What I've been up to ...

When I was 16, I picked up cross stitching as a creative hobby.  I'm not exactly sure why I did it, but I've done approximately a bajillion cross stitches since then.  It's funny that I can look at a site with a bunch of counted cross stitch kits and I can be like, "Did that one, did that one, did that one ..." and I've got these serious-looking callouses on my fingertips that prove my studliness.

This is one I started in February:

Interesting ... the photo looks more impressive than the cross stitch itself!  I didn't realize the water on the bottom is actually starting to look like ... water.

It's been a while since I've actually finished a cross stitch.  Maybe I'm lying.  Maybe I'm only thinking that because I had several cross stitches I hadn't done the finishing touches on and I've been working on finishing those instead.  Several weeks ago, I pulled all of my mostly finished cross stitches out of the closet and bought frames for them.  Now I have more of my handiwork hanging around the house. :)  I guess I ought to take photos of them and post them here or something.  Unfortunately, two are in Camren's room and she's sleeping right now.  I bought a puppy cross stitch in November to make for her because she looooooooves puppies.

Here are a few of the BIG cross stitches I've finished in the past couple of years:

This is a Greg Olsen painting I worked on while finishing up the Finance Jr. Core at BYU in 2008:

I tend to fidget nervously when listening to lectures, so I would cross stitch to stop myself from drawing hearts and stars all over the margins of my notebook.

And this is a cross stitch I did while taking my last 2 classes at BYU:

I'm a sucker for bright, colorful stuff.

I ought to take pictures of some more of my cross stitches before I send them off to people.  I made a cross stitch for my father-in-law last year and forgot I wanted to send it to him until I found it in my pile of cross stitches when I decided to frame everything ... oops!  Don't tell him.  It's still gonna be a surprise. ;)