expiration date 

since aina gave me a mothers’ day present last month, she’s been wanting to make one for ari. and the upcoming Fathers’ Day was exactly what she’s been waiting for. she’s been busy browsing craft books, trying to find ideas. most of her ideas were waaaay beyond her skill, until she bumped into this crazy-complicated-looking cross-stitch piece… i thought, well, maybe we can make it simpler… much, MUCH, simpler.

so, we went shopping at the Art Friend nearby to find a small plastic grid thingy, because i think it’s easier for her than going straight to fabric. good thing that Art Friend had piles of them in different sizes.

after that, we went into the computer and started to draw our designs, pixel by pixel. aina wanted to have a picture of ari and her. since there wasn’t much of a space, she was okay that both of them wouldn’t have faces.

then, the fun part started.

first, we dug into my yarn stash and chose colors. after getting some preliminary colors that aina liked (pink! red!), we started immediately. we changed many of the colors along the way, because aina kept changing her mind…

it turns out that teaching a 5-year-old cross-stitching is much harder than i thought. she got the yarn part — along with the needle going in and out — perfectly well. it was a breeze to teach her sewing. but counting was a different beast, especially in cross-stitching. she was confused to where the cross started and ended. i think she got the whole “cross” thing only after she was about 80% done… but finally, she got it.

it took her almost a whole week to finish the piece. in and out, of course. and she got bored pretty quickly, so we took many breaks. we had to hide the project in aina’s room, so ari wouldn’t see it.

even though we were a day late, she was very proud and happy when it was done.

the day after Fathers’ Day, ari had to stay late in the office and didn’t get home until around 11PM. aina insisted that she wanted to give the gift that day, because it was already a day late. and she was nervous and quite annoyed that ari had to stay late that day… but the surprise worked and ari was very happy to get his present.

aina did about 90% of the cross-stitching. i helped a little here and there along with the framing, because aina wished that ari could hang it somewhere in his office.

it is now sitting on ari’s desk in the office :)