For the Alliance!

I'm still playing around with layouts and colors and things for this. I wish it didn't look so generic, but I really don't know how to customize everything and make it look pretty. I'll figure it out eventually, I guess. I hope.

So. This weekend was a big weekend stitching-wise. This weekend was a new start weekend. A BAP new start weekend. EXCITEMENT!

My beloved is, for reasons that would be really difficult to explain, away for a year and only able to call me once or twice a month. This makes me super sad. I mean, we haven't been together all that long to begin with and then to have to go through this crucible? And it is a crucible, believe me. Those difficult to explain details would support me in this assertion... you'll just have to take my word for it. Anyway, my beloved really enjoys WoW. I used to play a few years back too. I think it was just after Cata came out that I sort of just slipped away from it. My life had gotten really busy at that time and it happened pretty naturally, but I miss it and I'll always have a fondness for it.

I got it into my head to stitch my very own Stormwind. It started as a little thought, a 'hey, that would be kinda cool' and blossomed and before I knew it I was committed to it before I ever consciously made the decision. Probably it's going to take more than a year. I expect the absolute best case scenario is two years really, but that's getting ahead of myself a bit here.

I fiddled around with maps from the game but eventually stumbled on a map that I really liked made by Jazzbrat on deviantart. I tweaked that in photoshop to get colors that were generally happy (and I kind of played with everything including messing with layers to try to get the water and the districts a bit more vivid) and after several days came out with a chart using the program found here. The program has a few kinks in it, but it is awesome on the whole. It allowed me to create my Stormwind with blended threads.

I'm really excited about working with blended threads! I've never done it before. I loaded up my Pako organizers on Tuesday and Wednesday and jumped for joy when my fabric arrived on Thursday and immediately set to gridding the first page. I put the first stitch in early Friday morning... I um, may have been so excited about this whole thing that I took a vacation day just to work on it. Perhaps.

Every project begins with one stitch. Or... closer to 1600. Nearly the same thing.

This is on 20 count lugana 2x1. My other two BAP WIPs are on 28 1x1.

Annnnd... I just now realized that I don't have a picture of the finished project. Oops. I'll rectify that on my next update. The awesome must be shared.

(I hope at some point to find the cord for my camera so I can take decent pictures rather than relying on my phone which really isn't the bee's knees for that sort of thing. But for now, I guess, it'll do.)

Technically I have 14 cross stitch WIPs right now with Stormwind added in. I don't really count 10 of them though... they're all from Satsuma Street's Pretty Little City series. They're all stitched but need the backstitching done yet. One is another original design based on a Disney poem/saying thing that I'm trading back and forth with a friend. The finished piece is meant to be a present for her son's paternal grandmother. The other two are Heaven and Earth designs. Aimee Stewart's Supersized Wanderer's Cove and Adele Sessler's Forsaken. They'll all make appearances here sooner or later.