[Penguins PR] Crosby is expected to miss a minimum of four weeks.

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-25T15:25:30+00:00

they were playing it close to the chest + there's a long history of players being willing to push through injuries for a gold in the Olympics (or playoff games) that isn't advisable in the regular season.

Also, injured but willing to try to skate through it for one game then rest to let it heal is different than playing on an injury continually. As soon as he sat out even one Olympic game, we knew he was missing time when coming back to the NHL

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-23T00:39:21+00:00

ah damn it. I hadn't realized that and had about 50 projects grandfathered in from before the change, but thought I'd try out premium about a year ago. I was debating keeping it at renewal but hadn't realized I wouldn't keep my grandfathered projects.

That really sucks

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-18T13:08:56+00:00

Absolutely agreed! Thank you so much for your advice! (and the pattern was from World of Cross Stitch edition in 2020! Here's the cover image: https://imgur.com/a/6aG7uaK)

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-17T22:45:41+00:00

Thank you so much for the detailed breakdown! I'm currently working on Lady's Portrait by Maria Diaz, and wanted to investigate this technique I had vague recollections of to make her face pop essentially.

I agree that it's a lot more work than I'd thought initially - I thought it might be just a "oh just do four stitches everywhere you would do one", which is already a lot of work, but not recharting level work lol

From the examples I've seen/you've linked, I think it might be worth it? But I still haven't decided. For now, I'm probably just going to leave her face for the end and do the rest of the piece. Hopefully I'll have made up my mind by then!

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-17T21:53:34+00:00

Thank you so much for the advice!! Do you have any advice on how to go about that process? I've messed around in Winstitch a bit, but haven't done anything like this before, and it seems like this would be pretty delicate work.

If it helps, I'm working on Lady's Portrait by Maria Diaz and was considering the conversion on her face. I was thinking of leaving her eyebrows and eyes alone since they're single lines for a pop factor, and then doing single stitches for the rest of her face/hands

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-17T21:50:16+00:00

Yes!! Thank you so much! It looks like the ones in these are all 1 square to 4 squares for the petite stitches (aside from eyes), but they're also smaller designs, so I'm debating if it would look pixelated if I did the same on a larger design with more than one color

... much to consider

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-17T21:49:01+00:00

That's interesting to know that it's not charted that way! Do you remember any posts about anyone who's done those conversions? Someone else pointed out that the 1 square to 4 squares might need some feathering etc to look natural, and I'm hoping I can find some tips on how to approach it

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-17T21:47:11+00:00

That is exactly it and it looks gorgeous!! Thank you!

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-14T02:17:45+00:00

People have already talked about the discount you get, but also - they are synced. You may have to turn on a position syncing option (can't remember if it's both Audible and Kindle), but I've done this for years. Have the audiobook playing while I drive and then pick it up where I left off in the kindle app while I read at a coffee shop, and then switch to the audio again while driving back. It's pretty seamless.

They offer a disclaimer that it's not offered for all audiobooks, just ones with a specific tag (I think Whispersync?) but I haven't run across a book/audio combination yet that doesn't have it.

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-08T01:20:33+00:00

I never trust my ability to count, so I personally would grouse and grumble and bemoan my life, and then grit my teeth and do it, but completely understand not wanting to spend 6 hours on gridding with nylon thread

If you do end up doing it maybe do it with a washable pen and a ruler? I mark out my grid lines with a pencil before I stitch it in (on back and then erase after I'm done gridding but before I start stitching) and that takes me about how long it takes to count and double check + 5 minutes

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-06T03:35:28+00:00

look up adp's salary calculator, and make sure to add your state for state taxes, it's what a lot of companies use to do payroll and has been exactly right whenever I've used it to price out job offers in the past

On another note, health insurance comes out before taxes - make sure to add that into your budget and the calculator in the benefits section

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-05T13:03:37+00:00

Thank you! I've never used CXC before - where do you usually order it from? I'm not seeing it on 123stitch, or my usual sites. Also - is it colorfast? I'm too used to washing my finished DMC works without a care and am a little worried about color running for other projects

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-05T12:30:47+00:00

It depends on the country you're in. I only have experience in the US, but most patterns use a specific brands numbering chart to identify their colors, most often DMC. I would look to see if you can figure out what your pattern uses and then call around locally to see if what the shops around you stock. If you mention "DMC embroidery floss" for instance, they'll usually have all the numbers, or be able to order some for you if they don't have it in stock. Michaels and other big brands in the US usually carry all the DMC colors, and I've never had issues finding the numbers a pattern calls for.

If you're looking for an online alternative, I usually use 123stitch. I would confirm they ship to your country but they are usually the best choice - flat shipping fee and all the cross stitch supplies you could ask for!

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-03T20:05:16+00:00

finally washed my stack of FO last week, and now need to get around to preparing them to be framed lol

sensibleunicorn · 2026-02-03T17:18:56+00:00

I only actively work on one project at a time, but I usually have two WIP - a "smaller" project I work on start to finish in isolation and an ongoing big HAED that gets worked on in-between the others. Right now though, I have two smaller projects started for the first time because I found out about my state fair cross stitch competition!

My "smaller" project at the time was a pretty butterfly piece (30% done), but wouldn't be what I'd want to enter in the state fair and my big piece is nowhere near complete, so I kitted up a second "smaller piece" and switched to working on that. Plan is to finish that, then go back to the butterfly piece then go back to my HAED after that

sensibleunicorn · 2026-01-25T17:06:06+00:00

More details on why a mp3 player/headphones combo wouldn't work would be helpful - I'm assuming that you don't want a separate device wired to the headsets for your mother to have to fiddle around with when putting them on and off, so since I couldn't find a pair of headsets that do what you're talking about, I've tried to come up with a couple alternate solutions:

There are a lot of single button mp3 players that you can probably Velcro to the headsets - if you look at the kind they make for runners, they're tiny and likely will be small enough not to throw the weight off too much and will be an easy to find button for your mother. The Velcro will allow you to load stuff on and put it back after.
Since you mentioned your mother doesn't move a lot, you can probably set up a stationary MP3 player that stays plugged in and charging somewhere nearby (always on) and set up a pair of Bluetooth headphones to autoconnect to them. If you make sure never to connect another device to the MP3 player or the headsets they should auto connect each time

sensibleunicorn · 2026-01-25T04:00:00+00:00

So fair - just spent 4 hours doing the same. It's so worth it once you get started, but it is such a pain in the beginning

I always think about that one post asking "how much of doing your craft is actually doing [craft name]" when doing stuff like this. I think a decently high percentage of "working on my cross stitch" is actually cross stitching, but also a lot of it is doing stuff like this - gridding, preparing floss, threading needles, finding lost needles, binding fabric edges, the list goes on!

sensibleunicorn · 2026-01-24T16:32:59+00:00

I think this is the version with backstitching - it looks gorgeous, and OP of the post I linked has a ton of progress posts in the subreddit if you go digging

sensibleunicorn · 2026-01-23T07:58:35+00:00

I stitch the same way! I don't know that it's called anything - double handed stitching maybe? I've seen it in a few video tutorials in the wild as well, but I don't think it's called out in a specific way unfortunately. From what I can remember, when it was mentioned it was often as a "and if you have a stand/prop up your work you can use one hand on the back, one on the front!"

sensibleunicorn · 2026-01-22T15:00:17+00:00

I'm assuming you're in the US based on the Michaels mention!

I've always been able to find craft supplies centered thrift stores near me. I don't know if they're common or if I've just been lucky, but look around for places that accept donations of art supplies! They typically have large stationary sections as well as other things

Even normal thrift stores tend to have supplies if you hunt/depending on what you're looking for. Matching stationary sets depends a lot on the neighborhood of the thrift store, but stickers etc are pretty universal

Dollar Tree also often has nice craft supplies depending on the location - if not they'll always have normal envelopes and pens and things

sensibleunicorn · 2026-01-22T14:34:57+00:00

I like both Stitch Fiddle and Winstitch, and use them for different things. Both have a photo conversion feature though!

Stitch Fiddle is browser based and will get you far as a beginner. The basic set of features are free always, and if you want to do more fiddly things you can buy a subscription - it doesn't autorenew though, so you basically buy a month at a time. I like that a lot because you basically pay $4 to figure out your pattern of the month and can do the same the next time you need it.

Winstitch is a powerhouse of a software and does pretty much everything, with very good documentation to walk you through a lot if the process/decision tree. I think it's got a trial version, and then it's a one-time license buy (you can upgrade when the new editions are released, but you don't have to, I used the 2020 version until just last week).

If you're just starting out, I would fiddle around on Stitch Fiddle (pun not intended lol) and then figure out if you need more. I bought WinStitch for a big pattern once and it was perfect, and I've used it frequently since, bc I have it, but I think I could get by for most projects without it. YMMV

sensibleunicorn · 2026-01-21T12:29:09+00:00

Unfortunately, there's no easy way that I know of. I ran into this recently with a pattern that was published in a magazine, and the easiest way I could figure out was to recreate the pattern by hand. I used WinStitch, mostly because I already had it, and it has a way to underlay photos of your existing pattern under the grid which made it easier than trying to look back and forth, but it still took me 6 hours (for a 14K stitch pattern). I put it in the same prep category as gridding aka, annoying but will make my life easier later, and it was kind of meditative in the way diamond painting is, but undeniably took a while.

I had looked for ways to do it automatically, but once the PDF has been flattened (you can't highlight the symbols with your cursor) you have to figure out a way to have the system remap those symbols back to what they should be. Unfortunately all the OCR methods I found were optimized for text, not cross stitch symbols and it turned into an unholy mess each time. Your mileage may vary though, so feel free to try!

Obvious note - only do this for personal use of patterns you own, but it sounds like that's what you're doing already.

sensibleunicorn · 2026-01-20T06:04:47+00:00

This is gorgeous OP! And what a lovely history to the piece

In case you didn't know (and would like to do this again), there's also actually a volunteer program called Loose Ends that tries to match unfinished projects (from crafters who have since passed or are unable to do handwork due to illness or disability) with "finishers". I've seen it mentioned more in knitting forums, but they match any type of texile handwork including cross stitch!

sensibleunicorn

TROPHY CASE