gets poison-knifed in the guts or not. Today's cross stitch patterns are of the party members you get if you say that you will try to help her, so you guys have to deal with Razzly, Mel, and Korcha. I thought that Korcha would end up looking really rubbish when I started, and while it's not my favorite pattern in the set so far, I think that I at least avoided that. I think that Mel ended up looking really cute, though, and am considering running off to stitch her when I'm done posting here. If you'd like to judge for yourselves, however, here are today's patterns!

With the patterns posted and ready to stitch, I now have some perler bead work to show off from reader and crafter OtakuLuka, who can be found at her homepage on Deviant Art! If you remember my feature about her from earlier in the month, you'll recall that she made some lovely perler bead versions of several of the sprite patterns from this blog, with Death Note and Ouran Host Club being her subjects of choice. Last week, however, she continued her set of Ouran Host Club perlers with lovely renditions of Tamaki and Renge! For this blog, I have some small photos of her work, but if you'd like to see some larger photos and her other spiffy perler pieces, visit her homepage that I linked to above!

I'm out of stuff to write about for now, so I guess that means that today's blog post is over! I'm not sure what I'll be writing about tomorrow, but I will be posting something or other then, which I look forward to. Until then, have a nice Friday!

Sprite Patterns December Day 22: Five New Chrono Cross Patterns

2011-12-22T15:53:00.000-06:00

Hello! Today, I have a lot of new sprite style cross stitch patterns to post, but since all of them are of party members from Chrono Cross, continuing a set that I started last month, I'm not actually sure if any of you care. After the patterns, however, I have a photo of myself ripping a Christmas present out of a dinosaur statue's mouth, so if you're interested in that piece of photography, taken with a cell phone by my sister, feel free to skip over all of the Chrono Cross stuff and read about that nonsense. For now, however, it's time to deal with the patterns!

The last time that I posted Chrono Cross cross stitch patterns, I had ones of Serge, Kid, Harle, and Lynx, which seemed like a nice place to start, but, from there, I decided that it might be best to try and post the party members in a semi-chronological order. That means that, for today, I have Leena, Poshul, Guile, Pierre, and Nikki, since all of them show up pretty early in the game. All five of the sprites were pretty fun to make, though Pierre did prove to be quite a bit of trouble, and I was thrilled that I got the Poshul pattern to come out looking like anything. I've done quite a few of the monster-type characters already, since I was worried they'd be more difficult than the rest, but for some reason, I had it in my head that making one of Poshul would be nearly impossible. I might have made it look a little more Pokemon-esque than necessary, but for me, that's hardly a problem, and I don't imagine it would be for anyone else reading this, either.

As far as actually stitching these goes, all five of these charts have a few more colors than most of my sprite patterns, but I think that's part of why they're cool. The character designs in Chrono Cross are really detailed and ornate, and even if I do lose some of the details in making them such a small size, it's still fun to find out what I can and can't get to work, and, at least so far, I haven't totally screwed one of them up. I've stitched the one of Leena, too, and the higher color count didn't make it any more difficult or time consuming to stitch. With that in mind, here are today's Chrono Cross craft makin' patterns, for your stitching or beading pleasure!

Now that today's patterns are posted, here is, as I promised earlier, a photograph of me fighting a plastic dinosaur for a Christmas present. I am not sure why there is a statue of a dinosaur in the middle of the mall, though I think it used to be in a mini golf course that closed a couple of years ago. However, I can't argue with the fact that they threw a Santa hat onto it and filled its mouth with wrapped gifts, since it makes the whole thing perfect for bizarre photo opportunities. It seems a little frivolous to post this, but since it just seems wasteful to get someone to take a photo of you fighting a dinosaur and then not do anything with it, here it is!

With that out of the way, I think that I'm done blogging for now, though I'll be back for more posting tomorrow with some sort of cross stitch pattern to match the rest from the month. Until then, I hope that you're doing well both in terms of the holidays and whatever crafts you've been working on lately!

Sprite Patterns December Day 21: Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure

2011-12-21T14:16:00.000-06:00

Hello! I realize that today, by posting three sprite style cross stitch patterns of characters from Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure, a late 90s giant robot/romantic comedy anime I'm getting a little bit too obscure, but I'm sort of curious to see if it's a show that anyone else remembers. It was one of the first series that I watched on DVD rather than television, when I was in 8th grade, and I always thought that it was really funny and entertaining. When I got to college anime clubs, though, no one else that I met had seen it! Since it had ended up being on Tech TV at some point, I thought that someone would have it taped off of TV with commercials (like my old tape of episodes of Lupin III from Adult Swim), but not even that was the case. In the end, I got to show the first volume of it to anime club my senior year, where it was at least met with a much better response than the week that one of the other members showed the Highlander anime. A couple of other people even borrowed my DVDs and ran through the series that way. Now that I have a bigger area to ask about it, though, I thought that I would ask if any of you guys had seen Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure, whether you've seen the whole thing multiple times like I have or shut it off halfway through the first episode. Either way, you're stuck with cross stitch patterns of three of the girls from it, with both of the Mitsukis and D being my choices, so here they are!

After all of that nonsense, I think that I'm done for today, but I will be back at some point tomorrow with new sprite patterns of characters from something that I imagine you guys care about a bit more than this! If you have any requests, let me know and I'll see what I can do, and if you finish stitching any of the patterns from this blog, I'd love to see and write about your finished work!

Sprite Patterns December Day 20: Cross Stitch Patterns of Robotech Characters

2011-12-20T14:12:00.000-06:00

Hello! I'm not sure how long it's really been since I've done a blog post in the afternoon, but it seems like it's been quite a few days. I can't really think of any reason why posting now would be better than at night, other than the fact that I feel more awake and am not hurrying to get finished before midnight. It does seem like this is quite a bit nicer, though, so maybe I should have actually done a big and nifty set of patterns for today.

As it is, I'm pretty happy with today's three new sprite patterns, though I'm not sure that anyone else will care! Over the weekend, I finished watching the first part of Robotech, the Macross episodes, and though I could go on and on typing meaningless things about the show, easily filling pages worth of blog text, I decided that I wanted to make a set of cross stitch standees to match the characters, which meant that I needed to make some patterns. I'd already made a couple of patterns of the pilots, and had even stitched one of them, which is a better start than I usually have, so I worked on a few more of them until Paint.NET decided to get uncooperative and start freezing my computer. After all of that, I ended up with three completed patterns to post here today, featuring Rick, Lisa, and Minmei. (I do realize that some of these characters had different names in Japan, but as with Sailor Moon, I watched the show dubbed, so their English names are getting used whether you like it or not.) I plan to get all of these stitched pretty soon, which makes the fact that I've already gotten one done useful, so I hope that some of you guys like them, too!

Since I just went and posted all of that nonsense, I'm done for today, though, as it has been for the last several posts, I'll be back tomorrow with more blog posting and more nifty sprite patterns! I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to make for tomorrow, unless I get an urgent request, which is always fun, too, so I'm hoping it works out well. Until then, though, have a nice day!

Sprite Patterns December Day 19: Minor Pokemon Characters, Yet Again

2011-12-19T23:10:00.000-06:00

Hello! I am not sure why, but tonight, I am having a lot of trouble paying attention to the same thing for more than three minutes at a time, so this might not be the longest post I've ever written. Today is another day of Sprite Patterns December, though, and, since it's Monday, I have two new Pokemon cross stitch patterns for you guys! Making the different Pokemon trainer sprites every week is a lot of fun, especially because I'm starting to get into some really odd characters, due to the amount of them I've made already. For tonight, I have a pattern of Lorelei, from the Elite Four in Red, Blue, and Yellow, and Delia, who is Ash's mother. Both of these characters seemed like reasonable choices to me, and I think that the cross stitch patterns ended up looking more than nice enough for posting. I'm coming dangerously close to another round of distractions, though, so I am just going to post the two of them before I type any more!

Before I stop posting for tonight, I have some very nice reader work to write about, courtesy of Reaper at her blog, The Stitching Reaper! The other day, she posted a photo of three new sprite patterns that she'd stitched, featuring Sailor Mini Moon, Tuxedo Mask, and Sailor Pluto. All of them look as colorful and nicely stitched as all of her stitching does, but the important thing about these three is that,with them, she finished stitching all of the Sailor Scouts! There's a photo of the full set over on her blog, which I linked to above, and she says that she's going to cut them out and use them as tree ornaments, which sounds amazing! If you'd like to see Reaper's full set of scouts and extend your congratulations, please stop by her blog. For now, however, enjoy this picture of her final three Sailor Scouts!

With that, my posting for today is done, but I'll be back tomorrow with some new patterns that I'm hoping end up looking nice. I don't know what they'll be yet, but I do know that I'd prefer they not suck. Until then, I hope that you guys had good Mondays and got your week off to a nice start!

Sprite Patterns December Day 18: Two Christmas Patterns and IHSW

2011-12-18T23:06:00.000-06:00

Hello! Since International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, as hosted by Joysze of Random Ramblings, is going to end in about an hour in my time zone, I'm going to write about the non-cross stitching that I did in the second half of this post, which should be very exciting and productive for everyone involved. For the start of today's blogging, though, I have two sprite patterns of Christmas type girls, since it's sort of fun to design holiday patterns every year. They're not fan art, which makes them spiffy and different to work on, and I get to work with all sorts of frilliness and red and green, which is also cool. Plus, since today is exactly a week before Christmas, it seemed like today would be a good day to post them! If you'd like to see last year's Christmas patterns, they can be found right here, but for now, here are two brand new patterns in the set!

Now that those sprite patterns are posted, I can move onto talking about the crafts that I did this weekend that were totally unrelated to cross stitching. I feel like this is, in some fundamental way, cheating the whole idea of International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, but since I did technically use a needle and thread to do this, I guess that it was stitching. Rather than cross stitch, however, I spent the weekend making bracelets to give away as gifts at a holiday event at the Pokemon League I run tomorrow night. If you want more information about what I actually did to make these, I wrote about it a bit in my post for last night, and if you want to make your own, there are tons of helpful and easy to follow tutorials, along with all of the patterns I used, at www.kandipatterns.com. Basically, though, what I did was use some elastic thread to (sort of) peyote stitch together pony beads and make a clunky, gaudy, and very cool piece of jewelry called a kandi cuff. They're really fun to make, and I think that they're neat to wear, too, so I'm hoping that some of the kids at Pokemon League like them, too. Since last night, I finished two more of these, featuring a Charmander's face (the orange one), and a Gengar's face (the purple one), bringing me up to a total of four. The first two are depicted in my last post, but in case you're curious, here's a photo of the two new bracelets!

I also folded 24 origami lucky stars and a very small crane, but didn't take photos of those, since they seemed to count even less than these did.

With all of that posted and written about, I'm done for tonight, though I'll be back with a new post tomorrow for both Sprite Patterns December and Pokemon Monday, which was fun for the last two weeks, and a couple of sets of nifty reader work to feature over the next couple of days! Until then, I look forward to reading everyone who actually followed the rules's IHSW posts and hope that everyone's weekends went well!

Sprite Patterns December Day 17: Two of RebelAngelRin's Requests and the Start of Hermit and Stitch Weekend

2011-12-17T20:25:00.000-06:00

Hello! It's yet another day of Sprite Patterns December at Dork Stitch, and I feel even more unfocused than usual tonight. I went to Wal-Mart with my family this afternoon and am blaming that for my current state of mind. However, I do have two new sprite patterns, both at the request of fellow cross stitcher RebelAngelRin, who can be found on Deviant Art, featuring Final Fantasy VIII's Rinoa with her dog, Angelo, and Mint from Tokyo Mew Mew! Admittedly, the new Rinoa pattern is just the pattern from before with Angelo added on, but I'm pretty happy with how it ended up, and plan to make her in her outfit from the dance soon, too, meaning there'll be three patterns of her in the end. The pattern of Mint was fun to make, too, and will probably lead to patterns of the other girls from Tokyo Mew Mew within the next week or so. Now that you know all of that, though, here are the two patterns for today!

Now that those two patterns are posted, I think that I'll spend a bit of time talking about the start of International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, as hosted by Joysze at Random Ramblings! I really like participating in IHSW, but this weekend, I'm not hermitting at all, and I'm not sure that I'll do any cross stitch, either. I am, however, doing a lot of multi-stitch, which is what you use to make a sort of bracelet called a kandi cuff! There's a lot of information and cool patterns for them available at http://kandipatterns.com, but for now, I'm making Pokemon themed ones as party favors for kids at Pokemon League on Monday. I don't need to make too many, since my mom is making some Pokeball hats, and we've got some Mario Kart folders to give away, too, but last night, I finished two of them.

I'm not disappointed with either of them, and am hoping to make a few more tonight, with a fresh and just organized box of pony beads right next to me and ready to be used in frivolous jewelry! Just for the purpose of comparison, I thought that I'd post a photo of the box of beads tonight and one after the considerable dent that I'm about to make in it, so here is the pre-bracelet-fest box of pony beads.

I feel like I've typed a lot here, including both the patterns and my grand plan to cheat at International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, so I'm done here for tonight! I'll be back with more patterns and more yappin' tomorrow, though, which I'm looking forward to working on. Until then, however, I hope that you guys are having good and relatively low-stress weekends!

Sprite Patterns December Day 16: Two Cross Stitch Patterns of Tekken Girls

2011-12-16T20:23:00.000-06:00

Hello! It's time for the sixteenth day of Sprite Patterns December here at Dork Stitch, even though this post might be a bit short because I'm watching Netflix. Before this, I was watching The Vampire Diaries, and now I'm watching Peep Show, because the two of those shows make such an excellent double feature. What's important for the purpose of this post, however, is that I have two new patterns to post and a lovely piece of finished work by a reader to show off, so here's the actual good part of the post!

Tonight, I've been on my laptop computer instead of the main PC, so I ended up deciding to try and make some new patterns based on fighting game characters. This involved about an hour of staring at my computer screen and thinking about fighting games in general without really considering the cross stitch pattern aspect of it, and then, after deciding that I wanted to make a couple of new Tekken patterns, considering the fact that my mom told me she'd seen the new Tekken anime for sale at Wal-Mart. Right now, it's been about two hours since I turned my computer on, and I'm about to post two patterns of Alisa and Unknown, from Tekken 6 on and Tekken Tag Tournament, respectively. They're pretty standard sprite patterns, chosen because both are characters I wanted to cross stitch, so I hope you guys like them, too!

Now that I've posted tonight's patterns, DawnMLC of Deviant Art and the blog Anime Stitching has made the pattern of Kyoko from Skip Beat! that was posted the other night! Her stitching looks really nice, and she made it really quickly, too, which is always spiffy, and quite productive, too! If you'd like to see Kyoko in her full glory, check her out right here at Dawn's Deviant Art page! For now, however, please enjoy this smaller version of the image!

Since both of my goals for tonight's post have now been reached, and Netflix viewing has turned from Peep Show to Parks and Recreation, I suppose that I'm done for now. I'll be back with more patterns tomorrow, though, and will be working on stuff for International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, too! Have a nice weekend and good luck with your craft projects!

Sprite Patterns December Day 15: Yugi and Kaiba

2011-12-15T23:20:00.000-06:00

Hello! Last night, when I mentioned wanting to have a set of needlessly elaborate sprite style cross stitch patterns ready for today, I'd been thinking about patterns from Yu Gi Oh, as a few of them were requested last weekend. Since today ended up being a little off, I only got two of these patterns done, which is at least one less than I'd been planning for. I think that both of them came out to be decent patterns, though, and look forward to stitching them myself, which isn't too bad at all!

The characters for today's entry in Sprite Patterns December, as the title may have led you to believe, are Yugi and Kaiba from Yu Gi Oh. I hadn't thought about it before I started working on these, but in the end, these ended up being almost as elaborate as the xxxHolic patterns from earlier in the month! Kaiba's coat provided a bit of trouble, since I decided that I wanted to make that black and white outfit with the coat that's perpetually blowing in the wind, even if he's standing around indoors or at a board meeting, but I think that paid off. The real challenge with these two patterns, however, ended up being Yugi's hair! I really should have seen it coming, but it took a really long time to move all of my pixels around and get his hair in exactly the right order. Regardless of that, though, I couldn't be happier with how it turned out, so I hope that you guys like it, too! Anyway, here are the sprite patterns of Yugi and Kaiba, ready to be stitched or beaded!

Now that Yugi and Kaiba are posted, I need to start thinking about what I'm going to post tomorrow night, which should be fun to work on! Sprite Patterns December is almost halfway over, but (I hope) there are tons of cool patterns still to be posted! Thank you for putting up with this for so long already, and have a nice Friday, too!

Sprite Patterns December Day 14: Two Patterns of Girls From Anime with Exclamation Points in the Titles

2011-12-14T22:29:00.000-06:00

Hello! Because of all of the school rubbish that I posted about yesterday, I was on the top of the high school's subbing list for today and got an actual job to do! I was very happy about that in terms of work, but it meant that I could not get the extremely elaborate pattern set that I'd been planning for today completed. I should have plenty of time to work on that tomorrow, though, and for today, I have two spiffy new patterns to post that you guys were going to have to put up with eventually anyway!

To be totally fair, I do not have a great deal to say about either of these cross stitch patterns. The first of them, Kyoko Mogami from Skip Beat! was a request, but I haven't seen the anime, despite the fact that it's just sitting there on Crunchyroll, so I can't comment at length. Her hair is really cute, though, so that has to count for something. The second of them is of Anri Sonohara from Durarara!!, which I made because I would like to make several of the characters from that show. Exciting, right? Before I get too wild with these pattern descriptions, though, here are the cross stitch charts themselves!

With these two patterns posted, it's time for me to get offline, and though I wish I could say that I had something very spiffy and productive to do, the truth is that I currently have a shrink wrapped copy of Kirby's Return to Dream Land sitting next to me and plan to do some good old fashioned video game playing. I'll be back tomorrow, though, for the 15th day of sprite patterns December, and hope that until then, all of you have a very good end to your Wednesdays and start to your Thursdays!

Sprite Patterns December Day 13: The Cast of Cowboy Bebop

2011-12-13T23:19:00.000-06:00

Hello! This morning, a little after I got up, I got a phone call asking how quickly I could be in to sub for a science class at the high school. I threw all of my stuff together, got to the school in about five minutes, and gathered all of the keys and attendance sheets that I needed to get through the day successfully. When I got down to the classroom, however, the regular teacher was just sitting at his desk. As it turned out, there had been a system error with substitute assignment, and no one had checked to see if he was really gone or not.

Anyway, today is day 13 of Sprite Patterns December here at Dork Stitch, and I just felt like I ought to tell that story. For today, however, I have the fruits of my post-briefly walking up and down a hallway labor to post, with six cross stitch patterns featuring the cast of Cowboy Bebop! I probably should have posted them this afternoon, but once I finished making them, I was really tired of being online, so I just decided to save it for tonight. These patterns were fun to make, though, and they should be fun to stitch, too! The only problem I ran into is that Jet requires a lot of detail stitching, like half cross stitches and mid-square backstitching, so he is not entirely suitable for perler beading or stitching onto plastic canvas, though I'm sure most of you could figure something out if you needed to make him in one of those mediums. Everyone else is relatively standard, though, so I hope that you enjoy these charts!

Now that I've gotten that set of patterns finished and posted, it's time to feature some reader work, coming to us tonight from perler bead melter extraordinaire Auron's Girl! She e-mailed me two lovely photos featuring eight bead sprites based on this blog's sprite patterns, and all of them look really excellent. I do wonder if, in the first photo underneath this paragraph, Sheldon would complain about being photographed with Auron and Yuna from Final Fantasy X, since he says in the episode where he and Leonard get robbed that they only have Final Fantasies I through IX (I was actually watching that episode of The Big Bang Theory tonight when I got Auron's Girl's e-mail, so it really amused me), but all three of them look great nonetheless. Her perlering of the Inner Senshi from Sailor Moon also looks excellent, with some of the best organization I've seen in a perler bead photo. Rather than just continue to write about these pieces, though, I suppose that I'll actually post the photos now!

With all of that stuff posted, I am finished here at Dork Stitch for tonight, but I'll be back tomorrow with some new spiffy sprite patterns! Until then, I hope that all of you are having nice weeks and doing well with your preparation for the holidays.

Sprite Patterns Monday 12.5

2011-12-12T14:55:00.000-06:00

Hello! The normal Pokemon Monday post, featuring two lovely new sprite patterns, can be found directly below this, but I'm back again for a very brief post. In order to explain why I am doing this, all I can do is say that if you like this blog on Facebook, at this helpful link, this post may become slightly less confusing. With that said, I hope that at least one of you reading this enjoys this sprite style cross stitch pattern of Horatio Caine. David Caruso has never looked so blocky and beady-eyed before, but I actually feel like it's sort of recognizable.

(Note: Neither myself nor anyone in my house watches CSI: Miami, so I can not vouch for this chart's accuracy, but this had to be done. Have a nice day!)

Sprite Patterns December Day 12: Two New Pokemon Trainer Sprites

2011-12-12T12:58:00.000-06:00

Hello! Today is another Pokemon Monday here at Dork Stitch, and since it coincides with Sprite Patterns December, today's post includes two new sprite style cross stitch patterns of Pokemon characters! Sure, the characters for today are Todd (not Snap, even if 4Kids did sneak in and redub his episodes) and Professor Oak, so it may not be the most exciting two characters in the world, but I think the patterns worked well and should be fun to stitch! Plus, it's always spiffy to have characters from the original Pokemon stuff, rather than more recent ones. Regardless of all that chatter, though, here are today's patterns, ready for you to stitch or bead!

With today's patterns posted, it's time to feature a bit of reader work, today from Caity of the brand new cross stitching blog Scrbblr! Her blog already has a lot of nifty stuff on it, including a how-to-stitch tutorial and original patterns, so I recommend checking it out. However, she also stitched this blog's sprite pattern of Sailor Venus onto a lovely bright purple iPhone case! Her stitching looks great on the non-traditional fabric, and the purple is a great match to Sailor Venus's yellows. If you'd like to see a full-sized image of Caity's work, go visit it on her blog, which is linked earlier in this paragraph. For now, though, please enjoy this thumbnail of her lovely and tech-friendly stitching!

I think that I'm done with today's post here at Dork Stitch, but will be back tomorrow with yet another day of this rubbish! I'm not yet quite sure what sort of patterns I'll be posting, but hopefully, they'll be fun for at least some of you reading!

Sprite Patterns December Day 11: Metropolis's Maria and Freder

2011-12-11T14:22:00.000-06:00

Hello! Last night I was up late watching movies on Netflix, so today, you guys have to deal with sort of a weird pattern. Tomorrow is a Pokemon Monday, though, so whatever damage I do today will be countered by the more standard subject of tomorrow's post!

Anyway, last night, I was watching Metropolis, the live action one rather than the anime one, which I also wouldn't mind making patterns from, with my sister and thought that it might be really cool to make some black and white sprite patterns for my collection of cross stitched standees. Even though they would look sort of out of place, they'd still be accurate to the source material, so it seemed like it could be interesting to have a pattern of that sort of thing to stitch. Because I got the idea while watching Metropolis, I decided that my test subjects for the project would be Maria and Freder, two of the characters from the movie. I think that, as patterns, at least, they ended up looking nice enough, though I still have to cross stitch them and see how that turns out, while my sister plans to perler bead them like they were on tinted film. If you'd like to give this project a shot, too, here is the pattern of the two of them!

With that pattern posted and ready to be used for some sort of craft project, I think that I've done enough for today, but I'll be posting again tomorrow and actually have quite a lot planned for next week, patterns-wise. Sprite Patterns December may be a third of the way done, but I haven't totally lost focus yet!

Sprite Patterns December Day 10: The End of The Current Sailor Moon Set

2011-12-10T16:58:00.000-06:00

Hello! It's time for another post here at Dork Stitch, to commemorate the tenth day of this year's Sprite Patterns December, and today's post will contain the last three cross stitch patterns in the current set of Sailor Moon charts! It was fun to make these, and there aren't really any of them that I dislike, but today's three patterns are probably my favorites in the set. Making the school uniforms that don't match the rest of them was sort of interesting, especially because Rei, with her gray outfit, had the best one of any of the Sailor Scouts. Even though she wasn't in school, I also enjoyed making the pattern for Sailor Pluto and think she came out particularly nicely. That might just be because I like the color scheme, but that's as good a reason as any to like one of these patterns. If you'd like to pick your favorite of the set, though, here are today's new patterns, featuring Rei, Lita, and Setsuna! Remember, if you want to stitch the Sailor Scout versions of these characters, the patterns for those can be found in the archives of this blog for last December!

With those three patterns posted and ready for whatever crafts you might have in store, I'm done blogging for today. I'll be back and posting again tomorrow, though, even though I'm not yet sure who the patterns will be depicting. Until then, though, I hope that you're all having nice weekends and doing well in terms of your crafting!

Sprite Patterns December Day 9: Trigun

2011-12-09T23:43:00.000-06:00

Hello! Tonight is another of those nights where I only have half an hour to get the sprite patterns post of the day done before midnight, but, since I don't really have that much to post tonight, I'm not too worried about it! I do want to say to Amanda that I got her comment and am hoping to have the cast of Cowboy Bebop, totaling seven patterns, if I get everything to work out properly, done sometime next week. Six of the included characters should be easy to guess, since I figure that if they're good enough for a trading figure set, they're good enough for one of my cross stitch patterns, but the seventh should be a bit more of a surprise. I'm looking forward to working on them, though, so it should be a lot of fun!

The set of sprite patterns that I'm posting tonight is one that I've wanted to make for quite a while, featuring the four main characters of Trigun! I think that I first thought about this over a year ago, but just never actually sat down to make it. Now that I have, though, I'm not disappointed by the results. A couple of the characters were quite difficult to make, and working on one of them even sort of made me want to pound my head into the wall, but the fact that, at this point, none of them look too indistinct is good enough for me. I plan to start working on stitching this set of patterns, or at least the one of Millie, rather soon, and I hope that some of you guys like them, too! Here are the cross stitch patterns (which work just as well for perler beads) of Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl, and Millie!

Since I'm sort of sleepy and am sort of out of things to post about, I think that I'm going to be done with blogging for tonight. I'll be back with some new sprite patterns tomorrow, though, so, until then, I hope you guys are enjoying your Friday nights and start the weekend well!

Sprite Patterns December Day 8: More School Uniform Wearing Sailor Scouts

2011-12-08T14:16:00.000-06:00

Hello! After last night's rushed post, which featured seven cross stitch patterns of characters from The Big Bang Theory, in case you missed it, it feels like there hasn't been enough time between that and today's post! For today, however, I can relax a little more, since I'm not trying to put together an entire blog entry in 10 minutes, which ought to be sort of nice. For today, as I'd previously promised, I have three more patterns of the cast of Sailor Moon in their school uniforms. Today's subjects are Amara, Michelle, and Hotaru, since their school uniforms match, which made it easy to type in the color key for each of the patterns. The next post of these will be of the characters who don't have matching outfits, so it's a short-lived luxury. I like how these three patterns came out, though, so I hope that those of you who are following the Sailor Moon sprite pattern sets like them, too!

Since today's new patterns are posted and ready to cross stitch (or bead, or whatever you choose), it's time to move on to some reader work, coming to us today from Boogirl2120 at Abby Universe! She decided to make the sprite pattern of Vocaloid Meiko that was posted here last Christmas, but, rather than cross stitching it, she made it into a crocheted patch! The result is really cute, and looks quite well made, too, and the blue and yellow that she used in lieu of Meiko's standard red and white is very nice as well! If you'd like to see a larger image of Meiko, as well as some of Boogirl2120's other crocheted patches, you should visit her blog, which I linked to earlier in this paragraph. For here, however, here is a small photo of her crocheted Vocaloid!

With that posted, I should probably just quit while I'm still ahead, but instead, I also have a photo of some of the sprite patterns I've made lately. All of them are cut out as standees and displayed like a class photo again, and though the untrimmed versions of a few of them were posted a couple of Hermit and Stitch Weekends ago, most of them are new to this blog. If you'd like the patterns for any of the ones that I haven't posted here yet, let me know and I'll get them up here in the next few days, but for now, please enjoy this slightly blurry photo, with a list of characters immediately following.

Front Row (left to right): Leena (Chrono Cross), Leonard (The Big Bang Theory, pattern in this post), Kula (The King of Fighters)
Second Row: Excel and Hyatt (Excel Saga)
Third Row: Spike (Cowboy Bebop), Renge (Ouran Host Club, pattern in this post), Jin (Tekken, pattern in this post)
Fourth Row: Etna and Flonne (both from Disgaea, Etna's pattern in this post)

I think that I'm out of things to post for today, but I'm going to be back with some new sprite patterns tomorrow night, since I'll be subbing during the day, and am hoping both to see more spiffy reader work and stitch some more of these sprites for my own shallow purposes! Until then, however, I hope that all of you are having nice Thursdays and doing well with your crafting!

Sprite Patterns December Day 7: Cross Stitch the Cast of The Big Bang Theory!

2011-12-07T23:59:00.000-06:00

Hello! I only have 10 minutes left before midnight, since today was sort of busy and I worked really hard on tonight's patterns, so it's time for some speed posting! Wish me luck!

Last night, I got a comment on my blog from Tiki, of Tiki Stitches, asking about patterns of the cast of The Big Bang Theory. I had talked about doing this before, and was sort of excited about trying it, but was going to save it for the end of the month, when I'd run out of requests and stockpiled charts and would just start posting odd things. Since it got mentioned, though, it seemed reasonable that for today's post, I ought to go for it, with seven new cross stitch patterns! I probably should have stopped with the patterns of the four guys, but I really wanted to make the girls, too, so that's why the set is so big. Every character's sprite outfit is based on a real one, from the sitcom, which means that these patterns are really bright and colorful, so they should be fun to stitch. I also used quite a bit of backstitching on these, mostly for glasses, though it did come in handy when making Howard's sideburns, but if you plan to use them for perler beads, they should look fine without those details. Since I'm down to just a few minutes, though, I'm going to stop talking and start posting! Here are the cross stitch patterns for Leonard, Sheldon, Raj, and Howard:

...and here are the patterns for Penny, Bernadette, and Amy!

Now that all of those patterns are posted, I hope that you guys like them and enjoy stitching them! I started these last night, so I've already got Leonard done, stitched on some perforated plastic canvas! The colors aren't quite matched to the key, but I think it still came out well.

Anyway, it is 11:58, so I have to wrap things up quickly! I'll be back tomorrow, though, with another day of Sprite Patterns December here at Dork Stitch!

Sprite Patterns December Day 6: Sailor Scouts in Their School Uniforms

2011-12-06T14:32:00.000-06:00

Hello! Today is the first day of sprite patterns December that I don't have any reader work to show, so, since I don't want to scan the sprites I'm working on stitching yet, today's post will be slightly shorter than the others have been so far. In order to make up for that, though, I do have four new patterns in a set featuring the cast of Sailor Moon in their everyday school uniforms! Since I've already finished all of the patterns for this set, I know it'll actually get finished, though I'm going to space them out over a few different posts and intersperse them with patterns of characters from different things. For today, though, I have patterns of Serena, Ami, Mina, and Rini, all chosen for this post because their uniforms match. (Since I watched the English of the show, I will be referring to the characters by their names from that version. It wasn't a problem last year, since I just called everyone "Sailor _____," but for now, you guys have to put up with their alternate names.) In the next post, I think that I'll post Hotaru, Amara (which I'm not even sure is spelled correctly, but hopefully, you get the idea), and Michelle, followed by the last three scouts in the final post of the set. For now, please enjoy today's cross stitch patterns!

Now that I have those patterns posted, I'm finished for today, but tomorrow, I'll be back with more new sprite patterns and even more pointless text! Until then, have a nice Tuesday and good luck with whatever weather that you have to deal with!

Sprite Patterns December Day 5: Two Pokemon Trainers

2011-12-05T14:58:00.000-06:00

Hello! I can't spend too long writing today's post because I have to go and pick up my brothers and sister from school very soon. Since today is both a day in Sprite Patterns December and a Pokemon Monday, however, it wasn't too hard to decide what sort of pattern to post! Today I have two new cross stitch patterns featuring brand new sprites of Leaf, from Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green and Roxanne, from Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire. There's no major reason why I chose these characters, and I don't really have too much to say about them specifically, other than that Leaf's hat was a massive problem to turn into pixels and that Roxanne ended up looking a little like a schoolgirl version of Phoenix Wright. They should be fun to stitch, though, so here are today's patterns for all sorts of crafting fun!

Now that today's patterns are posted, I have even more reader work to feature, once again by Kristine of Kristine's Random Stitches! I know that yesterday, I said a lot about being impressed by the set of Sailor Moon keychains that she stitched, but today, she posted photos of 19 different Final Fantasy keychains based on this blog's sprite patterns, alongside a 20th stitching of the tiny pattern of songstress Yuna from FFX-2. All of them look fantastic, once again felt backed and all ready to shove onto a set of keys, and the scope of the project is, once again, quite massive! If you'd like to read her descriptions and see some large photos of these keychains, please visit Kristine's blog. For now, though, here are some smaller images of her work!

I am now finished with today's post, but later, I'm hoping to work on more patterns so that I can continue to post nifty new things all through the month! Until tomorrow's post, I hope that all of you are doing well and having a generally nice Monday!

Sprite Pattern December Day 4: Nichijou Cross Stitch Patterns and A Reader's Sailor Moon Keychains

2011-12-04T15:31:00.000-06:00

Hello! I'm here to post another day of Sprite Patterns December, which today features two characters from the very cute Nichijou, as requested by Kamryn! Since I don't know too much about this anime, other than what I've been told and what I learned from Google, it's difficult for me to go on about this as long as I do about most of the things that I post. I really enjoyed making these patterns, though, so I hope that they're identifiable! Next to the xxxHolic patterns from yesterday, they look sort of small, but it was nearly as challenging to get them to look right. Both Mio and Professor, who are the characters for today, had hair tails over their ears, and while this looks nice in anime, it looked rather odd when done as normal pixels. Because of that, I ended up using some backstitching in their hair, just to get that detail well represented. If you want to use them for perler beads, though, I think that they would still look nice without that extra stitching.

Now that today's patterns are posted, I have another day's worth of reader stitching to show you from Kristine, who was recently featured for her nifty use of the Pokemon sprite patterns to make a cute guest towel and bookmark set! Since finishing that, she stitched every one of the Sailor Moon sprite patterns to make a fancy set of keychains, complete with rings and felt backing carefully selected to match each and every character. I have to recommend that you visit her blog, Kristine's Random Stitches, for the full effect of this project, both because she finished her post with a massive stitching of her own design that's really pretty and because, with the cats, I only made a pattern for Luna and she lists the floss colors for Diana and Artemis. For now, though, please enjoy these thumbnails of her hours upon hours worth of stitching!

This is only somewhat related to these photos, but in my stockpile of patterns, I have all of the Sailor Scouts in their school outfits, so if any of you want to see those patterns posted, let me know! It's sort of cool to have multiple versions of characters, which is why I made them, so if any of you want to stitch their non-magical outfits, I'd be glad to post them for you.

Well, I'm done with today's post, but I'm going to continue on with Sprite Patterns December tomorrow! Since it's Monday, I think that I'm going to try for some Pokemon patterns, but since I'm not sure which trainers they'll be of yet, there's still an element of surprise available. If you have any character requests for this month, let me know and I'll do my best to fill them, and if you do any sort of craft with the patterns featured here, I'd love to feature your work in one of these posts! Until then, I hope that you guys finish your weekends nicely and do well with all of your crafty endeavors!

Sprite Patterns December Day 3: Two Characters from xxxHolic

2011-12-03T15:54:00.000-06:00

Hello! I was a little worried that today's post for Sprite Patterns December here at Dork Stitch would be too close to yesterday's, since I posted so late, but it's been more than 12 hours since the last post, so I'm not doing too badly! For today's post, as was suggested by Queen Petra of Drama of the Queen, I have two new sprite patterns, featuring Yuko and Himawari from xxxHolic. Both of them are a bit larger than the standard sprite patterns, since I wanted them to look as much like the anime's character designs as possible, which involved making sure that they had longer arms and legs than usual. They're also a little more detailed than some of these patterns tend to be, too, since I think the tiny and detailed parts of the illustrations are what makes Clamp's stuff look really spiffy, with Yuko's dress and corresponding butterfly wings being full of tiny details that should be fun to stitch and Himawari's hair having proved a slight challenge to pixel. I was pretty happy with how both of these came out, though, and probably wouldn't have posted them otherwise, so I hope that you guys like them, too!

With those two patterns posted, it's time to move on to photos of finished work from a reader, with today's artist in question being the prolific perler beader OtakuLuka of Deviant Art! Her entire gallery is full of really nice perler work, with Pokemon, Vocaloid, My Little Pony, and even Tetris fairly represented, but she's made cool looking versions of some of this blog's Death Note and Ouran Host Club sprite patterns! The colors in all four of them are expertly chosen, with Ouran Host Club's Kaoru and Hikaru looking particularly nice in blue and orange, and her beading is exceptionally accurate, too! If you'd like to visit her entire gallery and wish her a happy birthday (which Deviant Art says is today), OtakuLuka and her gallery can be found at the link that I listed above! For now, though, I hope you enjoy these smaller photos of her perlers of L, Light, Honey, Kaoru, and Hikaru!

Now that I've posted all of that, I'm done with yet another day of Sprite Patterns December, but I'll be back tomorrow with more patterns and maybe some new photos of finished work, too! Until then, however, I hope that you're having good weekends and a particularly nice Saturday!

Sprite Patterns December Day 2: More of the Death Note Cast

2011-12-02T23:42:00.000-06:00

Hello! It is the second day of sprite patterns December here at Dork Stitch, and, seeing as I am starting to write this at 11:20pm in my time zone, it seems that I will have to write this post quickly! I was quite busy today, since I subbed for high school history classes, got a haircut, and put up the Christmas tree with my family, so I'm not sure this is too bad. Later in the month, there'll come a time when I don't have these excuses, but for today, I don't feel bad about putting this off until the last 40 minutes.

As today's post title indicates, the sprite patterns for today include a few cast members from Death Note, who today include Matt, Near, and Mello. I was a little concerned about making these patterns, since I was sure I'd screw them up, but in the end, I think it ended up being all right! I'm especially pleased with how Near came out, as my first version of him looked like a shapeless white blob. Once I started to go in and add some shading and experiment with different details, though, I think that I got a nifty result. Matt's fuzzy vest was fun to pixel, too, even if it is slightly too beige. Regardless of all of that, though, I hope that you guys like stitching or perlering or whatever craft you prefer with these new cross stitch patterns! I'm hoping to do a few more Death Note characters in the future, too, so hopefully, that works out.

Since I still have time to spare in terms of finishing today's post, I have some work to feature from friend-of-the-blog Kamryn! As you may have noticed, she's stitched the Clannad patterns that I've posted here quickly, nicely, and in a variety of interesting ways, and today's photo from her is no exception. For her latest project, she stitched the faux fighting game sprite pattern of Tomoyo onto a bag, and it looks really nifty! At first, I thought, "Oh, that looks pretty nice," but as I thought about it, I remembered stitching King of Fighters sprites onto perforated plastic canvas, and then imagined what it would have been like stitching them with waste canvas. Since I basically imagined stabbing myself in the finger with a needle several times and trying to rip the details of Mai Shiranui's kimono out of the fabric of a tote bag without ruining the aforementioned waste fabric, it gave me a new respect for Kamryn's work. It looks cool and I recommend that you look at it, too.

With both of those sections of the post done, I've just finished today's blogging with twenty minutes to spare! I'm fairly certain that, rather than a coherent blog post, I've produced a mass of crazy ramblings, but since that's not too different from what I usually have here, I'm not too worried about it. I'll be back with a new post tomorrow, so thank you for reading today's!

Sprite Patterns December Day 1: Final Fantasy X's Partial Cast

2011-12-01T13:48:00.000-06:00

Hello! In the last year, this blog has gotten tons of new followers and readers, for which I am very grateful. However, this means that many of you were not around to witness the horror that was last year's event known as "Sprite Patterns December." Every day for the entire month (except for my attempt to cheat that led a technical error that ended in two posts going up on Christmas Eve), I posted one or more cross stitch sprite patterns every day, since I enjoy making them and they're easy for people to make as gifts for either themselves or their friends. It was a very bloody affair, where bodies stacked up like blocks in a puzzle game as I sat at my computer desk, so consumed by the desire to create familiar characters from pop culture out of old Sega RPG graphics that I had no qualms about destroying all who stood in my way as I chased my terrifying dreams.* However, I have decided that it is worth the risk to try this again, with 31 new days of sprite patterns and blog posts!

For today, I wasn't sure where to start in terms of picking characters and patterns to post, since I have a lot of them stockpiled, but since I've previously gotten requests for patterns of the cast of Final Fantasy X, I decided to start making patterns for those characters. It seemed like it would be fun both to make and stitch patterns of the characters, so, for today, I have them completed for Tidus, Yuna, and Auron. Of the three, I'm pretty sure that I did the best job on Yuna's pattern, and am actually looking forward to stitching it myself at some point. (I'm also quite proud of Auron's jug of liquor and unused sleeve, but that seems like a different story.) I think that all of them look like the characters they're meant to represent, though, even if it did lead to an overabundance of floss colors on a couple of them, so here are the first three cross stitch patterns of this December!

With those three patterns posted, it's now time to post some photos of finished work from Kristine, writer of Kristine's Random Stitches and one of this blog's readers, who's done piles of work with some of the sprite patterns, as well as one of a surfing Pikachu, that I posted over the past year! Her focus was Pokemon, which I can always admire, and she stitched a dozen motifs (with a few repeats) from this blog's patterns as a way of decorating bookmarks and guest towels for her home. Her nifty stitching and character organization make all three of her projects look bright and cheerful, and the Pokeball and Pikachu face motifs that she added are extremely cute and fit the rest of the projects perfectly! If you're interested in seeing full sized versions of these projects with Kristine's comments, visit her original post about them at this link. For now, however, here are some thumbnail images of her bookmarks and towel!

With all of the new patterns posted, alongside the awesome photos of Kristine's stitching, I'm done with the first day of sprite patterns December, but I'll be back tomorrow with some new sprite patterns to cross stitch and, as always, some more inane chatter! If there are any characters that you'd like to see as subjects of patterns this month, please let me know, since requests were part of what made last year's sprite patterns December so fun to work on. I'd also love to see and post about any of your finished work made from these patterns, if you'd like to be featured on here! I'm going to go work on patterns for tomorrow's post, but, until then, I hope that all of you are having a nice day.

*Note: No one was harmed at all during last year's sprite patterns December, and I actually lied about all of that gory stuff in the first paragraph. If that had been true, I would probably be rotting in jail instead of posting to this blog.

Pokemon Monday 13: It's Absol, Lookin' Sassy!

2011-11-28T23:22:00.000-06:00

Hello! Tonight I am posting a new Pokemon cross stitch chart, and, because the character was requested, it features Absol. I know that this is not an exciting way to start a post, but it is informative, so it seems like it could be much worse. After all, in this state of being stuck about what to say, I could just type and type for hours without actually saying anything, or start saying things that have nothing to do with this blog. Instead, however, I think I'll just move on to today's pattern!

As you may have guessed from reading the start of today's post and the title, today's Pokemon pattern is of Absol, which I have to admit is not a choice I would have made on my own. Once I started looking through screenshots and official artwork of the Pokemon, however, I decided that I liked it quite a bit more than I'd initially thought. In my head, I was picturing it from the trading card game, looking sort of evil with glowing red eyes, its face enveloped in shadow, and an attack that decimated my deck every time I tried to play against the girl who had it. After I got over that, I was able to make a pattern that I was happy with, both because it makes Absol look like a Pokemon that is very frustrated with the idiocy of its peers and because I think that the way I cropped it makes it look cool. Here is the pattern, though, so you can judge it for yourself! Just remember, Absol is judging you, too.

Now that Absol is posted, I am going to leave for now and go work on filling in dates on a calendar, which should be just as exciting as it sounds. If I don't post again before then, however, Thursday is going to be the start of sprite patterns December, which I'm really looking forward to! Until then, I hope you had a nice day and are doing well with whatever crafty rubbish you might be working on.

Another Sonic the Hedgehog Pattern, Today Featuring Knuckles, and a Photo of a Needlepoint I Made

2011-11-25T14:56:00.000-06:00

Hello! Before I do too much with today's post, I wanted to thank everyone for all of the nice comments I got on my last one! I don't have any sprite patterns of 19th century murderers today, which has to be a let down after that chart, but hopefully, today's cross stitch pattern of Knuckles, from the Sonic the Hedgehog games, will please some of you. I started working on this either Sunday or Monday night, I think, but the biggest delay in getting this finished and posted was just that I haven't been working on it. For the first part of the week, I worked a lot on a community newsletter, which I almost have done now, and after that came Thanksgiving. Today, which was the final stretch on this pattern, was especially bad, since I actually sat at the computer desk, painting my nails and eating cookies while I looked at the unfinished chart on the screen. Right now, however, this lovely pattern is finally done, so all of you can sit and cross stitch Knuckles to your hearts' content. I used a screenshot from Sonic Underground to make this, so it might look a little old-fashioned, but I think it's still fairly nifty.

With today's pattern posted, I should probably just quit and go work on stockpiling patterns for Sprite Patterns December, which starts next week! I have quite a bit done already, and plan to do requests all through the month, so I'm really looking forward to it. Before I leave, however, I want to show off a needlepoint project that I just finished for my 14-year old brother's birthday. Normally, I like stitching things that are cute or fluffy or things like that, but I have to say that I'm really proud of how this plastic canvas piece of Beavis and Butthead attacking people with a drill ended up looking. It was stitched from sprites from an SNES Beavis and Butthead game, simplified a little bit so that I could make it out of craft thread, and I think that it looks remarkably accurate. I did spiffy it up a bit by scanning it on some scrapbook paper, but really, not even the prettiest paper can detract from the look of this piece of needlework.

Now that I inflicted that on you guys, I think that it really is time to leave, though I'm hoping to be back and posting again soon. I hope that all of you had a good week and have nice weekends full of crafts ahead of you!

IHSW November, A Lizzie Borden Sprite Pattern, and a Spiffy Piece of Reader Work

2011-11-20T23:42:00.000-06:00

Hello! As you can tell by tonight's title, there are a lot of things that I'd like to cover in tonight's blog post. I'm pretty excited about all of it, though, so I'm going to start writing and hopefully get through it before I fall asleep at the keyboard!

Since it came first in the title, I guess that I'll start off tonight by writing about my participation in this month's International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, hosted by the lovely Joysze of Random Ramblings! Since I didn't actually do too much, it shouldn't take too long. I did get a lot done on Friday night, since I stayed up watching Torchwood and It's Always Sunny In Philidelphia instead of playing Chrono Cross in order to get to my stitching goal for the night. This may not have been my best plan ever, since I ended up sitting around sleepily staring at the TV more than I ended up cross stitching, but it was more progress than I made Saturday and Sunday. Because of that, the photo I have to show off is a cryptic and crooked WIP image of the start of a sampler that I found in the mysteriously titled Cross Stitch Patterns by Misako Murayama. When the project is finished, I think that it'll be really cute, but for now, the portion that I have stitched just looks sort of weird and confusing. It's not very big, though, so I should have a finished project photo soon!

While I'm on the subject of Misako Murayama's samplers, I did finish a different one of them a couple of weeks ago, from her book Ondori Cross Stitch Patterns 2. It was really fun to make, and even though it looks very cute and pleasant, I feel like there's something just a bit weird about the selection of items she chose to put into the image. I was really pleased with the finished product, though, and am not sure why I didn't write about it sooner! Now is as good a time as any to write about it, though, so here is the cross stitched sampler that I did earlier in the month.

With all of the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend stuff over and done with, it's time to move onto the next section of this post, which includes tonight's new pattern! Though I always love making new sprite patterns to post here, the idea for tonight's came from Tama (the writer of Stitching Daze), who left a comment on last night's post asking after a pattern of Lizzie Borden. It sounded like a really spiffy idea, so tonight when I got online, I did a little research about Lizzie Borden and came up with a pattern that I was really happy with. The blue dress covered in blood stains and the hair tied back in a bun may make her look a bit like a fairy tale princess gone quite wrong, but as far as I'm concerned, that's the best part about it. I'm also pretty pleased with how politely she's holding her axe, though that's a fairly minor detail. If you'd like to find out any real information about Lizzie Borden, I found out a lot from http://lizziebordenwarpsandwefts.com/, but for the sake of this blog, I hope that you enjoy this cartoonish and likely historically inaccurate sprite pattern depiction of her.

Tonight's final order of business is to feature some reader work, which comes to us today from Deviant Art's Emilywip! Rather than using one of this blog's patterns for a traditional craft, she used one of the Ouran Host Club sprite patterns in a really cute Deviant Art icon! Though the subject of the image is clearly the frustrated Mori that pops into frame, a digital depiction of Honey's sprite pattern can be seen standing in the background. Her faux-crayon backdrop is also really nice, adding an extra layer of cuteness to the whole thing. If you'd like to leave a direct comment on Emily's icon, it can be found on Deviant Art at this link. However, it can be seen in all of its (hopefully) animated glory directly following this text block!

With all of that text and all of those images posted, I think that I'm done with this blog for tonight. I'll be back tomorrow with a brand new Pokemon Monday, though, hopefully featuring an Absol, as requested by Chen-Wang Tan Biyu. Until then, I hope all of you sleep well and start your Mondays without too much trouble!

Cross Stitch Sprite Patterns of 1850s Fashion, Which I Know You Guys Were Dying For

2011-11-19T16:14:00.000-06:00

Hello! This is another International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, hosted by Joysze at Random Ramblings, but seeing as I have been leaving the house and not actually stitching too much, my results are probably not going to end up being that impressive. For today, however, I have a couple of new sprite patterns done and ready to post, so that should count for something! Instead of using anime or video game characters as the ideas behind the two new cross stitch patterns for today, though, I decided to try and make some sprite patterns based on dresses from the 19th century. I still used the sprites from Phantasy Star II as the base for these patterns, meaning that they should fit into any set of these that you may have already stitched, but I'd been wanting to try making some of these based on real outfits and stuff like that for a while now, which was really fun. It was difficult to get all of the details into the dresses that I'd wanted to, but I think that, in the end, I ended up with a decent representation of what they should look like. Plus, since they're still sprite patterns, it was fun to choose ridiculous and historically inaccurate hair colors for both of the girls pictured. Before I talk too much longer about these patterns, however, I might as well just post them!

I really enjoyed making both of these patterns, so I might try doing some more sprite patterns like this in the future. For now, however, I'm going to stop monopolizing the computer and go do something else for a while! If you'd like to stitch these or use these for any sort of craft project, I would really like to see and write about your nifty finished work, and if you have any pattern requests, let me know and I'll do my best to make something nice according to what you asked. Until then, I hope all of you are having nice weekends and doing well with your stitching!

Pokemon Monday #12: Giving My Own Drawings A Shot

2011-11-14T13:32:00.000-06:00

Hello! Today, I don't plan on my post for Pokemon Monday being terribly long, since I don't feel like I have all that much to say, but I am excited about posting today's pattern! Even though it is of a Pokemon trainer, in keeping with today's theme, it's based on one of my own drawings rather than official art or images for the anime, meaning that it probably doesn't look as slick and tidy as usual. As far as posting a different style of pattern goes, however, I think that it should be sort of fun to stitch. The outlines are much heavier than usual, meaning that the finished product will have a different look, and the simple colors mean that it shouldn't be much trouble to stitch at all. I know that having been the one to make this pattern, I am biased towards it, but, at the very least, I hope you guys aren't annoyed by it! Here is today's pattern, featuring N looking dramatic and maybe not quite as anime as usual.

With today's pattern posted, I'm done for now, though I do have some photos of stitching that I've recently finished for a future post, as well as piles of nifty new patterns for all of you! I've just started the pattern I posted today, so I'm hoping to work on that quite a bit this week, but I hope that all of you have good luck with any crafts you've recently started, too.

Four Chrono Cross Sprite Patterns, Ready For Stitching!

2011-11-08T23:45:00.000-06:00

Hello! I don't think that today is really going to be a remarkable or mind-blowing post here at Dork Stitch, but today Chrono Cross went up for sale in the US PSN store, and that seemed like a good excuse to post some of my sprite patterns of the game's characters that I've been working on! A few weeks ago, I got it into my head that, since the characters were cool looking and very detailed, it would be good practice to try and make the entire cast of Chrono Cross as cross stitch sprite patterns. So far, I only have 11 of the characters done, but it's been fun so far, and, since I've made a lot of the monster and animal sorts of party members, I think that I have learned quite a bit about how much can be done with the sorts of sprite patterns I've been continually inflicting on you guys. For the sake of today's post and getting this set of patterns off to a strong start, however, I'm just going to post the patterns for four of the more important characters.

As some of you may have already guessed, either from having played/watched someone else play Chrono Cross or from scrolling down and looking at the patterns I included in this post before actually reading it, today's patterns are for Serge, Kid, Lynx, and Harle. All four of these patterns are more detailed than most of the sprite patterns that I normally post, either by a little or a lot, but because of that, I'm pretty happy that none of them came out looking like incoherent blobs of pixels. I think that Harle is probably my favorite of the four, at least in terms of the patterns, because her outfit was a complete pain to make, yet came out looking fairly recognizable. I certainly don't hate any of these, though, so I hope that you guys have favorites as well!

With those four cross stitch charts posted and ready for all of your Chrono Cross stitching needs (don't you love how convenient the game's title is for craft-based sentences?), I think that I'm done here for tonight, though I'm hoping to be back later this week with new cross stitch patterns, likely based on requests. Until then, I hope that all of you have a nice night and a good Wednesday, too!

Pokemon Monday #11: It's Flaffy and Some Finished Stitching!

2011-11-07T23:37:00.000-06:00

Hello! Today's edition of Pokemon Monday here at Dork Stitch is not late because I was working, or busy, or anything of the sort, but rather because I was so unfocused that I couldn't get myself to sit still and make a pattern. This afternoon, I was making stop motion animations on my DS and playing games, and tonight, I was printing out some of Gatchacaz's blackwork Pokemon patterns (which are really, really cool if you're looking for a unique way to stitch your Pokemon- they can be found here) and looking through the free Kindle books on Amazon rather than trying my best to make a good pattern. After a while, however, I got myself to pay attention to one window on my desktop for long enough to make a cross stitch pattern of the charming Pokemon Flaffy! I wish I could say that there was some special significance to my choosing Flaffy for the pattern, but instead, I just thought it was cute when I was looking through screenshots from the anime. Hopefully, you guys like Flaffy, too! Here is today's pattern.

Though my attention span is not at its best tonight, I do have one more thing to post with Flaffy ready for you guys to stitch, and that's a beautiful piece of finished cross stitching from Shio, over at the blog Nene Miow! As some of you may remember, she did a really spiffy stitching of this blog's monochrome pattern of Princess Zelda in the past, and now she's stitched Link to match! To my knowledge, the pattern hadn't been stitched before, but if Shio's work is any indication, it makes for a really lovely finished project, which certainly isn't hurt by her choice of floss color or incredibly tidy stitches. A small image of her work is right below this text, but if you visit her blog, there's a really cute photo of the stitchings of Link and Zelda together that I definitely recommend taking a look at!

With both Flaffy and Shio's Link posted, I'm done blogging for the night, though I hope to be back with more patterns and cool photos soon! Until then, I hope all of you have started your weeks well and are doing nicely with all of your craft projects.

The Start of a New Set of Sonic the Hedgehog Patterns, Featuring Tails

2011-11-03T14:24:00.000-05:00

Hello! I mentioned this in Tuesday night's post, but earlier this week, I got a request from an anonymous commenter (though I'm fairly certain it was one I've heard from before) for some Sonic the Hedgehog themed cross stitch patterns, since this year is the character's twentieth birthday. Since I certainly don't mind making cross stitch charts of cute video game animals/monsters, as is evidenced by the recent stream of Pokemon Mondays, it didn't take me long to decide that making a set of Sonic the Hedgehog patterns would be a fun project to undertake. However, I have to warn you guys that, unlike my work on the Clannad set, where I have a very small amount of knowledge about the source material and pretty much ask you guys who I should make next, I do know some stuff about Sonic the Hedgehog, which means that occasionally, as I work on this, a very odd character might pop up for no apparent reason. If there are characters that you guys would like to see, let me know and I will still do my best to make a cool pattern of them, whether they're from the games or comics or one of the TV shows. However, if there is a lull in requests, I'm going to start making all of the characters that I want to stitch, and since I've got a few Sonic Underground DVDs in my living room, this may or may not work out well for everyone.

Anyway, in order to get this set of patterns going, I spent this afternoon making a fairly ordinary portrait pattern of Tails the Fox! Since there's already a lot of cross stitching out there based on in-game sprites and artwork, I decided that for these patterns, I'd try wherever I could to use cartoons and comics as the source material, which, at least in this case, was pretty fun. I think that I was able to make a nice enough pattern using some screenshots from Sonic X, and since it's not the most remarkably detailed anime in the world, I was able to keep all details visible while keeping the pattern to just 74 by 62 stitches. Because of that, Tails shouldn't be too bad to stitch, but he should still make for a nice finish, with bright colors and plenty of shading to keep things from getting boring.

With Tails posted, I don't really have anything else to post for today, though I am hoping to get at least one post done this weekend! I'm making quite a few patterns in preparation for another Sprite Patterns December, which should be fun, and since I just got this set going, I'd love to know what Sonic characters you guys would like to see patterns for! Until then, however, I'm off to enjoy the rest of my cold, windy, and rainy day and hope that you guys are able to do the same!

Three Death Note Sprite Patterns, Starting Off a New Set

2011-11-01T23:41:00.000-05:00

Hello! Almost a month ago, Kristine, over on the Dork Stitch Facebook page, requested some sprite patterns of Death Note characters. Seeing as I enjoyed Death Note, and had actually made an unposted sprite pattern for Misa last December, it should have taken me a couple of hours to start working on this pattern set and get a few of them posted. This afternoon, however, I got a comment from an anonymous reader asking about Sonic the Hedgehog patterns (which I plan to start working on tomorrow afternoon), thought about cross stitching Tails, and then thought, "Oh, hey! I should make those Death Note cross stitch patterns! That would be fun." I wish I could say that there was some sort of connection between the two subjects, such as Light's hair being the same color as Tails or something like that, but as far as I can tell, there was not whatsoever. Still, I have three Death Note sprite patterns for you guys today, so I hope you guys like them!

The first thing that I did when I started working on these tonight was to revamp Misa's sprite, since, in the year since I've been making these sprite patterns, I seem to have gotten a bit better at making them look like the characters they represent. After that, it took a great deal of concentration for me not to sit around and make three or four different sprites for her in different outfits, as the casts of Final Fantasy games often fall victim to, but I also ended up getting sprites done for Light and L. The sprite for L was far more difficult, since it was harder than I'd anticipated to pixel out such elaborate hair, but I'm pretty happy with how his shirt came out, and not as disappointed as I'd expected to be in the hair, either. Though 939 is listed for the majority of it, I think that it would look nice if all of his hair was stitched in black, too. I just did it the way that it's charted because that's how I eventually plan to stitch it. Light's pattern was less challenging, since the set of Ouran Host Club patterns taught me quite a bit about how to effectively draw boys' school uniforms on a small scale, but it was still quite fun to make. His hair is very tidy, which I have no reason to complain about, and I thought giving him an apple would be a nice touch, too. Regardless of all of that unnecessary behind-the-scenes chatter, however, here are three Death Note sprite patterns, ready to cross stitch or perler bead or whatever you'd like!

With those three patterns posted, I think that I'm done for tonight, though I plan to have a few more Death Note characters (and a few alternate outfits) all patterned up in the near future! Until then, however, I plan to keep working on requests, doing other patterns that none of you asked for or wanted, and blogging about all of the lovely crafts you guys make from the patterns that end up posted here! I'm headed off to bed now, but I hope that your weeks have gone well so far and keep going as nicely as possible.

Pokemon Monday #10: Two Vaguely Spooky Pokemon Patterns

2011-10-31T14:22:00.000-05:00

Hello! I'm posting this later in the afternoon than I'd originally planned, first because I was playing games instead of blogging, and then because I got a new box of prizes for Pokemon League and wanted to see what I'd be handing out to players next month more than I wanted to be sitting at the computer desk and typing this. (In case you're curious, it's Watchog and fire energy cards for the TCG players and pins that look like the Basic Badge for DS players.) Now that I'm done with all of that excitement, however, I'm ready to post a couple of new cross stitch patterns for yet another Pokemon Monday!

Since today is Halloween, I thought that it might be appropriate to commemorate the day by posting some nice patterns of ghost Pokemon. Seeing as this isn't exactly a blog that thrives on terror and intimidation, I chose Shuppet and Rotom as today's subjects because they're round and cute. The patterns that I made are relatively simple, matching my previous set of Black/White starters in both style and size, so they should be quick and easy to stitch, if you like them. They don't exactly match the other Pokemon thematically, but in terms of appearance, they should make a nice addition to the previous set, too, if you made those without wanting to hit your head on a desk. Before I go on any more about these spiffy new cross stitch patterns, however, here are Shuppet and Rotom!

As far as I know, I don't have any finished work by readers to show off today, so I think that I'm out of things to post! If you cross stitch or perler bead or do any sort of craft with the patterns featured on this blog, though, let me know and I'll write all about it! I should have some new cross stitch patterns done and ready to post very soon, but until then, have a happy Halloween and a nice start to November!

A Pattern I Forgot I'd Made and Some Awesome Stitching From Readers

2011-10-25T15:23:00.000-05:00

Hello! A while ago, when I was making a lot of Baccano patterns (which I'm still working on for my ridiculous sampler), I got sick of all of the monochrome rubbish and made a cross stitch pattern of Shizuo Heiwajima from Durarara, since that's the anime I was watching while working on the charts, to post on this blog. Once I was done with it, I printed it and set in in the stack of patterns that I wanted to eventually stitch, but, as all of you may have noticed, I did not actually post it. Since there was no demand for this pattern whatsoever, I'm not sure how much that matters, but I found the pattern again yesterday and decided that today would be a good enough time to post it! I think that this pattern ought to be interesting to stitch, since Shizuo's hair ended up being very detailed, and it was sort of fun to step away from working on frilly girl patterns for a little bit, even if I was back to that within a day. If you're interested in stitching this, though, here is the pattern, ready to be printed, put in a folder, and forgotten about for long periods of time!

Now that I have today's pattern posted, I can move on to what I'm really excited about writing about today, in the form of two new stitched versions of Dork Stitch patterns! The first cross stitcher to be featured for today is Finland's Tihvutin, who's stitched another spiffy version of this blog's pervasive monochrome pattern of Princess Zelda! It's always really cool to see new versions of this pattern made, but this one is interesting in that it was actually stitched on the back of a dress. The stitching itself, pictured in a relatively small size below, is very tidy, particularly considering that it must have been done with waste fabric, and it looks pretty on the mint green of the dress. If you'd like to see a full sized image of it, however, alongside an image of how it looks on the dress, you should check out Tihvutin's nifty and stitching filled Deviant Art gallery!

Today's second finished piece of the day comes from official friend of the blog Kamyrn, who's made another of the Clannad patterns that's been posted here! Her character of choice for this cross stitch was Fuko, who looks lovely in peach and dark gray. As always, her stitching is very precise and pretty, and it's quite impressive that she got through stitching all of that hair without beating her head on a table! Here is a photo of her stitching for your enjoyment.

With all of that posted, I'm done for today, but I plan to keep working on all sorts of patterns and update again later this week! Until then, though, hopefully you guys will have nifty weeks and not make any bizarre and irreparable mistakes on your respective crafts. It sounds like a strange wish, but since that's what I always hope for in my own projects, I don't imagine it's out of line for me to say that.

Pokemon Monday #9: Wingull and Hilda, Plus Some Finished Work of a Pokemon and Non-Pokemon Nature

2011-10-24T14:40:00.000-05:00

Hello! Today, I don't really want to sit still, so blogging seems like it's going to be very difficult. I got online an hour and fifteen minutes ago, and, since then, have spent a lot of time wandering around the house, looking through my cross stitch supplies, putting an outfit on a blank doll so that I can use her as a drawing dummy, putting my DS on to charge, looking through all of my Pokemon cards, and eating candy and drinking soda. It is, however, a Pokemon Monday, and I have two new and spiffy patterns for you, featuring the charming Pokemon Wingull and Hilda, the female trainer from Pokemon Black/White! The Wingull pattern is one that I've had on reserve for quite a while, though I'm not totally sure why I haven't posted it. I think that it's a nice enough Pokemon, and, having stitched it on plastic canvas (which I used as the finished project image on the pattern, seeing as I write this blog and can do stuff like that), can vouch for the fact that it's a decent pattern. Hilda, on the other hand, is a brand new sprite pattern, and I'm really happy with how it came out because her hair is puffy and cool. I've stitched her real sprite before, from in the game, and will probably make this one, too! In the event that you guys would like to make either of these, though, here are the patterns!

With those patterns posted, I have some finished work from a reader to show off, which is really cool, since it seems like it's been a long time since I've done that! As those of you who follow this blog may know, The Stitching Reaper (click on her pseudonym to get to her blog) is on a quest to stitch all of the Sailor Moon sprite patterns, and she's finished three more of them very nicely! Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Uranus, and Sailor Mercury have been added to her set, and though there's only a thumbnail here, there is a larger version of it on her blog, alongside a nifty picture of her progress so far that I definitely recommend checking out!

I also have a finished piece to show off, even though it's not from one of the patterns I've posted here. Starting on Thursday and ending on Sunday, I did a plastic canvas needlepoint of the Pokemon card Team Rocket's Trap as it appears in one of the Pokemon TCG Game Boy games! (I got the sprite for it from Sprite Database, which is a very good website.) There is a lot more unnecessary information about the project on my Deviant Art page, but here's a smaller picture of it, which is probably good enough. I'm really happy with how this came out and started stitching a second card last night! (This was done with craft thread on 10-count plastic canvas and measures about 6.5 by 4.5 inches.)

I'm out of stuff to write about for today, so I am going to quit blogging and eat an orange! I'm hoping to have a lot of cool patterns to post this week, though, so, until my next post, I hope that all of you are having nice weeks and doing well with all of your crafting!

My Finished Sheet of Stitched Sprites

2011-10-20T23:56:00.000-05:00

Hello! Tonight is not a new pattern post, though I do hope to do one of those soon. When I said that I was almost done with my sheet of perforated plastic canvas covered in stitched sprites from the patterns I make and post, however, some of you seemed to be interested in that, so I thought I would post it! It was really fun to design and stitch all of these, even though I think I picked weird characters, and it'll be even more fun when I'm able to chop all of these into standees and set them up with the others I've made. Some of the patterns I stitched here are a bit of a preview of patterns I've finished and not posted, too, so if there are any of those you like, please let me know and I will get the patterns, and in some cases, the sets they go in, posted for you to stitch. For now, though, here is a photo of the 18 stitched sprites, a few of which you've seen before, and a giant block of text regarding them!

Top Row: Renge (Ouran Host Club), Adell (Disgaea 2), Maya (Dragon Quest IV), Regina (Dino Crisis), Yurippe (Angel Beats), Saria (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
This row is probably a bit boring, since the first four here were previously posted as my stitching for last month's International Hermit and Stitch Weekend. Past that, though, Yurippe is the row's sole unposted pattern, though she looks way too much like Athena from the King of Fighters games here. I know that her character design was derivative, but not nearly to that extent. It's not too weird looking or anything, though, so I don't mind too much.

Center Row: Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop), Rick Hunter (Robotech), SF-A2 miki (Vocaloid), Sinclair (Art of Fighting 3), Meena (Dragon Quest IV), Ash Crimson (King of Fighters)
In this row, the unposted patterns are Spike, Rick, and Sinclair, with the characters from Cowboy Bebop and Robotech likely being more of a preview of things to come than anything else. I used some DMC glitter embroidery floss on Sinclair, though, which has to count for something. I think that it makes her the cross stitched equivalent of a rare Pokemon card.

Bottom Row: Kula Diamond (King of Fighters), Megaman.EXE and Roll (Mega Man Battle Network), Lucia (Pangya), K' (King of Fighters), Julia (Tekken)
This row contains the two Mega Man cross stitches that I did over the weekend, with K' being the only other member of the group who's gotten their pattern posted. Julia's part of a much larger set of Tekken characters that I've made, while Lucia's sprite is actually the second version of the character that I've designed and stitched. I'd like to have an entire set of Pangya standees, and since it's an MMO, every character has piles of outfits to choose from, which is great for stitching.

With all of that typing done in regard to such an odd project, I guess that I'm done posting for tonight, though you'll probably see these stitches on here again when I've cut them into standees, as part of a larger group. I'm hoping to do a more normal post within the next couple of days, so until then, good luck with your respective craft projects, and have a nice day, too!

A New Sprite Pattern in the Final Fantasy VII Set

2011-10-18T14:27:00.000-05:00

Hello! Seeing as I posted no cross stitch patterns yesterday and some cross stitch patterns that were not requested on Saturday, it seemed like today would be a good day to work on some sprite pattern requests! There are quite a few of them that people want, and though I couldn't get through many of them this afternoon, partially due to my downloading of KOF: Encounter for my iPod, because I really need more King of Fighters to distract me, I did get two different patterns made for Yuffie from Final Fantasy VII! As always, it was totally unnecessary for me to make two different versions of her, but since her outfits from the PS1 game and Advent Children were totally different, it seemed like it would be fun. Plus, Aerith got two different patterns, and Yuffie is better than her (which is, of course, a matter of opinion), so that also needed to be taken into account as I worked on these. They aren't too different from any of the other sprite patterns I post, except for that these have a slightly darker color scheme than normal, but hopefully, they're still interesting to stitch.

With that posted, I really don't have anything else for today, though I am hoping to get through some more pattern requests and do more posting soon! Until then, however, I always love to see finished work based on the patterns I post, and, if you don't mind waiting through other requests and whatever weird patterns I decide to make in the meantime, I enjoy doing pattern requests. I hope all of you are having a good day and will be back for more posting later!

IHSW October's Lack of Actual Stitching

2011-10-17T22:48:00.000-05:00

Hello! I want to start today's blog post by apologizing for the fact that this week's Pokemon Monday has been cancelled, due to the fact that while subbing today, I had to watch the same Schoolhouse Rock video five times in a row on a top loading VCR with terrible tracking and listen as the sound quality degraded with each play, which seemed to temporarily defeat my creative spirit. I do have some patterns started and made, though, so next week's Pokemon Monday should be quite cool!

For today's post, I'm posting what I stitched over the weekend, seeing as it was an International Hermit and Stitch Weekend! I didn't do too well with either parts of it, since I went to town with my family on both Saturday and Sunday and spent more time looking at cross stitch patterns than I did actually stitching them. I did, however, stitch the two Mega Man Battle Network sprites that I posted on Saturday, so I've got those to show off! My sheet of plastic canvas is really close to being filled, so I should be able to do a post on that on its own sometime in the next few days. Until then, though, here are MegaMan.EXE and Roll, stitched over the weekend!

Tomorrow, I'm really looking forward to seeing what other people made this weekend, since that always seems to be the most interesting part of participating in the hermit and stitch weekends. For now, however, I'm off to e-mail people and possibly watch a bit of Netflix before I go to bed! I hope that all of you had good weekends and good starts to your weeks and will be back and posting again soon.

An Attempt to Reach Some Commenters and A Mega Man Battle Network Sprite Pattern

2011-10-15T16:25:00.000-05:00

Hello! Before I get started with this post, I would like to address two recent comments that I got, since I couldn't find any other way to reliably respond to the people who left them. I hope that you guys are reading this, but if not, it's not taking up enough webspace to be damaging, so that's fine, too! In regards to Greg's comment, I am, in fact, happy that you took up cross stitching and hope that you enjoy it. Good luck with the simpler projects you're starting with! However, I am also happy that this gives me a somewhat valid excuse to make more Monster Rancher patterns, so if there are any characters in particular that you'd like to see, please let me know! In regards to Edgar's comment, which of the ponies would you like charts for? I'm going to make charts of a couple of them to stitch for some friends' birthdays, so I might as well make it a set! Thank you very much to both of you for commenting, and I hope to hear back soon.

Anyway, since it's currently an International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, courtesy of Joyze at Random Ramblings, I'm trying to finish up a sheet of my sprite patterns on perforated plastic canvas. I don't think that I'll get there, since I'd have to make five to achieve this goal and am partially done with two of them, but I have been making some new sprite patterns for myself for the occasion and, since I think they turned out well, am going to post a couple of them. The two characters who got the sprite treatment for today are MegaMan.EXE and Roll from Mega Man Battle Network/Mega Man NT Warrior, and it was actually really fun to work on these, since their designs are fairly different from a lot of characters. They've been fun to stitch so far, too, so if you like the series or characters, I hope that you'll like stitching these as well.

With all that out of the way, I think that I'm done with this for now, but I'm going to do my best to have a cool Pokemon Monday post and then get back to all of your requests. Until then, I hope that you all have good weekends and do well with your craft projects!

Another Entry in the Set of Clannad Cross Stitch Patterns is Done!

2011-10-13T13:39:00.000-05:00

Hello! On Mondays, I realize that I usually say that I am going to finish and post something in at least one of the sets of cross stitch patterns that have been requested over the course of the week, but, despite the fact that I have a lot of sets to work on, this usually doesn't get done. Today, however, I actually have a new pattern in the Clannad set for you guys, which I think counts as some sort of progress. There are still a lot of sprite patterns that I'd like to finish in the next few days, but I think that, for today, anyway, it's sort of cool to have a new larger pattern done.

Anyway, the Clannad character featured in today's pattern is Kotomi, who is one of the first anime characters with an ordinary name that I've typed into Google without the title of her show and actually gotten good results. I don't know if this is because Kotomi is an unpopular name or because the character is, for some reason, incredibly iconic, but it seemed unusual either way. I've actually been working on this pattern on and off for weeks in some form or another, since her hair was giving me quite a bit of trouble, but the other day, I found a really nice image to use as the pattern's basis and was able to finish it pretty quickly. There are a few more colors in this than there are in some of my other portrait patterns, because of her ponytail holders, sweater, and the level of detail in her eyes, but I don't think it's anything that should make this too difficult to stitch. She's about the same size as the other Clannad patterns I've done, too, with the exception of Tomoyo, which I hope is convenient for those of you interested in stitching the set. Without any further chatter, here is the pattern of Kotomi!

Now that I have another cast member of Clannad done, I plan to go back and do a couple of sprite pattern requests, which currently include a couple of new Final Fantasy VII patterns, the cast of Death Note, and some more patterns for Final Fantasy VIII and He-Man. Of course, I'll probably get distracted on my way to making them, which shouldn't be too difficult, considering that this weekend is Joyze's International Hermit and Stitch Weekend. I'm probably just going to spend the weekend stitching more of my sprites, but I'm still looking forward to it and recommend it to any other bloggers looking for a fun monthly event! Even without that ahead, though, I still plan to do another post in the next couple of days, and, until then, hope that all of you are doing reasonably well!

Pokemon Monday #8: Porygon2

2011-10-10T23:33:00.000-05:00

Hello! Today I'm posting Pokemon Monday a bit late, but it was quite a busy day and it's not midnight here yet, so I think it still counts! Like last week, I've only got one pattern to post, but I think that today's is a super cool and potentially fun to stitch one, so I hope you guys like it. The biggest strike against it is probably that it's of Porygon2, but even though it doesn't feature the most popular Pokemon, I think that it still has a good enough combination of bright colors and a cute image to be a very spiffy pattern. It uses Porygon2's Dream World image as its basis, too, so it's also very modern and up to trend as far as big cross stitch patterns of Pokemon go. Regardless of all of this chatter, however, I'll post the pattern and let all of you decide if you like it or not!

Now that Porygon2 is posted, I'm sort of out of new content for today, but since I'm sort of tired, it's probably not such a bad thing that I'm ending this post early. I should be back with a more normal post soon, but, until then, I hope that all of your weeks are off to good starts!

Guys, You've Got to See This Thing My Mom Made!

2011-10-06T15:55:00.000-05:00

Hello! Today I don't have any patterns to share with you, though there's piles of them that I want to work on fairly soon, but I do have a photo of a really impressive finished project to show off here. For the past couple of months, my mom has been working on crocheting the big monochrome pattern of Princess Zelda that I posted here, and today, she got it finished! I think that it's safe to say that it's the biggest thing anyone has made from any of the patterns posted here, since it's large enough to use as a small blanket, and it looks really cool, too. If you also crochet, I can tell you that it was made with pound balls of acrylic yarn (Caron One Pounders, I was just told), and the border is done in scallop stitches, which make it look all fancy. It was also all stitched as one piece rather than Zelda being embroidered on top of the light purple stitching, which is also nifty. Rather than just type about it, though, I'll actually post a couple of photos of it, so that you guys can look at them and then all post comments telling my mom how spiffy she is!

Here is the first photo of the crocheted Zelda, which doesn't show off the image in its entirety, but does show off how massive it is next to the 14-count Aida cloth version of it I stitched. I think that Mom made hers a lot faster than I got mine done, too, even taking into account that she made sweaters while working on this.

Here is another photo of it, without my cross stitch plopped over the bottom corner and obscuring part of the image. I guess that the only thing really blocked in the other one is part of the shield, but the shield looks really nice, so it seemed worth it to post a second photo.

Anyway, now that this is done, Mom gave it to me, and my current plan is to have it replace the Invader Zim throw blanket from Hot Topic that I've had for years and years. I like it quite a lot and said thank you several times, but I wanted to do a blog post about it, too, so I hope that you guys liked seeing it! I should be back within a couple of days with a standard patterns and rambling post, so, until then, I hope you're all doing well!

Four Sprite Patterns of King of Fighters Characters

2011-10-05T14:14:00.000-05:00

Hello! Lately, I have been pretty good about not going nuts and posting cross stitch patterns of characters from SNK fighting games every week, as those of you who've followed since the start of this blog know has been an issue in the past. In fact, since I posted a pattern of Rock, from Mark of the Wolves, and a finished piece of Chizuru, from the King of Fighters games, in May, this blog has been relatively SNK free. However, this was not a trend that I really wished to keep up, so today, I have four sprite patterns featuring some of the main characters from the King of Fighters series.

There are tons of characters from the games that I wanted to make, mostly so that I can stitch them, but as far as starting a new set of patterns went, it seemed like Kyo and Iori, the two most recognizable characters, would be a good place to start. Both of them were pretty fun to make, though I got irritated trying to get a nice looking sprite of Kyo's newer outfit and ended up going with the older, more traditional one, and I was pleased that, in the end, I got them both to look like the characters they represent. Once I had Kyo and Iori finished, though, I decided that while I was at it, I might as well cover the later main characters, too. Ash and K' were not nearly as easy to make as the other two had been, mainly because of Ash's Bumpit-tastic hair and K's belt-crazed biker outfit. I ended up being pretty pleased with these, too, since working on Final Fantasy VII patterns that got requested seems to have taught me a lot about dealing with weird hairstyles and excessive belts on leather. (Actually, I think that this means that without Tama, of Stitching Daze, these patterns would not be possible, since she'd made a lot of those requests, so I owe her an official Dork Stitch thank you!) Regardless of how well I like each of these patterns individually, however, I look forward to stitching them all, and if any of you guys like the King of Fighters games, I hope that you like them, too! In order to save paper, I've put two sprites on each chart.

Getting four new sprite patterns posted is more than I expected to do here today, so I'm going to sign off of Blogger, print these up, and go about the rest of my day! I'm hoping to do some more substantial patterns, or at least ones that you guys have actually asked for, soon, and, as always, I love getting pattern requests and seeing any finished work based on these patterns that you guys have made, regardless of your craft of choice! I hope that all of you are having nice weeks and doing well with your respective crafting endeavors.

Pokemon Monday #7: A Rather Abbreviated Post, Featuring Meowth

2011-10-03T23:05:00.000-05:00

Hello! Even though I do Pokemon Mondays on here because that's the night that I go and run the Pokemon League at the local comic store, I don't usually write too much about it, because I'm usually writing before I've actually gone. Tonight, however, one of my friends from junior high and high school came in to play cards, which was pretty spiffy. What was odd about it, though, was that she said she knew I'd be there because she recognized my handwriting on the league's poster in the front window. I never thought that my handwriting was very distinctive, but if someone who'd seen my handwriting occasionally years ago knew what it looked like from a few words scribbled in Sharpie, I guess that it must be. It was a little weird, but by no means negative.

Anyway, tonight I'm doing a late-night post for Pokemon Monday because I had substitute teaching today, about which I was actually very happy. Because of that, and the fact that I got too sleepy to do much pattern-making last night, however, I only have one cross stitch pattern. It is a portrait pattern of Meowth, at the request of Anonymous, which I find to be rather delightful, so if any of you out there are really fond of Meowth, it's your lucky day. If you're for some reason intensely irritated by Meowth, though, you're probably not going to like this post very well. It is a nice, moderately sized portrait pattern, though, with fairly subtle colors and a nice, cheerful look, so I think that it would be a nice enough project to make. Here is the pattern itself so that you guys can make your own judgement on it! The colors are simple enough that if you want to brighten them up, it should be easy to do, but I like them like this, so that's how I left it.

Well, now that I've told you guys a relatively pointless anecdote and posted a pattern of a Pokemon, it's time for me to end Pokemon Monday! I'm going to get to work on some more new cross stitch patterns for later in the week, though, so it won't be long until I post again! Until then, i hope that you guys have nice weeks and had a fairly good Monday.

A New Set of Tenchi Muyo Patterns Starts Tonight, Featuring Ryoko!

2011-10-01T23:24:00.000-05:00

Hello! Tonight I'm sort of sleepy, but I want to post to this blog anyway, so I hope you guys are ready for some incoherent rambling! I'm sort of hoping to keep my extraneous typing to a minimum tonight, since Durarara is on in about 25 minutes and I want to be done with this before then, but I'm usually not very successful at those sorts of endeavors, so that likely won't happen.

Anyway, I've wanted to post some new portrait-style cross stitch patterns here for quite a while now, and though I did have one of Cilan from Pokemon in Monday's post, it wasn't quite what I wanted to do, so I decided to start a set of them featuring the cast of Tenchi Muyo and its spinoffs. I realize that this is not something anyone requested, and I have not yet finished the portrait pattern sets for Clannad and Baccano. Tenchi Muyo, however, is a really good show, and I would like to cross stitch the characters from it, so this seems like a very good idea to me.

Tonight I'm starting the set of Tenchi Muyo portrait patterns with a cross stitch chart of Ryoko, since she seemed like a good character to start with. Even though she doesn't look too thrilled here, I really like how cartoony her expression is, so I think that it fits the show's animation style well, and the extreme shadows and highlights should make it interesting to stitch, too. It is a rather large pattern, but hopefully, it'll take a reasonable amount of time to complete and look nice in the end, too!

With Ryoko posted, I'm looking forward to making cross stitch patterns of the rest of the Tenchi girls, and, of course, Tenchi himself! Before and around the time of posting that, however, I plan to do a really nice Pokemon Monday post and, shockingly enough, try to fill some of the requests I've gotten in the last few weeks. Until then, however, I hope that you guys are having a good weekend and doing well with all of your crafting.

Pokemon Monday #6: Requested Patterns of Four Trainers

2011-09-26T14:31:00.000-05:00

Hello! It's Monday, so that means it's time for a new Pokemon themed post here at Dork Stitch, but this week, I don't have any new cross stitch patterns of actual Pokemon! I do, however, have a whole pile of requested patterns of Pokemon trainers from comments here and the blog's Facebook page, which I had a lot of fun making and am very happy with. (In a sidenote to Anonymous, I haven't forgotten the other thing you mentioned in last week's comment, but I am saving it for a themed post in the near future.)

The four trainers for today's post are Cilan, Iris, May, and Melody, from Pokemon the Movie 2000, and it was fairly nifty to make patterns for all of them. In order to add a bit of variety to today's post, I did make Cilan as a portrait pattern rather than the usual sprite, since he was the only one where a sprite pattern wasn't specifically requested, but I do plan to make a sprite pattern of him and a portrait pattern of Iris soon, so that post should look strangely familiar when it comes. (I have at least one portrait pattern of May in this blog's archives, if you're interested in stitching a larger image of her, too.) It was especially nice to make the smaller patterns of May and Iris, since that means that there's now a full set of Ash's female traveling companions posted here and ready to stitch, but it was fun to make one for Melody, too, so really, I had no problem at all with making the patterns in this post. To stop myself from typing an endless stream of nonsense, though, I'll start off with posting today's pattern, starting with the portrait of Cilan! The colors in the new season of Pokemon are really simplistic, without much shading or detail, so he should be very quick and easy to stitch.

Now that Cilan's posted, here are the three sprite patterns for today, featuring Iris, May, and Melody!

I have to say that, now that these patterns are posted, I'm sort of out of content for today, so I suppose that it's time to log off of here and print up these patterns to make for myself! I've been on a bit of a kick as far as stitching these sprite patterns goes, so I'm hoping to eventually get all three of them done. It shouldn't be more than a couple of days until I post here again, but until then, thank you for reading and have a nice week!

Hey, Hey, It's The Monkees- You Can Cross Stitch Them and Make it Look Like They're Monkeying Around

2011-09-24T17:16:00.000-05:00

Hello! Over the past week, I have not done as much blogging here as I would have liked to, mostly due in part to the fact that on the day when I intended to make more progress on the Clannad patterns set, I ended up making tiny patterns of characters from other anime and then not actually posting them. It was fun, but in terms of blogging, it wasn't exactly productive, so I'll have to try harder for next week. Today, however, I did a set of sprite patterns featuring the members of the Monkees, since I know all of you out there and reading this were dying to stitch some 60s sitcom/music projects (for me, it's actually won't be the first), so I decided to go ahead and post it.

Originally, I was going to make this set of patterns for my sister's birthday, but after some discussion, she decided that she wanted Isaac and Miria from Baccano (the patterns for which you'll probably see here eventually), Celty from Durarara, and then Mike Nesmith instead, which has, so far, been fun to work on. When I sat down today to make the pattern of Mike Nesmith, though, it seemed like it would be depressing to make a sprite pattern of him without the other three Monkees, no matter how similar to reality such a thing would be. With that in mind, I dug around Google image search until I found a photo of them in their red shirts and jeans, since that seemed representative of them, and got to sprite editing. It took a while to get them to look how I wanted them to, especially with Peter and Davy, but I think that, in the end, it turned out to be okay. You can decide for yourself, though, by looking at today's pattern. From left to right, the members are Peter, Mike, Davy, and Mickey, but I feel like if you've kept reading this for so long, you may have known that without my saying so.

With that posted, I don't have much more to say for today, though I hope that you guys do like the pattern! It was fun to make sprite patterns for real people, especially since it took a bit more effort to make them look right. Other than that, though, I should be back and posting again with a new Pokemon Monday on, oddly enough, Monday, and more nice posts throughout the week. I'm also considering doing another sprite patterns December, if people are interested in that, though that's pretty far off at this point. For now, I am going to get off of Blogger, but I hope that you guys have nice weekends and do well with your crafting stuff!

Pokemon Monday #5: Nurse Joy's Audino and a Sabrina Sprite

2011-09-19T22:47:00.000-05:00

Hello! First of all, I want to thank all the people who commented on my last post, since it was very nice of all of you, and I can't wait to look at all of your IHSW posts tomorrow, too. It's always really fun, but I spent today subbing for a junior high science class, which was quite a bit more difficult than a lot of substitute teaching I've done, so because of that, I'm doing this post quickly, getting offline, and heading out to the living room to watch Robotech until I'm ready to pass out. I don't at all want to miss a Pokemon Monday post, though, so I'm all ready to post two new cross stitch patterns for you guys, even though I'd be lying if I said I didn't plan to stitch these myself.

Just like the last few Pokemon Mondays have been, tonight I have a big pattern of a Pokemon and a small sprite pattern of a trainer, though some week, I'll have two big patterns, since there are a few trainers in particular I've been wanting to make. For tonight, though, there's nothing really out of the ordinary. The bigger pattern is a bit different from normal, since it's basically a portrait pattern of a Pokemon, but I was so fond of a screenshot I found of Nurse Joy's Audino that it seemed more fun to make a cross stitch pattern like that than a full body one, like the Gothorita and Swablu I posted. In terms of today's trainer, though, I decided to use a slightly more old fashioned character, so I have a sprite pattern for you of the first gen gym leader, Sabrina! For that, I ended up combining a few of her different character designs, so it's not exactly like any of them, but I think it looks enough like her, and it was fun to make, too. Before I've gone on for too long about either of these, though, I'll just post them so that you guys can print them and use them for crafts if you'd like!

Now that I've posted these patterns, I'm done blogging for tonight, since I don't think that anything I've said has made any sense at all. I'm hoping to post again very soon, though, with some more filled requests and other odd patterns, so hopefully, I'll be more coherent at that point. Also, if there are any Pokemon or trainers you'd like to see cross stitch patterns of in future Pokemon Monday posts, let me know, and I'll do my best to make something cool! Until then, have a nice week and have fun with whatever crafts you might be doing!

IHSW September, Featuring a Lot of Sprites From My Own Patterns

2011-09-18T23:16:00.000-05:00

Hello! It's the end of the third weekend of another month, so it's time to post the stuff I stitched during another International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, as hosted by Joyze at Random Ramblings! I didn't do very well with the hermit part of it, since I was gone most of Saturday, but I feel like I did pretty well with the stitching part of things, or at least better than I expected to do. Earlier in the week, I'd just finished one of my big projects, so for the weekend, I decided to just stitch things based on the sprite patterns that I always bombard you guys with on this blog. I was feeling very positive about them, for reasons that you'll see at the end of this post, so it was easy to get through a pile of them, so I'll go ahead and show you the first four for this blog post now!

These may have been rather odd choices for a set of cross stitches, since they don't really go together at all, but, from left to right, the characters stitched here are Renge from Ouran High School Host Club, Adell from Disgaea 2, Maya from Dragon Quest IV, and Regina from Dino Crisis. Renge and Adell are relatively recent patterns, which I think shows in the level of detail I fit in compared to the other two, while Maya and Regina's sprites are from last December. I'm pretty happy with all of them, though, and managed to stitch all of them starting early Saturday evening and finishing before ten tonight. Plus, any time that I get to stitch a character who runs around shooting velociraptors while I watch the Emmy awards is fine with me. (Regina's pattern isn't posted, but if you also like Dino Crisis and want to stitch her, let me know, and I'll get it posted for you!)

The fifth sprite that I have to post for today doesn't really fit under the IHSW banner, since I did the outline on Thursday and filled her in on Friday, but I also stitched my very recent pattern of Celty from Durarara for my sister, so I figured that I might as well post that, too! The dark gray glitter floss that I used for her leather outfit may have been a bit much, but the final product looks cool, so I'm not sure I care. The motorcycle helmet was kind of cool, too, since it pretty clearly differentiates her from the other sprite patterns.

All five of these were stitched onto perforated plastic canvas, so, before I go for tonight, I sort of want to show off why that's usually my fabric of choice for projects like this! I've posted photos of my cross stitch standees on here before, which are all made using the plastic, but earlier this week, I got a fairly large amount of ones based on my sprite patterns cut out and set up, so if you ever wanted to see what thirteen of them look like organized like a grade school class photo, here's your chance!

One way or another, I think that I've posted all thirteen of these finishes on here before, so I'll leave a link to my post of this on Deviant Art for people who want to know who all of the characters are, but I always like to see what people do with their stitchings after they're done, so I thought it might be sort of interesting to show off the figurines I make of mine. This is what's going to happen to the ones I posted tonight, so when I get another big set of them done, I'll post another photo like this one!

Now that I'm done writing about all of this weekend's stitching, I'm off to work on the patterns for tomorrow's Pokemon Monday post! I'm going to be substitute teaching for a junior high science class tomorrow, which'll be followed by the Pokemon League session itself, so it'll be a bit of a late post, but hopefully, you guys will like the new patterns! I'm hoping to get some other nice posts done this week, too, but until then, have a nice Monday!

A Really Big Cross Stitch Pattern of (Not a Princess) Link

2011-09-14T14:06:00.000-05:00

Hello! Even though it's been over a year since I posted it, the monochrome pattern I did of Princess Zelda is one of this blog's most-stitched patterns, so today, after some requests and my decision to finally stop being so slow about the whole thing, I have a matching pattern of Link. In a shocking move, I made the executive decision that, rather than sitting down to draw a fan art of Twilight Princess Link somehow simultaneously shrouded in shadow and surrounded by flames while waving Ganon's head in the air as the basis for today's pattern, I would go the previously-untraveled-by-this-blog cute path and use some of the character art from The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures instead. It seemed to me that having a cheerful adventurer type of Link would match Zelda well, even though this was, alarmingly, based on an image of Blue Link. If you're enough of a purist to be bothered by that, though, just stitch him in blue and ignore my suggestion of green entirely.

While making this, I wanted to make sure that it was similar in size to the monochrome Princess Zelda pattern, so even though the width is a bit different, Link and Zelda are the same height, so they'll be suitable for displaying together. I think that they should probably be about the same amount of work to finish, too, which, depending on your patience level in regards to monochrome projects, is either good news or information that ensures you will never stitch it. Either way, though, I think that this pattern came out pretty well, and I hope that you guys like it and enjoy stitching it! Just under a year and a half after the monochrome Zelda cross stitch pattern was posted, here is a matching monochrome Link.

Now that Link is posted and all ready to be crafted by whoever might like to, it's time to feature some reader work, courtesy of Deviant Art's RuinedRhedam! Her lovely piece, featuring stitching based on three of this blog's Final Fantasy VII sprite patterns, features a lot of fancy extra detail, including a game logo that she got from the always spiffy Gatchacaz (whose blog is here and whose website is here) and some nifty looking self-designed lettering. What I found really impressive about this whole project, though, is how symmetrical the whole thing is. She gave Sephiroth a well-designed weapon to match Cloud's, mirroring his sprite's design, and plopped Vincent in the middle, looking unarmed and as if he might think his cross stitched companions are trying a bit too hard to look dangerous. In order to see a full-sized image of this stitching, check out RuinedRhedam's Deviant Art posting of it, but for now, please enjoy this lovely thumbnail!

With today's post typed up and over with, I'm off to do something else for a bit, but I should be back soon to post something in regards to the upcoming International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, hosted by Joyze at Random Ramblings. I'm hoping to have some new patterns soon, too, so that ought to be interesting to post about as well! Until then, I hope you guys have a good day or multiple good days, and always welcome requests and photos of finished versions of this blog's patterns!

Pokemon Monday #4: Snivy and Misty's Sisters

2011-09-12T15:25:00.000-05:00

Hello! It's another Monday, so it's time for another Pokemon post here at Dork Stitch, and since it's not a holiday, I'm actually getting the post done in a rather timely fashion! Like every week, I have a Pokemon cross stitch pattern and a trainer themed sprite pattern, though things are slightly different for today. A few months ago, I started a set of patterns for the new set of starter Pokemon, featured in Black and White, and even though I intended to get it done in a reasonable amount of time, I posted Oshawott, got a Tepig done a few months later, and then sort of forgot about it. For today's post, however, Snivy had been mentioned in some recent comments, so I figured that I might as well finish off the set. In the likely event that someone wanted to stitch Snivy without bothering with the other two starters, I did my best to make sure that it was a nice standalone pattern, so hopefully, you guys will find it to be an appropriate representation. It should be easy to stitch, too, with only a few colors, and if you don't want it for the set or anything, the background can be left out fairly easily, too. Rather than just type about the Snivy pattern, though, I suppose I'll post it!

With that up and ready to stitch (or whatever your craft may be), I have to admit that today's sprite pattern, featuring Misty's three sisters, has very little to do with the Pokemon pattern at all. If I wanted to stretch it, I guess I could just say that it works because Snivy is green and one of them has a green swimsuit, but really, I just like the old episodes of the Pokemon cartoon and wanted to make some characters from it. This pattern was pretty fun to make, since I don't usually fiddle around with multi-character sprite patterns, but in order to recreate an old Topps trading card I have, I decided to use some of the side view sprites in order to get all three of the sisters lined up properly. I like how it came out pretty well, though, so, with that in mind, here's a sprite pattern of the sisters of Cerulean City for your crafting joy!

Right now, I am inexplicably running out of steam, but before I go, I want to feature a couple of nifty new stitched sprites from The Stitching Reaper. Last week, I wrote about the start of her nifty set of Sailor Moon cross stitches, and the other day, she finished a couple more of them! Her most recent stitched scouts are Sailor Venus and Sailor Pluto, and though I'm sure that I'm quite biased towards this project, I think that they look really well stitched, bright, and cheerful! The images below are just thumbnails, but if you check out her blog, linked above, you can see larger photos of these and a really pretty stitched geisha, too.

In the interest of not getting so frustrated with Blogger that I throw the computer on the floor, I think that I am going to be finished with this post now! As always, requests are very welcome, as are photos of finished work, but for now, I'm off! I hope all of you have a good day, and I should be posting again very soon.

Cross Stitch Sprite Pattern Dumping Day, With Durarara, Disgaea, Ocarina of Time, and Vocaloid Charts

2011-09-09T14:42:00.000-05:00

Hello! The last time that I posted here, I wrote about a ton of work from readers, a lot of which was based on the sprite patterns I've been posting for a little bit under the last year. Since I'm not very focused, this made me want to sit around and make tons of sprite patterns so that I could stitch them later, which is a bit of what I've been doing for the past few days. I haven't stitched any of them yet, since I'm trying to actually finish a larger project that I'm working on, and none of these, save for one that had been mentioned months ago, are requests, but here are five new Phantasy Star II style cross stitch sprite patterns for your crafting enjoyment!

The first pattern up for today is the one that I've been wanting to make for the longest period of time, featuring Vocaloid Kaito. When I first started making these patterns, the Vocaloids were the first thing I'd done, since I'd been seeing them a lot online and their designs looked distinct and fun to stitch. Tons of them got posted on Christmas last year, but because they were my first sprite pattern project, a few of the characters, most notably Kaito, were missing due to my lack of practice and skill. Every once in a while, I'd go back and try to make a nice sprite for him, but I just kept messing up and not getting it quite right. Today, however, I decided that I was sick of screwing around with it and made up my mind that, before I did my post for today, I would have a presentable and cool Kaito pattern. After a longer than usual time spent moving pixels and colors around to get things just right, I think I finally got it! Without any further ado, here is a pattern of Vocaloid Kaito, ready to stitch or bead or whatever you want to do with it.

The next two charts in today's sprite pattern lineup are both of characters from Durarara, which were designed to stitch for my sister's upcoming birthday. She wants a couple of Baccano ones, too, and I imagine that she wants those more, but when I turned the computer on last night, I really wanted to do a sprite pattern of Celty, so these got done first. The pattern of Shizuo is probably the most detailed one I've got for today, both because his hair was complicated and seemed to require backstitching to get even remotely right and because I wanted him to have that vending machine he throws in the opening credits for good measure. In contrast, Celty is tied for the second least complicated of the day, since it looks like the motorcycle helmet should be a little easier to stitch than the standard face is, though I'm not sure why that would be. That makes her pattern pretty different from the others, though, which should make her interesting to stitch. Before I've typed too much about technicalities, though, here are Celty and Shizuo!

The next pattern for today is of Saria, from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and I actually don't have much to say about this one. I had a lot of different patterns of Princess Zelda, so I thought I should have one of Saria, too, and she was pretty easy to make. I should have a large and fancy pattern of Link posted soon, but for now, please enjoy this tiny pattern of Saria.

Today's last pattern is probably the least exciting of the five, featuring Adell from Disgaea 2, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out, so I decided to post it anyway! A while ago, I had a pattern of Rozalin posted, and I wanted to make her, but it seemed like it would be more fun to stitch her if I had another sprite pattern to match, so I ended up making Adell. When I first started working on this pattern, I really hated it and thought that it looked really stupid, but as it is now, I think that it actually looks like the character! He's sort of a boring character, as far as Disgaea goes, but it does seem to look like him. Here's the pattern, though, so you can decide for yourself if there's any resemblance to the in-game character design or not.

With those five patterns posted, I'm out of pointless new content for today, but I have a lot of requests to do and some other patterns I'd like to make, too, so it shouldn't be too long before I post again! If you stitch anything based on these patterns or have any requests, I will do my best to address that in good time, but until then, have a good weekend and good luck with all your crafting!

Two New Sprite Patterns and a Ton of Work From Readers

2011-09-06T23:34:00.000-05:00

Hello! I was working on stuff for this blog this afternoon, but still felt a tiny bit off, like I did while I was posting last night. After a few hours of playing Disgaea 2 and some really good chocolate ice cream, though, I'm ready for a substantial post here at Dork Stitch, with some new He-Man and Sailor Moon sprite patterns and three really cool photos of work done based on previous patterns!

Before I actually post today's patterns, I'd like to address a few request/comments I got, since I'm not sure how to respond to the comments directly. In response to Moje, who commented over the weekend, I do have a cat pattern which I've recently finished test stitching. There are a couple of changes I'd like to make to it, so it won't be up tonight, but it should be posted relatively soon! As for the comment made by Anonymous yesterday, who I think is probably the same one I've heard from on other Pokemon Mondays, I hadn't really meant any small green Pokemon in particular, since I just like grass types, but Snivy is cool, so I'll have one next Monday!

With that all done with, it's time to post today's patterns, which cover two previous requests and feature Sailor Moon's Tuxedo Mask and He-Man's Teela! I made these this afternoon, and though I sort of had the mindset that they'd both come out looking weird and bad, I ended up being pretty happy with them, so I hope you guys are, too! I don't have much specific to say about either of these, other than that Tuxedo Mask takes a bit more backstitching than normal and that Teela has the same gold floss listed as She-Ra, making her an ideal candidate for more usage of gold floss. Other than that, though, these should be very similar to the other dozens of sprite patterns posted here, so hopefully, they're what you guys were expecting!

With those patterns posted, it's time to move on to some nifty photos of work by Dork Stitch readers, starting with a Perler project from virtual pet enthusiast and writer at Tamagotchi Diaries, Aurons_Girl! I don't feel that I've made any secret of the fact that I very much enjoy watching True Blood, with the upcoming season's finale putting that in the forefront of my mind, so I was thrilled to see her Perlered (if that's even close to a word) rendition of my old pattern of Bill Compton enjoying an old fashioned golf game on his Wii! Her beadwork is very nice, with spot on colors and intensely even ironing, and, even though this isn't part of the piece, I like how it looks against the wood grain, too. If you'd like to see a full sized version of this craft, visit it at Aurons_Girl's flickr page, but here's a slightly smaller version for your viewing enjoyment!

The next featured work for today comes from the sinister sounding, but, as far as I can tell, very cool and polite, Stitching Reaper, who's been cross stitching some Sailor Moon characters based on the sprite patterns from here! I definitely recommend checking out her blog, The Stitching Reaper, if you get the chance, since she's done some really nice Sailor Moon stitching from Alcanurewen's patterns and posted progress shots of several WIPs, too, but for now, here are some spiffy cross stitches of Sailor Moon, Sailor Mars, and Sailor Neptune, all looking very bright and pretty on 14-count perforated plastic canvas, which makes me want to get some out and stitch a pile of sprites, too. As always, if you want to see the full version of her photo, you have to go to her blog, but here is her work in most of its glory!

Our last featured stitcher for today is Stitching Daze's Tama, who seems to have more focus and energy directed towards stitching in one day than I do in an entire week. If you've ever visited her blog, you'd see that not only does she stitch tons of the sprites from here, but she also has a battalion of very fancy and detailed projects that she puts tons of time and effort into! I'd easily recommend reading it, but for now, I'd like to turn my attention towards the two newest additions to her sprite collection, She-Ra and Rinoa! Both of them as as well stitched as ever, and her work with the gold floss on She-Ra is really excellent, especially considering what a pain metallic floss is to use. The pink border is cute, too, and though it has nothing to do with Tama's stitching, I quite like it. Here are her new stitchings, though, just waiting to be stared at both here and on her blog!

After all of that, I think I've had my fill of blogging for the night, though it probably helps my quitting that I'm out of content for now. While I was writing about the finished projects, though, I got really excited about making and stitching more sprite patterns, so you guys will probably have a few more of those to put up with in the next couple of days. Aside from that, however, I still have plenty of larger requests that I plan to complete, along with whatever I end up getting distracted by and posting about, so I should be posting pretty frequently for the time being! Until I'm here again next, though, I hope all of you are having good weeks and excellent luck with your craft projects!

Pokemon Monday #3: Generation Three and a Splash of Blue!

2011-09-05T22:50:00.000-05:00

Hello! Even though this is a Pokemon Monday post, I'd like to begin by apologizing for a lack of features today. If you've finished some crafts based on Dork Stitch patterns and I said you'd be featured in this post, you can expect to see your work here tomorrow or on Wednesday! I'm sort of lazy and getting driven up the wall by allergies today, so I get the feeling that, even though I love all of the stuff I've seen and am set to write about, if I did it tonight, I'd go, "Yeah, yeah, whatever, it's nice, isn't it?" even though I think much more than that. Because of that, I've seen fit to move it to the next post, which shouldn't be very far off at all!

As for the actual Pokemon Monday part of this post, which I hope has a title much in the spirit of Pokemon's cartoon, I have, as per the last two weeks, a new cross stitch pattern of a Pokemon and a sprite pattern of a trainer for you, though today's choices might be a bit odd. Today's Pokemon is Swablu, for no reason other than that I think it's cute and puffy looking. The pattern I made for it is a bit different from the last two in that I used a screenshot from the anime as the basis, so that it looked a little less static than it otherwise would have, but I don't think that'll make much of a difference. It's not a terribly large pattern, and the color count is relatively low, so it should be fun and easy to stitch! I'm considering making it myself, to match a Wingull that I put on plastic canvas, but since that's a fairly irrelevant statement, I'll quit typing and just put up Swablu's cross stitch chart!

As for the Pokemon trainer sprite pattern to be included in this post, I actually had quite a bit of trouble choosing a character to use! I'm not going to list who my options were, since that would doubtlessly lead to frustration that I chose the character I did, but after determining that, although she has no clear connection to the Pokemon, Ruby/Sapphire's Elite Four trainer Phoebe would look nice next to a Swablu, she became the clear choice for tonight's post. I actually haven't done too many sprite patterns of summery outfits or beachwear, so it was sort of interesting to try that, but I don't think she came out too badly! You can judge for yourself by looking at the pattern right here.

With these patterns of Phoebe and Swablu, another Pokemon Monday here at Dork Stitch has drawn to a close, but if there are any Pokemon or trainers that you'd like to see in next week's post, let me know! As you can tell from this post, things get a little obscure if I'm left to my own devices, but doing requests is fun, too, so I'm happy either way. I should be back with another, less regimented post within a couple of days, but, until then, I hope your weeks have gotten off to good starts!

A Fighting Game Style Cross Stitch Pattern of a Clannad Girl, With a Bonus Vocaloid!

2011-08-30T13:49:00.000-05:00

Hello! I know that I just posted here yesterday, but I figured that since I'd made more progress on the set of Clannad cross stitch patterns and found a special bonus pattern to post, I might as well write again today! I was going to post a standard portrait pattern for Kotomi, since I started rather unsuccessfully working on her on Sunday, with a new Baccano pattern and several games of Super Collapse being what I made the most progress on that afternoon. She's about half done, though, so it shouldn't be too long before her pattern pops up. For today, though, I have a pattern of Tomoyo that I was really excited about making, even though it doesn't at all match what I did for Nagisa and Fuko.

When I found out that Tomoyo was a character that fights a lot, it seemed to me like the perfect opportunity to make a pattern for her in the style of a sprite from a Neo Geo fighting game. To be fair, I'm not sure that anything is actually the perfect opportunity to do such a project, but it seemed like fun, so, last night, I sat down and worked on it until I was ready to pass out at the computer desk. I think that I got it looking fairly accurate, since I got it down to a proper size (110 pixels tall), the right amount of colors (15, with the last spot reserved for transparent pixels in games), and, with the help of some sprites from real Neo Geo games, got some sort of approximation of the style I was going for. It was a lot of fun to work on this pattern, and, since I like stitching fighting game sprites, I'm hoping that it'll be fun to make, too. There's not as much room to alter the colors as there is in most of my patterns, but one of the things that I like about this style is how much detail can be shoved into a pattern with a relatively small number of colors by reusing them in different areas. I actually considered doing a Player 2 type of color edit for her, but since I haven't lost my mind quite that much yet, please enjoy this Neo Geo style pattern of Tomoyo, looking quite snappy in her default color scheme!

Now that Tomoyo is posted, I do have, as promised earlier in this post, a special bonus pattern which a few of you may have seen before over at 1337xstitch. It's the first pattern that I made to look like a Neo Geo fighting game sprite, featuring the Vocaloid Miku Hatsune, and, even though it was a collaboration with the mysterious ACL, who did a preliminary simplification of the image that had been requested, I still really enjoyed making the pattern, which, on my part, basically involved consolidating the colors and touching up some pixels, to get it down to 16 colors, and it was just as fun to cross stitch. Since I thought back to it quite a bit while working on Tomoyo's pattern, I figured that I might as well post it here today. Since the pattern's editable file is lost on a completely non-functioning PC's hard drive, the format I'm going to post it in is a bit odd, but hopefully, it's still completely functional.

Here is an image of what the project looks like when completed, as stitched by me, with more explanation of what I did and a link to the lettering's chart available on my Deviant Art page.

Here is the cross stitch chart itself, which looks a bit daunting here, but prints up on one sheet of paper quite nicely! If you click on this (or the key), it'll take you to a full sized version of them for more convenience.

Last, but perhaps most importantly, is the pattern's key, so that you actually know what colors are involved in this pattern! It has a bit of information about the pattern on it, too, but if you read this blog regularly, you know how much I love typing for paragraphs on end, so that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Anyway, I've gotten two fairly large patterns posted today, which is more than I usually do, so I'm not distressed about the outcome of this afternoon. I'm still working on all of the pattern requests I've gotten lately, so I should be back and posting again with at least one of them pretty soon. Until then, however, if you have any requests or finished versions of this blog's patterns in the craft of your choosing, let me know and I'll do my best to address the new information I've received right here on this blog!

Pokemon Monday #2: Gothorita and Bianca

2011-08-29T13:33:00.000-05:00

Hello! Last Monday, when I first decided to institute Pokemon Mondays here at Dork Stitch, I had been somehow convinced that every comment on the post would be something along the lines of, "Oh, come on! We don't care if you run a Pokemon League on Monday nights! Go play your dumb card game and get this rubbish off of our screens!" However, considering that all of you watching this blog have managed to not only put up with it, but be polite about the whole thing when I decide to completely ignore what people like and/or care about and post cross stitch patterns of characters from obscure Neo Geo games,I shouldn't have been worried about the reception to posting Pokemon cross stitch patterns. Because of this, I'm back for a second Pokemon Monday, with two new patterns and a piece of finished work from a reader that actually has nothing to do with Pokemon!

Just like last week, I have a big, somewhat fancy pattern of a Pokemon and a Phantasy Star II style sprite pattern of one of the trainers. Thanks to an anonymous commenter, who has in all likelihood saved you guys from a pattern of a tiny grass Pokemon, today I have a pattern of Gothorita, and thanks to my having already made the pattern, today's trainer is Bianca, one of the rivals from Black/White. Both of the patterns were pretty fun to make, and I'd actually like to stitch them both at some point, but I hope you guys like them, too! If any of you have any Pokemon or trainers you'd like to see next Monday, or on any Monday in the future, just leave a comment about it and I'll see what I can do. Until then, here are some cross stitch patterns for Gothorita and Bianca!

Since the patterns portion of this post is done with, it's time to turn our attention towards some spiffy and creative stitching from Dork Stitch reader Kamryn, who's going through the Clannad patterns like nobody's business! (Speaking of those, I started a new one yesterday, so it ought to be up later this week!) Her new, and excellently stitched work is based on the dango pattern from a few weeks back, which she not only cross stitched, but also turned into a cute light switch cover! Though the project is certainly a testament to the power of clear nail polish, which she used to prevent unraveling threads and fabric, and customizable light switch plates, it's also a really cool idea and an interesting and fun way to display finished stitching. I haven't seen stitching used this way before, but I think that it looks really cute.

Even though I'm caffeinated enough that I could sit here and type for several more hours, I'm actually out of things to say in regards to this blog for the moment, so I'd better go before I've posted an entire paragraph on the jigsaw puzzles stacked up on top of my scanner or something like that. I should be back with new patterns sometime relatively soon, though, so until then, good luck with all of your crafting and have a good day!

A Pattern of Monkey D. Luffy, Ready For Some Cross Stitching

2011-08-25T23:14:00.000-05:00

Hello! I haven't done a nighttime post here in quite a while, but after I made the pattern for today this afternoon, I felt like my ability to form complete sentences had somehow vanished into the ether, so it seemed like my best option was to wait. Today, however, I've actually filled a cross stitch pattern request rather than doing something weird like usual, featuring Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece! I'd originally intended to have it done late last week, but I ended up getting distracted and doing the new Final Fantasy VIII patterns and Pokemon Monday instead. (By the way, I got a request to do Gothorita for the next Pokemon Monday, thanks to an anonymous commenter, and am quite excited about making a pattern for her!) Hopefully, though, those weren't a waste of time, and I hope Luffy is up to par, too.

I haven't seen One Piece in a really long time, not since I watched one of the movies a few years ago, so I was actually pretty excited to work on the pattern of Luffy. I wasn't sure what to do or what was expected, so if you guys want a sprite pattern of him, let me know and I'll make one of those, too. For today, though, I decided to make a portrait of him looking really cheerful and enthusiastic, since that seemed appropriate for the character. It was really fun to make, since it was almost like charting something based on a coloring book, and I think it turned out fairly well, too. It's a bit larger than the Clannad and Baccano patterns, but since Luffy's character design is relatively simple, it shouldn't take much longer to stitch than those do. There's a bit of backstitching on this, too, but nothing too fancy, so it shouldn't cause too much trouble! Before I go on too long, though, here is the pattern!

Though I'm pretty pleased with how this pattern came out, there are a couple of other options for stitching Luffy available online, both in a petite and chibi form, from Anime Stitching's Dawn, which can be found on her website, here, and in an ambitious and detailed form, from the formerly prolific LittleMojo, hosted on 1337xstitch. I've seen both of them stitched before, and they look really cool, so they're definitely worth checking out if you're looking for a nice One Piece pattern.

I'm sort of sleepy right now, and I of want to go watch an episode of Robotech before bed, so I'm done blogging for now! I hope to be back soon with more patterns, though, so until then, I hope all of you are doing well and get through the weekend safely, specifically in regards to readers on the eastern coast of the US, though I do hope for everyone else reading's safety, too.

Pokemon Cross Stitch Patterns Monday, Featuring Munna and Erika

2011-08-22T15:12:00.000-05:00

Hello! I've been posting a lot lately, though I'm sure that's not really a problem, as far as posting patterns and photos goes, and I hope to keep posting a lot of new stuff as this blog keeps going. This afternoon, however, I was doing some clerical stuff for the chapter of the Pokemon TCG/video game league I've been running, and it seemed to me like it would be fun to, as long as I'm doing a lot of other Pokemon stuff on Mondays, use the day of the week for Pokemon themed posts here at Dork Stitch! I know a lot of people like to cross stitch Pokemon, so it's not like I'm having a weekly Neo Geo Battle Coliseum cross stitch patterns day every week (though that would be really fun for me), and I like making the patterns, too, so it's not really a problem for me. I don't really think there's that much about Pokemon Mondays to explain, though, so I guess I'll just get on with posting some patterns!

It seems like, as far as doing a balanced post goes, it would be best to post a cross stitch pattern of a Pokemon and one of a Pokemon trainer, so for today, I have a big pattern of Munna, ideal for needlepoint, and a sprite pattern of gym leader Erika. I picked Munna for today's Pokemon mostly because I think it's cute, though I know that my sister despises it. I've thought that having a pink Pokemon with a floral pattern was a good idea ever since it was mentioned in the first set of games, though, and having it be round and float through the air doesn't hurt its image, either. About as much thought went into my picking Erika as today's trainer. The biggest appeal for me in Erika's pattern was that I already had it done, since I'd really wanted to do a sprite pattern with a kimono a while ago but didn't really have a reason to post it. I do like grass Pokemon, though, so she's one of my preferred gym leaders, making her a natural choice for this blog's patterns.

Since this is the first Dork Stitch Pokemon Monday, these patterns are all I have for now, so I guess I'll go and do something else now. If there are any Pokemon or trainers you'd like to see in the coming weeks, though, let me know in the comments! Hopefully, I'll be posting again pretty soon with some non-Pokemon pattern requests and whatever other stuff I come up with.

The End of International Hermit and Stitch Weekend

2011-08-21T22:58:00.000-05:00

Hello! Just as I threatened yesterday, tonight I'm posting a wrap-up of my stitching and participation in Joyze of Random Ramblings' International Hermit and Stitch Weekend! If I were a smart or practical stitcher, I would have used this weekend to try my best to make a lot of progress on one of the many stitching projects that I'm currently trying to complete. However, I really, really wanted to stitch something fluffy and cute, so I decided to dig through the patterns I'd made and stitch a Vocaloid instead. I chose a pattern of Meiko, based on the Vocaloid event that happened at TinierMe a while ago (and wasn't at all as threatening or earth shattering as I just made it sound) that I'd made for this blog at least a few months ago because it required a lot of backstitching and that seemed like it would be fun. I actually don't have too much to say about this, so I guess I'll just post the photo and finish the post. This lovely Meiko was stitched on 14-count Aida cloth with all sorts of embroidery floss brands over the course of one weekend!

Now that my stitching for the weekend is posted, I suppose I'm done for now, though I'll be back rather soon with a variety of new patterns! As always, if you have any pattern requests or have finished any of the patterns previously posted here, let me know, and I'll do my best to waste webspace based on the information you give me. Until then, however, I hope your week gets started with a complete lack of disastrous incidents!

Two New Final Fantasy VIII Sprite Patterns, Completing the Main Party!

2011-08-20T15:54:00.000-05:00

Hello! It's been a few days since I last posted here, so I probably should have shown up with more to show for my non-posting days than two new sprite patterns. There are a lot of requests that I still plan to fill, including some new requests for Link and Monkey D. Luffy, more Clannad portrait patterns, and more sprite patterns for He-Man and She-Ra. This afternoon, however, I made a bit of new progress on the set of Final Fantasy VIII patterns, so I figured that I'd post those if I had them finished and ready to go anyway. Today's two new patterns in the set feature Zell and Quistis, and I'm actually pretty happy with how both of them came out, even if my mind was momentarily boggled by the prospect of pixelling Zell's bizarre outfit. Now that these two are done, though, the game's entire main party is all charted up and ready to cross stitch! I got Rinoa and Squall posted earlier this month, and had Irvine and Selphie done months ago, with all of those patterns easily found under the magical Final Fantasy VIII tag on this blog's sidebar. In order to find the patterns for Zell and Quistis, however, all you have to do is look directly below this text block!

Even though this completes the main party from Final Fantasy VIII, I still plan to do several more sprite patterns for the game, with the list of characters I'd like to make being so long that it would look sort of ridiculous here. Hopefully, they'll work out well as cross stitch patterns, though, and it won't be too long before they get posted!

Since today's patterns are posted, it's time to move on to featuring some finished work based on this blog's patterns, starting with some new cross stitches from Tama! Not too long ago, she'd said she was out of my sprite patterns to stitch, which ultimately led to the revitalization of the Final Fantasy VIII sprite patterns set. Possibly because of this, one of her new stitched sprites features Squall, which, I have to say, looks much better than I expected it to when stitched, especially with Tama's usual nice stitching as the basis for the finished product. However, Squall has made an unexpected, and perhaps under-dressed friend in the form of He-Man, who looks very spiffy next to his jacketed companion, maybe because both of them use quite a few belts in their outfits. It's probably best if you disregard my expert commentary and just enjoy Tama's nifty stitching, though! Full versions of these photos can be seen at her previously linked blog, but here is a smaller image of her work.

In a development that is somewhat unexpected, I too have finished one of the patterns I posted here, having needlepointed the dango from Clannad. I actually made the pattern for my own purposes, since I like needlepointing blobby and cute stuff, with it being mere coincidence that it actually fit into one of the sets I've been working on posting. Regardless of why I made the pattern or what set it belongs to, though, I enjoyed switching every color in my design, deciding not to use it for an actual cross stitch project, and then needlepointing it with craft thread on plastic canvas so that it can eventually be pinned to my wall. A bigger version of this image and additional comments can be seen on my Deviant Art page, but you won't really miss much detail if you just look at it here.

Seeing as my current inability to throw together a sentence has made this blog post take much longer to write than it normally would, I no longer want to continue writing it. The fact that I'm out of new content today is a factor, too, but since the first excuse sounds more dramatic, I think that'll be my official line for today. Tomorrow or Monday, however, I'm going to post the results of my taking part in Joyze's International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, and it won't be too long after that when I post some more spiffy new cross stitch patterns! Until then, however, I hope you're all having good weekends that are just as productive (or unproductive) as you'd like them to be!

The Baccano Pattern Set Continues and a Reader Stitches Something Very Quickly

2011-08-15T14:57:00.000-05:00

Hello! I am not very focused today, so I actually first considered making the post that you're currently reading about an hour and fifteen minutes ago. However, a combination of job applications, online games, and the fact that Head is currently showing on Antenna TV (though it'll likely be over before I'm done posting here) have conspired to make me get this done really, really slowly. Now that I'm actually typing, however, I think that I should be able to get today's new pattern and impressive piece of reader work posted in a decent amount of time!

As the title for today's post has probably rightly led you to believe, the Dork Stitch cross stitch pattern for the post features a cast member of Baccano, though I'm not sure that this pattern set is going to stay in my current project rotation. I've been working on quite a few patterns based on the character portraits in the opening credits, so that I can stitch a three by three grid of the characters at a 50 by 50 stitch size, which means that I do have plenty of them to post and don't plan on shielding them all from the world for any reason. Because all of them have been reduced from a television screen's resolution to 50 by 50 stitches, however, it's been a little difficult to get them as nice as I'd like them to be, meaning that as I work on stitching them, I'm making corrections to the patterns so that they look better when I post them here. That means that they'll pop up more slowly than the set of Clannad patterns, which I'm fairly confident about, and the sprite patterns, which don't have as much detail that can get screwed up. Of course, seeing as I'm not sure anyone cares about these patterns, this may all be an unnecessary block of text, but I figured that I might as well type it anyway.

Anyway, even though I have a pile of Baccano patterns charted up and, for all intents and purposes, ready to go, the only one that I've had a chance to stitch most of is Firo, so he gets to be featured today. I do have to say that it got stitched first because it's my favorite of the set so far, since the whole hat-tipping thing seems rather spiffy. From what I've done of this, however, I can also say that he's pretty easy to stitch, with the outline somehow working in a way that guaranteed I didn't make many counting mistakes (which I do often), and he goes pretty quickly, too. If you want to adjust the monochrome, which is green here, it should be pretty easy to do, so there's also plenty of room for customization. Before I've gone on about this lovely cross stitch pattern for too much longer, though, here is Firo's chart, all ready for whatever craft you prefer!

Since today's pattern is posted and ready to go, it's time to feature some reader stitching, brought to us today by Kamryn! If you remember the last time I posted Baccano patterns, which I think was a couple of weeks ago, her WIP photo of Nagisa, from Clannad, was featured towards the end of that post, looking very spiffy and tidy. A few days ago, however, she e-mailed me a photo of her finished version of Nagisa, and it looks excellent! The stitching is near perfect, and I'm still impressed by how quickly she was finished. Regardless of all of my chatter about it, though, here is a photo of Kamryn's Nagisa, looking quite nifty and well made.

Since I've posted a new pattern and a photo of some finished work, the general order of posts on this blog now mandates that I've completed this post! I should be back with more content and some less disjointed writing soon, though, featuring more sprite patterns in the Final Fantasy VIII and He-Man sets. Until then, I hope you have good luck with your crafting and a generally okay week!

The Third Cross Stitch Pattern in the Clannad Set Appears Today

2011-08-09T14:01:00.000-05:00

Hello! In starting my post for today, I don't really feel like I have too much to explain before I get going, especially since I pretty much just said what was going to be here in the post's title. It isn't by any means the worst thing that's ever happened, but really, if I'd just been a little more creative when coming up for a title, you guys would be getting a much more interesting and informative introductory paragraph than you are right now. This, however, is all I can do for you right now, so I suppose I just ought to quit typing and get on with the post.

As you already may have guessed, today's cross stitch pattern here at Dork Stitch features another character from Clannad, following the recent patterns of Nagisa and the dango mascots. I don't know as much about the anime as I ought to, considering that I'm doing patterns for the entire cast, so they're not in any particular order. Today, however, the featured cast member is Fuko, since I thought she seemed charming and delightful. The pattern is a bit different from Nagisa's, which I hope can keep things interesting for any of you who've decided to stitch more than one of these patterns. Before I could visit my archives and look at things, though, I'd been a little worried that Fuko's pattern would look way to similar to one of the ones I'd made of Miyuki, from Lucky Star. Once I had a chance to look at both of them together, I felt a little better, since the two patterns certainly aren't identical, but they are similar enough that I think stitching them together could look sort of cute. Regardless of the older Lucky Star pattern, however, here is Clannad's Fuko, all charted up out and ready to be crafted! She should be fairly easy to make, since the only really detailed part of the pattern is her blush, which I tried using a little dithering on to get a lighter than normal effect, and it's not a terribly large pattern, either.

Since Fuko is now posted, and I don't have any other new content for today, I suppose it's time for me to leave this blog and find something else to do! Like always, if you've got any requests or finished work to show off, let me know, and I'll get back to you about it fairly quickly. I'm hoping to post here again pretty soon, probably with some new patterns in my Baccano set, but until then, I hope you are all doing well and having decent enough luck with whatever craft projects you may be trying to complete.

Filling Some Cross Stitch Sprite Pattern Requests and Featuring Some Reader Work!

2011-08-07T16:31:00.000-05:00

Hello! I feel like I've been on the computer for a really long time, and I've got a lot of stuff to post today, too, so this post will probably be a little heavier on images than it will be on text. Still, as I'm not really sure that's a problem, I think I'll just go on with today's blogging without trying to do too much to remedy that issue.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of portrait style cross stitch patterns of anime characters, which I really like working on, both for pattern making and stitching. It gets sort of boring to do too much of one thing all in a row, though, so I was pretty happy that, within the last week, I got some requests for new sets of sprite patterns! Since the two sets are going to feature the cast of Final Fantasy VIII, which I got a small start on in December, and characters from He-Man and She-Ra, I'm not sure they'll make for terribly coherent blogging, but they have made for fun pattern making. For today, I have two patterns from each set to post, featuring the titular characters from He-Man and She-Ra as well as Squall and Rinoa from Final Fantasy VIII, making it a bad day for supporting cast members on both fronts. I'm pretty happy with how these patterns ended up looking, though, particularly in the case of She-Ra. With a bit of gold embroidery floss, I'm pretty sure she could work out to be the most awesome sprite pattern ever. Regardless of my opinion on these cross stitch charts, however, here are all four of them for your viewing, stitching, beading, or general crafting pleasure!

With all of those patterns posted and ready to make, it's time for this blog post to turn towards featuring some reader work, starting with the prolific Tama, who's made two more of this blog's Final Fantasy themed sprite patterns! Her stitching is very nicely done, just like always, and on today's subjects, Selphie and Tifa, the colors look really bright and impressive. If you want to see the full sized image of Tama's work, check out her blog, Stitching Daze, but here is a smaller picture of her work!

The next reader work feature for today comes courtesy of Tazzy, who used some of the patterns from this blog to make spiffy bookmarks. She stitched a few Final Fantasy VII sprites, featuring Cloud, Sephiroth, and Genesis, with some delicate and lacy flair lent to them by the bookmarks themselves and some very nice color choices for all of their eyes. I've been told that Sephiroth even has some blended floss in his eyes by a very reliable source, which is quite fancy indeed. (That reliable source, by the way, was the artist, so I think she ought to be trusted.) Tazzy also did a really cool version of the pattern of Sebastian from Black Butler that I posted a while ago, making for a very classy and butler-y bookmark! All of her pieces that I've been going on about can be seen in the photo directly below this block of text!

The last, but not least, of the reader work features for today comes from Deviant Art's NintenDani, who used one of this blog's Pikachu patterns to decorate a tidy and nice sewn pouch! I really hate working with yellow floss in large quantities, so I have to say that I'm envious of both how clean all of the yellow stitches look, and her focus, as she says the cross stitching portion of this project only took her four hours. At any rate, though, both her cross stitching and her pouch look excellent, and can be seen in all their glory in her Deviant Art gallery! For the purpose of this blog post, however, please enjoy this smaller version of the photo.

After all of those patterns and features, I think I may actually be done with today's post, which was fun to write, but seemed to take about a year to get through. I was really happy to have so much content for today, though, and hope to be posting again rather soon! For the next few posts, I think I'll still be working on patterns from my current projects, which are portrait style cross stitch patterns of characters from Clannad (with Fuko probably coming next) and Baccano (with Jacuzzi likely being the next pattern) alongside the two sets of sprite patterns I started working on today. It's pretty likely that I'll get distracted and make something that has nothing to do with any of that at some point in the near future, though, so you guys also have that to look forward to. If any of you have any pattern requests or finished work you'd like shown off, let me know, but for now, I'm getting off of this blog post and continuing with my day!

Hannah and Kamryn Pick Up Needles and Begin to Stitch With Vigor

2011-08-02T15:22:00.000-05:00

At the first post of a new set of cross stitch patterns, which are sure to haunt this blog for many days to come, is it important to try and determine who the main character of such a post would be? Perhaps it's the patterns themselves, today featuring Issac and Miria from Baccano. They each measure 75 stitches high, making them well matched, and their relatively low color count means that stitching them wouldn't be such a chore, either. Besides that, everyone knows that a cross stitch patterns blog is often visited for the patterns, making them at least look like the stars of the show. Go ahead, look at them and see what you think.

If you take a look at these, though, you'll see that they're just cross stitch patterns. They might look nice, sure, but can they really move the story along? If you go a little deeper, it might be easier to say that the main character is Hannah, who asked for these patterns in the first place and even went so far as to consider leaving the message "moar baccano patterns plz" on the Dork Stitch Facebook page's wall. She's even started to stitch one of these patterns, with her progress on Issac visible below, meaning that her work done before the rest of the world even got to see them put her at the forefront of activity related to this blog post.

If you go another layer deeper, however, maybe it has to be said that Kamryn is the main character of this post. After all, her request for Clannad patterns set this recent rash of portrait style cross stitch patterns into motion. Her work on Nagisa, pictured below, is at least as notable as Hannah's on Issac, and if she's the root of today's patterns, it's not unreasonable to argue her importance.

All of this talk about main characters and posting about WIPs is probably a little silly, though, so I'll let all of you get back to your important lives. I should pop up again soon, with some new patterns and more chatter, but until then, I hope you're having a diverting day.

A New Clannad Pattern, Featuring Some Dango

2011-07-30T23:28:00.000-05:00

Hello! I haven't posted all week, so I really wanted to get something done and ready to post tonight! Because of that, I got out my computer when The Marty Stuart Show was on, about four hours ago, then set about spending a lot of time not really getting anything done. I did, however, get my act later at around 10, an hour and fifteen minutes ago, and made a new Clannad pattern that I'm quite pleased with. It's of the dango that's always floating around Nagisa rather than being a new portrait pattern, but it's cute, presumably easy to stitch, and ought to be perfect for a needlepoint project, so I hope you guys like it. If you don't like the colors I used here, I think they should be really easy to switch to your taste, which I always think is fun, too. I'd type more about it, but I sort of want to get my post done before Durarara comes on, so without further ado, here is the dango pattern!

With another Clannad pattern posted, I think I'm going to do a couple of patterns from Baccano next week, which I'm really looking forward to working on! I'm not going to forget about this set, though, and I certainly haven't forgotten about my sprite patterns, either, so there's more of all of those things, plus some likely odd and previously unmentioned patterns, though, so it should be fun to do all of that. Regardless of all of that, though, Durarara is going to start in three minutes, so I'm signing off and shutting this computer off! I hope all of you are having good weekends and good luck with your stitching.

The First Pattern in a New Set of Clannad Patterns

2011-07-21T14:59:00.001-05:00

Hello! Late last week, I got a request through e-mail to do some portrait style patterns of characters from Clannad. I do not know much about Clannad and haven't seen much of it, but, as some of you who requested patterns during the now-infamous Sprite Patterns December know, that doesn't really stop me, so today, I've got the first pattern in the set to post. The requester named Nagisa as her favorite character, so that's where I started, and though the pattern looks massive, it actually isn't as much work as it looks like it would be. This is due to the fact that she has the tallest antenna hair I have ever had the fortune to chart in my life. It stands at 23 pixels tall, and though I could have left it off, it seems that the poor girl has enough problems without a vindictive crafter stripping her of her cool hair, so I left it there. The color count on the pattern also isn't too bad, at 13 different colors, though it took quite a battle for me to get Pattern Maker to use that many. As it turns out, the program has an extreme aversion to brown, so I ended up doing most of this in Paint.NET and running her through Pattern Maker at the last minute. I'm not sure any of you care about that, but now you know that, I'm assuming that it'll be a difficult fact to forget. Before I spout too much more nonsense, though, I'm just going to post the pattern I've been talking about and move on! (As a sidenote, when printing this, the best readability on one sheet can be found using the landscape format.)

Now that I've posted a cross stitch pattern, it's time to post some finished versions of other patterns I've posted here by this blog's lovely readers! Today, I'm going to start with a cross stitched piece from Deviant Art's talented and prolific stitcher Xiampu18! She did a really nice version of the pattern of Konata from Lucky Star that I posted quite a while ago, looking spiffy on some bright white Aida cloth. If you want to see a full sized version of this, check out her Deviant Art gallery, which is linked above and full of really cute cross stitches, but here is a smaller image of her lovely Konata!

The second, and final, set of finished work to show off on Dork Stitch today comes from friend of the blog Tama, who writes the cross stitching blog Stitching Daze. I wasn't sure they'd ever get stitched, since demand seems to be much higher for sprite patterns of the guys of Final Fantasy VII, but as part of her weekend stitching, Tama stitched both of the patterns of Aerith that I post a few weeks ago! I was really excited to see them, since I have too much enthusiasm for sprites in alternate outfits, but they're quite well stitched, too, which makes it even better. Some small versions of Tama's work are directly below, but go to her blog to see the nifty full sized images!

Now that I've got all that posted, I'm done for now, so I'm probably going to retreat to a room with air conditioning and stay out of the kitchen for a while. I should be back and posting again before too long, though, so I hope all of you continue to weather the summer and do well with whatever stitching you can stand to do in this heat!

IHSW July and a Bit of Cross Stitched Progress

2011-07-18T14:28:00.000-05:00

Hello! On account of the fact that the entire United States seems to be 900 degrees right now, I was not as productive as I would have liked to have been during this past weekend, which also happened to be July's International Hermit and Stitch Weekend, hosted by Joyze at Random Ramblings. I did manage to finish the outline on my current project during True Blood last night, and got a few of her white stitches done, too. The later it got, however, the hotter it seemed to get, so when I was sitting around and watching anime on Netflix, I could barely stand to have the project's giant piece of fabric touching me, which was not great from a productivity standpoint. Finishing the outline on this was my goal, though, so at least I didn't screw up in regards to that! Here is a photo of my in progress cross stitch of Patrako, from Cleopatra's Fortune, dressed up like a bunny-eared cocktail waitress. Maybe I'll have her done before the next Hermit and Stitch Weekend hits!

Thank you for reading my International Hermit and Stitch Weekend update! I'll be back later in the week with new patterns and normal Dork Stitch stuff like that, but until then, I wish you good luck in dealing with the weather!

A Cross Stitch Pattern of N From Pokemon and a Pre-IHSW Stitching Image

2011-07-15T15:29:00.000-05:00

Hello! I haven't posted anything here in over a week, I think, but today, I just finished making a really cool new pattern, or at least one I think is cool, so I figured that I'd post it along with some explanatory text! Next week, I have some finished work from readers to post about, and I'm going to try and fill some more sprite patterns requests, too. For now, however, I have a 100 stitch tall portrait of N from Pokemon Black/White to post, so that's going to be the focus of this post.

Before lunch today, I'd been planning to not actually do anything on the computer this afternoon, save for playing dumb games and waiting until the daily rerun of Friends came on. One of my brothers came out of his room yelling that in the new Pokemon TCG expansion in Japan, N got a full art supporter card. (I currently run a Pokemon card game group, so this sentence makes sense to me, but I apologize if it's entirely gibberish to you.) Since N is a relatively unreasonable character, and as such, very entertaining, it seemed like not only was the spiffy trading card was well-deserved, but that a cross stitch pattern on my blog would be. Because of that, I promptly sat down, stared at my computer screen doing nothing for a good hour, and then sort of halfheartedly made the pattern I'm about to post. I'm actually pretty pleased with how it ended up looking, even though I'm not sure the technique of recoloring manga images with the colors from in-game sprites is one I'll use too often. Regardless of how I got the pattern made, however, here is a lovely cross stitch pattern of N, sized at 51 by 100 stitches for whatever craft you prefer to do. I tried some new stuff with the chart itself in an attempt to improve readability on the larger pattern, so I hope it works well for you guys!

Before I go today, I'm going to post a picture of the cross stitch I'm currently working on, since this weekend is the International Hermit and Stitch Weekend hosted by Joyze of Random Ramblings! It's sort of a big project, and I'm not very focused, so I don't think I'm going to actually get it done. I figure that on Sunday night or Monday afternoon, however, I'll post what I got done and go on a little more about it then. For now, please enjoy this image of a not-even-close-to-done cross stitch of Patrako from Cleopatra's Fortune, inexplicably dressed up as a bunny-eared cocktail waitress. I don't know how far I'll get, but this should be an interesting frame of reference!

With all of that posted, I'm done for today, though if you decide to stitch N, or any other pattern posted here at Dork Stitch, send me a photo and I'll gladly feature your work right here! Other than that, I don't have much else to say, so I wish good luck to all of the other participants in the stitching weekend!

The Sailor Scout Sprite Patterns Draw to a Close!

2011-07-08T13:38:00.000-05:00

Hello! Today is going to be another rather non-intense day here at Dork Stitch, but I got the last of the Sailor Scouts (or the major ones, at least) charted as a sprite pattern and have a reader's finished piece to feature, so I figured it was worth doing a post! Today's cross stitch pattern is from another Facebook request, featuring Sailor Mini Moon, or Sailor Chibi Moon, depending on how strict a Sailor Moon fan you are. I'm not sure why I hadn't done a pattern of her back when I did the other Sailor Scouts, but she's done now, and I'm sort of glad to have the whole set! I want to stitch all of them in a row and then sit there and look at it, thinking, "Well, I guess that's finished now. Time to find a new project," since finishing cross stitches, especially big ones, often seems anticlimactic. Regardless of all of that, however, I do have the pattern ready to go, so here it is!

Now that Sailor Mini Moon's pattern is posted, I have some spiffy reader work to feature today, courtesy of DeviantArt's always nifty Lil-Samuu! (If you click on her name, it may or may not feature a link to her DevArt page. I'll leave the solution to that mystery up to you.) She cross stitched a lovely rendition of the sprite pattern of Half-Life's Gordon Freeman that I posted not too long ago, though I can't remember when. Her work is really neatly done, particularly if you look at the backstitch, and it all leads to a nice finished project, which you can find right below this block of text! The full version can be seen at the Deviant Art page that I can't really tell you if I linked to or not.

My content for the day is now all posted, so I suppose I'm off for now. If you have any pattern requests or finished crafts based on patterns from this blog, let me know and I will see about doing something in regards to that! Otherwise, though, I hope to post again soon with some non-sprite patterns I've been working on and all sorts of other things, so I'll see you all then!

Modern Social Networking Has, Ironically, Caused Sprite Patterns of Characters From Nearly 20 Year Old Anime

2011-07-06T14:36:00.000-05:00

Hello! Today I'm feeling a bit sleepier than usual, so I don't know if today's post will be up to my usual chatty standards, but today, I have the first post here at Dork Stitch than can be chiefly attributed to social media! The requested patterns for today came from our Facebook page (which can be found here, if you've not yet seen it), as did some of the finished work for later in the post, and the other finished work for today was found on a Tumblr feed. I am not sure that this means anything, since this was on the internet in the first place, but I think it's sort of cool, so there you go!

Anyway, today's patterns were requested by Essence Johns on the Dork Stitch Facebook page and feature some new Sailor Moon sprite patterns, continuing the set that I started posting back in December! I really like doing sprite patterns from magical girl anime, since the bright colors and frilly dresses are fun to work with, and with today's patterns, Wicked Lady was no exception. Her outfit was really fun to figure out, and though I ended up leaving off some of the red details at the bottom of her skirt that I saw in some official artwork, seeing as they looked sort of weird in such a small format, I think it turned out rather well. The second of the patterns, featuring Luna, was less frilly, but just as interesting to work on, since I hadn't done a Phantasy Star II sprite edit of a mascot character yet. When next to Sailor Moon, she might be a bit too big in terms of proportions, but as 14 by 16 stitches, Luna would be quite quick to stitch or bead.

Since I have today's patterns posted, it's time for some finished work, with our first two pieces being from the aforementioned Facebook user Essence. In the past, I've seen the patterns from this blog used for several crafts, but her work marks the first time that I've seen any of them done in pony beads. It's pretty cool, since the bright colors and larger beads have a nifty effect on the finished project's look. I quite like her versions of the Sailor Scout symbols added to these projects, too. It's a nice and well-designed touch. Before I've gone on for too long about these, though, here are her beaded versions of December's Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars patterns, which can be viewed in a larger size on Dork Stitch's Facebook wall!

Today's second finished piece comes from Tres Acordes on Tumblr, who used the two Kill Bill patterns of Elle and Gogo that I posted here in (I think) December as the jumping off point for a much larger and spiffier cross stitch project! The two original sprites are, of course, quite nicely stitched, but to those, she added two brand new sprites, featuring the Bride and O-Ren, along with some fancy lettering. Her finished project can be viewed in a small format here, but check out her Tumblr feed, linked above, for a bigger photo, as well as some pictures of it as a work in progress. (The small image for this is much smaller than usual, though I am not sure why that would be the case.)

After all of that, I suppose I'm done for today, though, as always, I hope to be back and posting again soon. If you guys have any pattern requests, for the standard sprite patterns or otherwise, or have any finished work you'd like to show off to the world, let me know and I'll try my best dedicate at least a chunk of a post to it! Other than that, I hope all of you are having relatively good weeks and doing well with all your crafty endeavors.