Stitcheroo!

As I mentioned in my profile, I like doing counted cross-stitch. I find it very relaxing to bring the focus of my perpetually over-active mind down to a tiny little hole and the point of a needle. The only really crappy thing about counted cross-stitch is that it's hard to find decent patterns at stores, unless you go specifically to a craft store. If you do that, though, you end up paying $20+ per pattern. On top of that, we haven't found any craft stores around here, so even if I had $20 to drop on a craft, I wouldn't be able to.

Last night, I was sitting around thinking about what I want for Christmas, and I remembered that there's computer software out there that will convert photos into cross-stitch patterns. I decided to do a little price-checking online, and discovered PM Stitch Creator 3.0 has a free 15-day fully-functional trial you can download. So I downloaded it, and wound up spending 3 or 4 hours last night learning how to make my own patterns. It's not a flawless system, as it has trouble converting detail in photos sometimes, but it's a heck of a lot better than having to stitch Dogs Playing Poker because that's all I could find at Wal-Mart. So far, I've made a Yoda pattern, a Spider-Man pattern, a me-and-Jenny pattern, an MAF pattern, and a pattern based on the Thomas Blackshear painting Forgiven. Will I actually stitch all of these pattern at some point in the future? Probably not. But it's fun to make them, all the same.