Heeeey crafty friends! Sorry I’ve been away for so long, no real excuse, health has been sh*te (still is) and I really just haven’t been overly crafty tbh. I will be back on the clothing board hopefully to show a couple of things I’ve made in my absence, but I wanted to show the project that I’ve just finished first as it means so much to me. 
It’s going to be a tough project to talk about because it’s about my beloved pup Rosie that we lost in June 2022, but that was really the point of it. I wanted to use my crafty skills to create something to go on the wall, to remind us of her, and as a therapy of sorts.
(Sorry, bit of a reflection at the bottom left quadrant!)
It certainly was a bigger project than I anticipated, I started working on my pattern early August 2022, and I finally finished it at the end of Feb 2024, so an absolute labour of love.
Here’s the photo I used for my pattern initially, it’s one of my favourite photos from when we were at one of our local parks taking a rest from an exciting game of ball, which included many “where did the ball go?!” (whilst hiding it behind my back and then quietly dropping it on the floor when she wasn’t looking), ninja jumps (her, not me), and spinning ballerina dances (again her, not me, we used a ball on a rope and if she picked it up with the rope she had to dance around like a ballerina with it spinning around) 
I used Blend Threads cross stitch software, and initially planned to just use the picture as is, but even playing with the size, dithering techniques, merge options etc etc I couldn’t get it to a decent picture without breaking the bank in terms of floss I’d need to buy!
Sooooo, I started playing around with the PicToPainting plugin in PaintShop Pro to try and get more of a smooth cartoonised effect that would require less dithering, and I ended up using 2 different options, one for the backdrop and one for Rosie, and putting those together. And hey presto, my pattern…
Which ended up being 6 A4 pages worth of stitching, and took me a good deal longer than I’d anticipated!
I mainly stitched in the evenings in front of the TV, whilst I was stuck in bed with the aforementioned health issues with Arwen our new dog taking care of me, on holiday, round my friend’s house, and when I took time off of dog collar making for a couple of months to raise (e.g. clean poop off the floor, get bitten over and over with tiny needle teeth, stop him from chewing things he shouldn’t…) our new puppy Atlas.
15th Aug 2022
28th Feb 2023
Apologies to any advanced cross stitchers out there, this was my first photo style cross stitch, I’d only ever done basic text cross stitches before so it was a big step up. Also I don’t use a hoop, maybe I will in the future, but I found it easier to kind of roll up the area I wasn’t stitching and use that as a hand hold of sorts if that makes sense, hence it’s a bit wrinkly!!
14th Mar 2023
1st May 2023
Whilst having a Sharknado watching marathon on Boxing Day 2023
After I’d finished, ironed and just framed my Rosie cross stitch.
And after Mr Loops finally put it up on the wall for me a month later! 
You can also just spy (behind the booze) the paintings that MiL did of our pups Arwen and Atlas for us, which will also be going on the wall, and hopefully she’ll do one of Rosie also.
I hope you like it anyways, it’s my first foray into the cross stitch world, but I do plan to do a couple of Bob’s Burgers cross stitches for our bathroom, and then either another Rosie cross stitch or one of Arwen and Atlas.
Loops xx
Argh, my eyes are leaking, I knew this would be a difficult post! 
