Amateur Amalgam

Part 1

Nov 6, 2024

Once upon a time, I worked at Michael’s (arts and crafts store), and while I was there I passed by kits for making latch-work projects regularly. Very quickly I became obsessed with this new thing, because this is a type of project that I had never seen before. I promised myself that at some point I would get one to try (I got 2 actually, but I haven’t opened the second one yet).

This one I got first – and is the one that originally caught my eye – and I’ve worked on it (very) slowly. I am a lot further along on this one than I am with other incomplete projects, surprisingly, but it still took several years of on and off work to get here.

I want to finish the other cross stitch pieces that I have in the works before I continue with this one though, just because doing too much at once is the quickest way to get me to lose interest in everything and just stop making stuff altogether. I did want to log it on here anyway though, just so that I have it in the queue so I actually remember to do it (which I have found is the best way to get myself to do stuff).

I probably won’t be back with an update on this one till well into next year – but you never know, I kinda chose to work on stuff at random so I might put in some work here and there.

Part 2

Oct 21, 2026

Wow! I was right about working on this one at random. It’s been almost 2 years since the last post but I’m finally back with some very good news…It’s finished! 🥳

Last we were here I had gotten to just over 50% of the way through. When I started I did blocks of the pattern then I switched to colours and then I went back to blocks because I was starting to loose my place.

When I did finally get back around to working on this post-part 1 (which was only this year mind) I was able to average about an hour a month, before stopping for about 3 months.

Finally I made it to the home stretch over the summer, and it was starting to be mostly large chunks of the same colour to fill in.

The last section I did by going back to the colours method, since it was just sky left. I finished the tiger’s ears and then blocked out the outline of where the sky ends for the pattern.

All that was left at that point was the filling and then all too quickly I came upon the last stitch!

And just like that, literally a decade in the making, I was done!

The back has it’s own charm as well!

The only step left at this point was just finishing up the edges. I debated if I should just cut the excess canvas and finish it that way, but I was worried that would unravel all my hard work and then the knots would all come apart. So I opted for trimming the excess and then actually sewing the edges down. I was afraid it might make a bump all around the edge but you cant even tell it’s there tbh.

Obviously the thread I was using immediately got tangled and made a big mess

But I got the hang of it eventually and it started coming out more smooth.

And then finally, all done!

Literally a decade in the making. Working on this was more fun than I thought it would be! At first I used a crochet hook but that was quite slow, so I caved and bought the actual latch hook and it actually made a big difference in speed and the neatness of my yarn loops. It’s so crazy that when I add up the total time it took to make this it’s only ~45 hours but I didn’t finish it for 10 years. I’m glad that I made myself sit and do it though. Otherwise we’d be here for another 10 years 😂