Mona, that sounds sensible, learning the ropes on something small first before you jump into your masterpiece :)
I just read the story of it in confetti rain, it's so lovely of you to make this for your grandma! I'm sure she'll be super happy to have something made by you on her wall :)
How's the needle threading going? I usually just look closely and poke the thread right through, but then I have very good eyes. I've seen a video of a trick where you put the thread on the ball of your palm and then sort of rub the needle over it and it magically threads itself once. I tried it and it didn't seem quite as easy and reliable as in the video, but it did work with a few tries.

Jacob, hahaha, I would have done the same thing :D
Great that it arrived!
I'm currently sitting on this train in my halloween outfit (which is just giving the clothes from my goth phase some love basically, haven't decided if I'm a dark witch or a vampire or something) like a crazy person. Nobody else here is wearing anything out of the ordinary. I'm curious what my coworkers will say :D But I think they're already used to me dressing a bit eccentrically...

Oh I just have some actual needle threaders from my beading phase. It's no big deal. I'll send you to amazon to watch a video of what it does and you can order like 20 for a few bucks if you're into it after seeing the video.

Ah, the little wire thingies that you just poke through the needle instead of the thread and then they give you a bigger hole to poke the actual thread through? Right, I have one like that too, I'm just too lazy to get it out of the drawer more often than not. I'm usually quicker without it.

I took some pictures of my tablet weaving at last!

Here we go, this was my first try:

It's a short band, I could wrap it around my wrist twice to wear as a bracelet or try wearing it as a choker in principle.
But it was really just the practice piece to try the technique on, the pattern is just what they used in the beginners tutorial.

Now I'm working on this one, I'm going to make it long enough to fit around my head as a circlet to hold a veil for my medieval faire outfit with:


And that's the tablets part of the weaving:

They're just cardboard squares with some holes punched through, all homemade.

I didn't take a picture of the whole setup from further away since my desk is way too messy ;) But the ends of the threads are just tied to two screw clamps that are fixed to my desk.

that's so awesome! I had to take out my work and start over somehow ended up with 4 stitches instead of 8 I don't have a clue what I did wrong. Probably put the knot way too close to the work...Said I needed to move it an inch away I have no freakin clue being left handed doesn't really help...I think.

It was an online tutorial, but a German one... It's here, in case you want to have a go at it with google translate or something, but that might be a bit diffiult...
I'm sure there must be english tutorials for it somewhere online too, though.

Hm, I don't really understand what might have gone wrong with your cross stitching either, Mona. Did it go better the second time around? If not, maybe you can post a picture of the situation and we'll be able to help better?

On an unrelated note: I finally made that Art Contest thread I wanted to do! *confetti rain* (mem's rubbing off on me :D)
Here it is: click
Just need to finish going over my items for the item prize pool now... But not tonight, it's past midnight already, I should already be fast asleep.

It told me to start working away from the knot and work my way towards it so I can lock it in with the stitches. "No ugly knots on cross stitch" Bull crap to me waste of thread to tangle it up with others so it'll stay...Geez.

edit: I'll probably take pictures of the book to show you if that doesn't make since now.

I need to invest in a digital cam to take pictures if this is gonna be a normal thing.