Ooo, colorful art of the food/It's a beautiful Japanese meal

I finished Space Carter this weekend.  It's been ironed, trimmed down, and put into an envelope for mailing.  I used another letter to get that ringed planet for the second R (I didn't like the swirly thing enough to bother repeating it).

For awhile I've been coveting Sublime Stitching patterns and considering taking up embroidery.

Some of the arguments against this were that I already have too many on-going craft projects, too many patterns I haven't even used yet, and too many damn craft supplies.

But you don't get to have all those things by saying, "You know what?  I should probably just use up the shit I have," so I bought Sushi Bar and two towels (and successfully managed not to buy Unicorn Believer or Under the Sea.  Or Spaced Out.)

If I've learned anything today, it's that using pins to hold the pattern pieces in place is not a good idea.  It creates little pockets where the ink doesn't end up on the fabric.  I don't know if the paper overlap for the sushi rolls made a difference, but I had to do a lot of improvising on the little roll.

You can definitely see the missing ink in the picture with both the towels.

For some reason, people think cross stitch is hard.  I should probably stop telling people this, but it's really not.  There's a grid, and you need to be able to count and make /'s,  Once you've made enough /'s, then you go back and make \'s.  Oh, and you should probably be able to thread a needle.

I haven't worked with an embroidery hoop in years.  I don't think I could really work with the towels without one, but it's still hard to get used to.

Also, I really only seem to have mastered the backstitch.  Which isn't really too surprising since I've been doing backstitch for years--there's backstitch in Space Carter (don't go back and look because I think some of it came out ugly).

The hand's done completely in backstitch (except the fingernail, which is satin stitch).  This is partly because I tried split stitch on the sushi roll, failed, did the outline in stem stitch, and was disappointed.  I'm still trying to decide if it's the ugly thing ever or if my standards are ridiculously high.

Even if it's the latter, my chopsticks are still wobbly as I have yet to master the art of "following a straight line".

The sushi roll fillings I just sort of made up (I wasn't sure what to do with the three dots that're in the pattern).  The little one's a tuna roll and the big one's a California roll.

One thing I like about this is that I've got one towel done in a few hours.  Cross stitch--which does not do well with all those curves--would be at least a few days for something this size.

Zoot decided to sit by me while I was ironing the towels and doing the transfers.  Either she wanted to hang out with me, or she's just interested in any new and unusual behavior.