A Long List of Ideas

I don't design a lot yet, but I have a ton of ideas for stuff to make once I do.  Here's a list of some of my ideas that I hope to stitch up someday, in no particular order.

• "Anything is Possible" with a Kevin Garnett Celtics jersey.  Or make it big and put Kevin Garnett on a boat.
• "You are the best worst person I know" from the show The League
• The ice cream quote from Phantam, along with some reference to Reggie Bannister
• Also, possibly, the random guitar duet from Phantasm
• More Home Movies stitches
• Katamari stitches
• Mission Hill stitches
• Salad Fingers stitches
• "Juicy Chunks, yeh" from MacCurdie's Exhibition in Scotland.  I started to design this at one point but put it off for now
• "Stay far from timid, only make moves when your hearts in it, and live the phrase sky's the limit." - Biggie Smalls
• "Busy gettin' brain like Krang." - Chilidish Gambino/Ninja Turtles mashup
• "You's a Ho" - Ludacris
• "drank" - Kendrick Lamar
• "I'm doing 100 on the highway, so if you do the speed limit get the fuck outta my way" - Ludacris
• "Cornbread, ain't nothin' wrong with that" - Chris Rock (This one is in the works right now)
• "Say what you will about pacifism, but at least it's an ethos" - Big Lebowsi/LOTR mashup with an Ent pictured
• "Sharing, it's a rule now" - IASIP/Home Movies mashup with a picture of Walter and Perry
• "It's raw!" - IASIP/Gordon Ramsay mashup with some milksteak boiled over hard
• "Wow!" - Doge/Owen Wilson mashup
• "You got to be a spirit.  You can't be no ghost." from Bulworth
• Charles Swindoll's quote on Attitude
• "Losers make excuses, winners make it happen" - Bubba Sparxxx
• "Reach for your dreams" with gymnast Mr. Poopy Butthole
• "My attitude is celibate; I don't give a fuck." - Fabulous
• "Killin someone's vibe should be a fuckin crime." - Rae Sremmurd
• "One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain." - Bob Marley
• "Not my chair not my problem." - Or really almost any quote from Liam Lynch and Dan Deacon's "Drinkin' Outta Cups"
• "Get snagged bitchass"
• "The pink fuck who loves to suck." - Quote about Kirby from Nick Wiger of the Get Played podcast
• "Damn girl, you shit with that ass?" - Gail from Letterkenny as a bathroom wall piece

Finished Stitch #3: "Ludacris/Dora the Explorer" Stitch

I LOVE rap music.  I'd love to make hip hop based stitches like Wu Stitch some day, though obviously I'm coming along in the designing department.

Recently I decided to try my best at a first hip hop stitch, and had a few choices.  One was a lyric from Kanye West's "Monster," with a bunch of pictures of monsters around the outside of the lyrics.  But that's a TON of images, so I decided to go with something more basic with Ludacris' "Number One Spot."

My lyric of choice was "Explorin' like Dora, these Swipers can't swipe me."  It encapsulates a random TV show I watched a bit as a youth with a great rappers song, and I always really liked the lyric, so I figured it was worth doing.  So ONTO THE blue pen it was!

This one was tricky...my first two things were just images, and this one had words.  So I traced Dora's head in the top left, Swiper in the bottom right, and lyrics in the middle-ish.  After a week, it looked like this:

My wife's store has a monthly sip n' stitch, and I mostly worked on this there.  But I was working on other stuff for a bit.  Finally, like two months ago, I started marking some headway.  First I finished the top:

I thought Dora looked really good, though I wish I had done another outline of her face.  The writing...meh.  I should've made it more script based, but I kind of just winged it.  And it looks kinda weird.

Here's the bottom and Swiper:

The words suffer from the same ails of the above image, but I think Swiper looks pretty great!  Aside from his not being finished-ness and one eye.  In terms of not being finished, when I traced the image I tried to make it so it'd stop at the edge of the hoop.  But when I stitched it all, that didn't really work.  So I wish I had finished him rather than having some incomplete pieces.

As for the eye, I had a lot of knots, so my back was a mess!  See below:

That being said in the end it wasn't all bad.  The text is definitely a little off, and there's a lot of white space, but I think Luda would be proud:

This is the biggest piece I've done to date, and it makes me either want to follow stricter patterns for embroidery or switch to cross stitch for a bit.  I guess we'll see what's next!

Finished Piece #2: Tubbs from Neko Atsume

In late February, I attended Midwest Craft Con in Columbus, Ohio with my wife.  She was a sponsor so she got a free ticket (which went to me) and I was able to attend any events/classes/etc. I wanted.  Mostly I was there to sell stuff for my wife as she attended classes, but I did have the option to attend classes if I wanted.  That being said, I didn't go to any classes - nothing really stood out to me as something good for me - but man did I ever event it up!

I helped people make some shrinky dink vaginas.  I made friends with friendship bracelets and wine. I sang some karaoke (pictured is "Come to my Window" by Melissa Etheridge).  And somehow, within all of that, I found time to stitch!

We had a friend who introduced us to Neko Atsume like two weeks before the Craft Con, and so by the time Con hit we were pretty into it all.  We mentioned it to everyone and anyone we could find, and got like ten people to add the app to their phone.  And then I decided to embroider Tubbs for funzies.

We had my trusty blue pen, so I traced an image of him sitting in front of an empty plate of sashimi onto some cloth.  The cool thing was I literally traded it off of my phone screen - I dropped my phone into the toilet a few weeks prior, and my new fancy phone was big enough to have the perfect image size for a tiny hoop stitch.  Then I stitched away, and the final result was this:

I'm super happy with it.  His right leg and crotch are a little weird, but I like how the crumbs turned out and I'm a huge fan of his general shape.  And the back isn't even that bad!

All in all, pretty awesome, and right now it's hanging in the front window of my wife's store.  It was on a back wall, but I figured that wasn't awesome enough for Tubbs, since he's such a beast.  I think this is the best stitch I've done to date - hopefully my skills continue to improve!