With the power of Safari, the iPhone is more than capable of loading just about any administrative blog interface. It is not the optimal solution for banging out long posts. It is, however, more than capable of running a linkblog. While there are dedicated iPhone applications for several popular blog types—including some real bang up Tumblr apps—there is no such app for my platform of choice: Textpattern.

Thing is, if you’re just interested in posting interesting links like right now you hardly need a dedicated app. With a little bit of forethought and a handy bookmarklet you too can share interesting links with the world via your Textpattern site. Let’s go!

Step 1: Lay the foundation

Textpattern ships with a special link function. I don’t ever use it. This is partially because I’ve been running Textpattern since the release candidate days and the feature was poorly explained nor as robust as it is now. I keep my links in Textpattern articles.

When I had decided to add a link section I had several features I wanted from it. When posting a link I wanted the section to:

1. Allow me to use Textile in the description.
2. Show up in my feed—both mixed and section specific.
3. Accommodate extra links should I so choose, which is arguably the same as reason number 1.
4. Be friendly with Textpattern forms.

The only way I could check off all of these requirements was to post these links as articles. So that’s just how I set up the section. I made a new section named “link” and set it to be on the front page—it will appear on the front page when I call <txp:article/>—and to be included in site search. As I’m not using the default Textpattern feeds I didn’t much care if it’s syndicated. You might want to look into rolling your own feed if you set up a link section in this way. More on that in a bit. If you don’t want to segregate your linked list as a separate section you can easily post everything in the default article section.

Textpattern uses a cookie store the device with which you last logged into the admin. This can cause a bit of a snag if you’re trying to use the same login credentials on both desktop and iPhone. Instead of posting a link you’ll end up looking at the login screen and that info you were trying to pass on just gets lost in the ether. The solution is simple: make a new author.

I made a new author that I only use on my phone. I set him up with the same name and email address as my primary author because that info is transmitted via meta tags. It’s not terribly important, though you do need to use a real email address because the password is sent that way. I gave my iPhone account the privileges of “Staff Writer” but you can set him up to have any account type as long as it is allowed to create articles.

The final preparatory step is setting up a place to store the link’s URI. Textpattern allows you to assign up to 10 different “Custom Fields” to articles. Pick one of them. It doesn’t really matter which one, but keep track of it. Make sure to give that field a dedicated name under Admin > Preferences > Advanced because only named fields show up in the Write tab. If they’re not already in use, the default “Custom_1” and “Custom_2” will work just fine.

Let’s recap. In order to prepare to post links to external sites as articles I:

• Created a new section. This could have been skipped had I been okay with links appear in the same section as articles. But it wasn’t and I did.
• Set up a new author so I don’t need to sign in repeatedly.
• Chose a custom field to store the linked site’s URI.

Got that? The next step is where the real heavy lifting takes place.

Step 2: One word: bookmarklets

Bookmarklets—tiny bits of Javascript launched from a browser’s bookmarks—are the key to sending information from one website to another. When tapped, this bookmarklet will look at the current site in Safari and copy the address and the title¹ to Textpatten’s article tab. Sure, now that the iPhone supports cut-copy-paste you could do this manually, but why would you? Installing a bookmarklet turns a mildly fussy procedure with several taps and holds into a two tap operation.

So, you’ve told your iPhone to sync your Safari bookmarks, right? Good. It’s going to be a whole lot easier if you do.

The first thing is to build a bookmarklet for your site. Thankfully, this has all been spelled out on the Textpattern forums. The code is replicated below. Copy this into your text editor of choice.

javascript:
var d=document,
w=window,
e=w.getSelection,
k=d.getSelection,
x=d.selection,
s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0)),
f='http://PathToYourTXPFolder/index.php',
l=d.location,
e=encodeURIComponent,
p='?bm=1&Section=SectionName&from_view=1&Category1=CategoryName&Title='+e(d.title)+'&Body='+e(s),
u=f+p;
a=function(){
  if(!w.open(u,'t','toolbar=0,resizable=0,status=1,width=800,height=800'))
    l.href=u;
  }
  ;
if(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))
  setTimeout(a,0);
else
  a();
void(0)

In order to work the following lines need to be changed:

• Change f='http://PathToYourTXPFolder/index.php', to the address of your Textpattern’s administrative page. This is usually http://yoursiteaddress.tld/textpattern/index.php
• Change Section=SectionName to whatever section these linked sites should be posted under. In my cast that would be Section=link.
• Change Category1=CategoryName to whatever Textpattern Category the links should have. The second category can be specified by adding Category2=CategoryName but make sure that it is separated by &. I’m not using Categories in this way so I deleted this bit.
• Add the following to this line: '&custom_1='+e(l.href). This is what copies the site’s address to the custom field selected to hold the link’s URI. In my case that is Custom 1.

This line—the one that stats with p=—is the important one. It controls what gets transferred and where. Here’s what mine ended up looking like:

p='?bm=1&Section=link&from_view=1&Title='+e(d.title)+'&Body='+e(s)+'&custom_1='+e(l.href),

Translated from the original Javascript this line says that I’ll be posting into my link section. The document’s title will be the new article’s title. Whatever text I’ve selected will be passed into the article’s body. The document’s URI will be be passed into custom 1².

So you’ve got your nascent bookmarklet all set up. You’ve told it where your admin page is. You’ve set a Section. You’ve chosen your Categories (or deleted them altogether). You’ve told it to copy the URI to a Custom Field. It’s almost ready.

There’s just one problem: too much white space. You can’t use a bookmarklet with all these lines and spaces. You could strip it out yourself, but it’s a far sight easier to just copy this whole mess and paste it into the Bookmarklet Builder. Just paste the whole mess into the textarea, give it a snappy name, and then click “Format” and “Compress.” Bookmarklet Builder will give you a nice handy link suitable for dragging and dropping into the Safari’s bookmarks. I would recommend that you install a copy in your Bookmarks Bar and in your top-level Bookmarks. The former will be useful in the desktop Safari. The latter will be a bit easier on iPhone. Of course, the bookmarklet works in every browser, but only Safari will sync to iPhone.

Add the bookmarklet to Safari Bookmarks. Plug in iPhone. Sync.

A recap of step 2. In this step I’ve:

• Configured a bookmarklet to post the desired information to my Textpattern installation.
• Added said bookmarklet to Safari.
• Synced it to iPhone.

Now it’s time to put it to use.

Linkblogging on the go

iPhone in hand, visit a site you’d like to share with your lovely, intelligent readers. You’ll need to visit it in Safari, so if you’ve a ken to share a page found via Twitter or feed reader you’ll need to hit the “View in Safari” button.

Provided you’ve upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0 (and I doubt you’d be reading this if you haven’t) you can copy and paste text from linked sites into your own—as a blockquote say. You might want to go ahead and copy that text now unless you really enjoy swapping tabs/windows. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Now it’s time to put that bookmarklet to use. With the page loaded in Safari tap the bookmarks icon at the bottom of the screen—you know, the one that looks like a little book. Scroll down to wherever you saved it and tap the bookmarklet. This is why I recommend saving a copy in the top-level of the bookmarks.

Safari will open a new window with your Textpattern write tab—provided, of course, that you’ve logged in with the special new phone account. You’ll see the page title from the site you just visited will already be in the article’s title field and the address will be in the custom field chosen to hold the URI. Great!

Scrolling over—the administrative interface isn’t really built for a screen that tops out at 480px—you’ll see that the section for this article has automagically been set to link instead of the default. I also like to turn off comments for my links. I’ve ensured that the comment form doesn’t appear on this section through the presentation, but I still like it off thank you very much. There doesn’t seem to be a way to do this via the bookmarklet.

Type a description for this link in the body. Here’s where you can make use of that fancy new cut-copy-paste you’ve been wanting for so long. Use the excerpt field below too if that’s your thing.

Tap submit and…

Your link has been posted. Good for you!

Oh balls! I very nearly forgot!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention just how the hell you’re going to display all of this. Those of you with even a passing familiarity with Textpattern have probably figured out that our little article is going to be of little use if the link doesn’t go anywhere offsite.

With my links I like to have the title of the link go to the page and not to the permanent link on my site³. That’s how Gruber does it and it’s just flat out the right way to do it. You don’t have to do it that way, but you’d be wrong.

No matter where you choose to put the link’s URI, call it up in your forms using the <txp:custom_field/> tag. Here’s how I set mine up:

<a href="<txp:custom_field name="linkURI" />" title="<txp:title />">
  <txp:title/>
</a>

Set the custom field name to whatever you set it to earlier. You could wrap this link around whatever you want, such as a spot of text that says “go away!” or some such thing. That’s not very helpful link text, but nobody is stopping you from doing it.

And finally…

To sum up a rather overlong, excessively wordy, and painstakingly specific tutorial, here’s what just happened. In order to post links via iPhone to my Textpattern based site I:

• Added a section in which to store these articles.
• Created a new author to circumvent Textpattern’s security cookie
• Named a custom field to store the linked site’s URI.
• Configured a bookmarklet, compressed it, and synced it to my iPhone.
• Posted a link to my site on the train home from work.
• Oh, and I also made sure my Textpattern forms were in order.

It occurs to me that this entire tutorial could be boiled down to a few succinct sentences. It also occurs to me that I can write whatever I want, however long I want. So, I guess it’s a wash.

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¹ In desktop browsers the bookmarklet will copy whatever text is selected into the article body field. iPhone 3.0’s select doesn’t seem to work in the same way. No matter what is selected, the article body section is going to be blank on iPhone. Remember to tap copy first!

² If instead of posting these links as articles you’d prefer to use the Link functions of Textpattern you might want to consider this bookmarklet from the Textpattern forums. I can’t speak for it personally, but I thought I should mention that it is possible.

³ The little ∞ links to the permanent link to this, ahh, link here on the site.

Last time I showed you how to add cross stitch to an article of clothing. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to make a pretty kickass button adorned with cross stitch without needing an expensive button make. It’s quite simple with the proper tools.

You will need:

• cover button kit
• 22-count fabric
• embroidery floss
• small gauge needles (I use 26 gauge)
• a sharp cutting utensil: embroidery scissors work pretty well
• an idea

Most craft stores will stock a cover button kit like this one. You’ll typically find it near the sewing supplies. They’re intended for use on dresses and the like. The idea is that one could precisely match the color of the buttons to the dress by covering these buttons with a piece of fabric leftover from the making of the garment. As it turns out, you can stick a bit of fabric you’ve cross stitched on just as easily.

These cover buttons come in a variety of sizes, but I’ve chosen the 1.5 inch size. This will give me enough room to stitch a standard 16×16 sprite with enough white space to provide balance. The design is going to need to be small enough to leave a bit of room at the edges. A good rule of thumb for a 1.5 inch button is to pick a design 1 inch or smaller.

The first step of course is to stitch your design. Well, technically, the first step is to pick your design and figure out what floss colors you’ll be using. I assuming you’ve already managed to do that. I’m also assuming that you’ve already learned how to cross stitch. You can find some good tutorials online if you need some pointers.

I’m going to be using the Robot Ninja Haggle Man pattern that I posted several days ago. You can too, if you like, as I’ve provided the pattern and floss list. Any small image will work just great.

To maximize the available stitching area I’m using 22-count Hardanger fabric. That means a design 22 stitches in width (or height) will take up 1 inch of fabric on my finished button and look quite smashing on a 1.5 inch button.

Cut the fabric into 2 inch square segments. This packet of Hardanger comes in sheets of 11″×14″ so it’ll make a bunch of buttons. When stitching on 22-count you’ll want to use a single strand of floss rather than the two you may be accustomed to with larger counts.

Stitch the design as usual, using just one strand of floss. A 2 inch square of fabric won’t fit into any hoop, but it’s not really necessary. Don’t bother ironing it yet, because you’re going to need to fold it again in the next step.

The cover button kit will probably have a pattern marked on the back of the cardboard liner. It’s just a semicircle of cardboard with a radius of half the button, or ¾ inch. Fold the completed cross stitch along the flat side and cut around the edge of the pattern.

Now you have a circle of fabric with your design in the center. I slipped up and cut one edge too closely and my circle is pretty sad. It won’t matter in the end. You do need to cut the fabric a little bit though because it needs to fit in between the parts of the cover button.

Inside the cover button kit you’ll find four button halves, a rubber guide, and a small plastic “pusher.” The fabric will be stretched across the top (the rounded bit) and the edges will be sandwiched between that and the bottom (the flat bit). Now, I haven’t done an exhaustive search for every type of button like this so there’s a chance that some don’t come with all these parts. This is the type I’ve found locally.

These buttons are designed to be the sorts of buttons you use on a garment or upholstery. As such, they have a small metal peg for sewing on to something. This is going to get in the way later.

So just rip it off. It can be a tad dicey, and the aluminum back has a tendency to bend. Unless you really mangle it this won’t be a problem. Just get that sucker off of there!

With all the prep work completed, it’s time to assemble. Center the stitched fabric on top of the rubber guide and set the front of the button on top of it. I’ve found this a bit more reliable than trying to center the fabric on top of the front itself.

Push the fabric and the front of the button down into the rubber guide. This stretches the fabric taut across the button. This is what that “pusher” is designed to do, but you can use just about anything.

Fold all the extra bits of fabric sticking out into the center of the button. Set the back of the button on top. Push the back of the button down as far as possible. Friction will hold the entire thing together.

And there you have your completed button, more or less. The loose edges are sandwiched between the two button halves. As you can see, I didn’t do a spectacular job of centering my design. That’s okay. It’s these little imperfections that make it handmade!

These are the best pinbacks I’ve been able to find. I’m not thrilled with them. The spring is terribly finicky and difficult to keep straight while pinning. They get the job done, and they’re a snap to affix. These pins have an adhesive back that I can attest holds tight. Just peel off the backing and stick it on.

At this point you could also opt to make a pretty awesome little magnet too. You should be able to find self-adhesive magnets in your local craft store. With the proper glue any old magnet should work just fine. I’ll have to give that a shot someday soon.

There you have it. One slightly off-centered but totally handmade Robot Ninja Haggleman button. Pretty cool, right?

Let’s say for argument’s sake you’re a bit of a dab hand at cross stitch but you’re a bit sick of mounting and framing everything you make. Or you’ve run out of places to put or hang them and so have all of the friends to whom you’d normally gift your work. Yet you’re not yet ready to learn something new and your compulsions won’t allow you to just stop crafting. What to do?

(I suppose I could’ve just drop the whole “for argument’s sake” bit. I just described myself. But you probably already knew that.)

Well, how about embellishing something like a bit of clothing? It’s not that much more difficult than traditional cross stitch. It looks pretty danged nice too, particularly if you’re doing two-dimensional pixel art like myself.

Now, you can cross stitch on any old fabric you want if you have a mind to do it. You can even stitch on a piece of clothing freehand if you like. Some folks can make nice straight stitches this way. I can’t, so I use something called waste canvas. Waste canvas is essentially a very loose piece of evenweave fabric. It can be used as a guide and then removed once the stitch is complete.

In this tutorial I’ll be working with another baby Onesie™. I’ll be stitching upon it the pink Shyguy from Super Mario Bros. 2. This guide presupposes that you are already familiar with cross stitch and have already found your image and selected your floss.

(By the way, I’m using DMC colors 310, 3806, and B5200 for this particular character.)

To prepare the waste canvas I’m going to cut it into fourths. This is a larger piece of canvas than I really need for a 15×16 sprite but I want to put it into a hoop to maintain tension and the smallest hoop I own is 4 inches in diameter.

Next I’ll need to find out where I’d like this Shyguy to go. Since I’m using a baby Onesie™ I like to put the stitch as close to the middle as possible. Rather than measure anything I just put the bottom part of my hoop under the front of the clothing.

Now I’ll center the piece of waste canvas I cut earlier over the fabric as best I can. I use the dark blue threads to gauge the center of the canvas as well as determine if it’s straight. Because the piece is big enough to cover the hoop and then some I don’t need to worry overly about centering it.

As stiff as the waste canvas is, and as thick as it and the Onesie™ fabric are together this step can be difficult. I take the top part of the hoop and sandwich the waste canvas between the front of the clothing and the hoop. I need to try and keep the Onesie™ fabric taut without stretching it too badly.

Now I just need to fully seat the hoop and tighten it. I’m ready to start stitching. I’ll trust that you don’t need any instructions on this part. If so, a quick search with your favorite search engine should produce good results. I posted a tutorial a while back but I’m not going to link it now because I just know the formatting has been buggered up by careless redesigns.

I’m going to want to get access to the back of the clothing, so I flip the Onesie™ over and secure it on the top of the hoop. Otherwise I’d have a hard time maneuvering the needle about.

With the cross stitch completed I’m ready to remove my waste canvas. Taking off the hoop I’m left with quite a bit of excess waste canvas. I’m going to want to get rid of this as it’ll make the next steps needlessly difficult.

Using a pair of scissors—it doesn’t really matter what type—I’ll trim the waste canvas down as small as I can. I want to leave enough to grab onto though. Just a lazy circle around the finished cross stitch will do fine.

Now it’s time to start removing the waste canvas threads. I’ve found a clean pair of needlenose pliers to be quite useful for this step. It also helps to dampen the cross stitch. This loosens the fibers and allows the waste canvas threads to slip out with less effort. Apply a moistened wash cloth to the front of the stitch. You don’t want it soaking, you just want it damp.

Start pulling out thread from one direction at a time. If your cross stitch is longer on one side than the other start with the shortest side—if it’s taller than it is wide start with the horizontal threads. Since the Shyguy is almost a square I’ve just picked the vertical threads.

The vertical threads removed, I can now pull out the horizontal threads. This is a far cry easier than the first round of thread removal. I’m even able to pull out two at a time a couple of times. Still, it pays to be gentle. I don’t want to mess up my hard work.

And I’m finished! The cross stitch is applied to the Onesie™¹ and the waste canvas is removed. I don’t have any scratchy interfacing to irritate baby’s sensitive skin. I’d probably still recommend hand washing this. I haven’t tried to machine wash them. It might work just fine, but I’d be hesitant to try.

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¹ This ™ bit is getting more than a little tiresome and almost certainly not necessary, but once I found out that they are ™ by Gerber I just couldn’t stop.

It was my wife who reawakened my love of cross stitch. Yes, I, a dude, used to cross stitch as a child. I never made anything terribly detailed nor interesting but I used to do it back in my elementary school days. So, when Staci announced her plan to make her xmas gifts this year through needlework I jumped at the chance. She ordered the Subversive Cross Stitch book and the Sublime Stitching Stitch-It Kit as well as a few patterns for each. We never got around to any of the Sublime Stitching due to limited time, but hope to start that in 2007.

As soon as I saw the blocky patterns in the Subversive Cross Stitch book there was only one thing I could think of: pixels. I grew up in front of the Nintendo Entertainment System and I’ve never lost my love of two-dimensional sprite based games. Over the years I’d toyed with a number of classic gaming projects in LEGO, in print, and in stencil. Cross stitch would be a perfect home for NES and other classic game sprites.

If you’re reading this you’ve likely seen the creations I posted thus far. You might have thought you’d like to make some yourself. Today I’d like to help you do that. Here’s how to go about making a NES cross stitch.

Find your sprite

Turning classic game sprites into cross stitch is terribly easy: the pattern is essentially already made for you. Every pixel becomes a stitch. Provided your aim is to recreate a popular game (and occasionally even if it isn’t) this is very easily done. Video Game Sprites has a tirelessly organized and complete collection of sprites for several NES and SNES games. If you can’t find what you’re looking for there, check her links or Google Image Search. One caveat about GIF files: many of them are dithered all to hell. A similar warning applies for JPG files, though not for dithering concerns. The lossy compression of JPG can lead to some awfully ugly blurred edges. Just be certain you can identify the primary color and find the crisp edges of your sprite and you should do fine.

Determine your colors

Of course, you’ll need some thread (usually called floss). But before you go shopping you’ll need to figure out what colors you need to buy. Cross stitch thread comes in a retarded number of colors, all designated by a three or four digit numerical code. Had you purchased a kit or pattern at a store you would have these numbers given to you. Since you’re striking (relatively) new ground here, you’ll need to figure that out on your own.

You have a few options in this regard. First, you could just try and “eyeball it” and take a printout of your desired creation to your local craft supply store and pick the thread that best matches it. That’s exactly what I did for my moblin design. Second, you could figure out the RGB or Hex values of your image and compare them to this chart, though this is rather unwieldy and difficult to browse. Third, you could use the counted cross stitch creator at Dark Lilac which allows you to create a chart along with color values. When stitching a game sprite be sure to enter “0” in the field that says “Number of isolated stitches grouped together that will be removed.” Fourth, you could find a computer program that generates charts. I have not tested any of these and cannot speak for them.

Personally I used the Dark Lilac creator or just trust my own eyes. Both work reasonably well for me. Be aware, that no computer application can predict with 100% accuracy how your design will look in thread. Use your best judgment but don’t worry too hard. This is supposed to be fun.

Here are the colors used for Mario in this example (all colors DMC):

• 732 – Olive Green
• 946 – Medium Burnt Orange
• 977 – Light Golden Brown

Lay out your design (optional)

Depending on how large a project you are working on you may be able to skip this step. If you’ve used an application to find your colors you’ve already done this. When working with small individual sprites I tend to eschew this step and work directly from the screen. Using Preview, I blow the image up as large as can fit on screen and count the stitches using the selection tool. If you’re working with a larger design you may find it helpful to lay it out on paper.

Any graph paper will do. You can find specialized cross stitch paper at your local craft store that is scaled to the same size as the fabric. Depending on the size your graph paper you may find yourself with a rather large pattern. I had to use 7 sheets of graph paper to lay out my moblin. Take a look (DS lite to show scale):

Our design for this tutorial is very simple, measuring only 34 stitches (pixels) by 32 stitches (pixels). So simple, I didn’t see the need to make a chart. What I did was open it in Preview and use Zoom to Fit to make it large enough to follow. It saved me some paper and some ink.

Go shopping

Once you’ve figured out your design (or designs) and have your color list prepared you’re ready to go shopping. You’ll find all the thread in sorted bins generally somewhere in the back of the store. Unless you’re a cross stitch veteran you’ll need to pick up a few more items while you’re there. Here’s what you’ll need:

• fabric — Available in a variety of colors, though shades of white are the most common. I’ve found that larger stores such as the Michael’s chain have the best selection. Cross stitch fabric has a grid-like pattern of holes at regular intervals and is marked with a stitch count that refers to the number of squares per inch. The smaller the number, the larger the square. I usually use 14 count fabric.
• needles — These come in packs of 6 or so. They come in various gauges depending on the type of needlework. You’ll want 22 or 24 gauge.
• embroidery hoop — Buy one that will fit as much of your design at once. They’re cheap. Buy two.
• embroidery scissors — Very small and very sharp scissors. You’ll need them to make a clean cut in your floss and to trim off the excess when you’re done.
• pinking shears (optional) — These aren’t cheap. What they do is cut a zig-zag pattern which reduces fraying. Unfortunately, that’s all they do. You don’t necessarily need them, but when working with a larger design that takes several days to complete you might find that the edges start to get messy. A more economical solution is to buy a rotary cutter and pinking blade. I found a set on sale at a fabric supply store and it’s terribly handy for cutting all sorts of things.

That’s really all you need and most of it is quite inexpensive. Floss is about 30 to 40 cents a skein. The hoops and needles will set you back about $1.50 to $2.00. Fabric is usually about $4. Embroidery scissors can be had for about $6. The only expensive item on the list is the pinking shears, and you can get by without them. ‘

You’ll also need:

• an iron — Unless you really like the looks of circular creases left by your hoop you’ll want to iron the design out at the end.
• gentle laundry detergent, like Woolite — It’s also a good idea to wash your creation once you’re done.

While you’re shopping, you might also want to consider the final destination for your project. Pick up some framing materials if you’re so inclined. You can also find coasters designed to hold small cross stitch or other such products.

Cut your fabric

Okay, so you’ve brought everything home and you’re ready to get started. First thing you’ll need to do is cut off a hunk of fabric. You’ll need to know just how big a piece your design requires. Most NES sprites are about 16 pixels by 16 pixels or 16 pixels by 32 pixels. If you’ve picked up 14 count fabric that means your final design will be a little over an inch width and between 1 and 2 inches high. . . roughly. To figure it out exactly multiply your pixel count by your thread count.

But wait! Don’t cut just yet! Consider a few more things. If you’re going to frame your masterwork you need to consider that most frames are in certain sizes. Think about how much empty space you want around your creation. Do you want it to take up most of the frame? Do you want it to stand alone in an empty field of solid color? Do you have an entire scene prepared? Once you’ve figured out these stylistic questions and have a size you’ll also want to add an inch or two to each side for mounting. It’s always better to cut on the generous side. You can trim the excess off at the end.

Commence the stitching!

This might actually be the simplest step. Take your fabric and fold it twice along each side so you have a crease in the center. Don’t worry, you’ll iron it out at the end. These creases will help you find the center of the fabric. It’s a good idea to start there so you know your project will fit properly.

Find the approximate center of your pattern. It’s not critical that it’s the exact center because you cut spare fabric (You did leave a 1-2 inch border on the edge, didn’t you?). Now grab that color thread. If you look closely you’ll see that your floss is made of six individual strands . You’re going to want two of those strands for cross stitch (other needlework uses more or less). Cut a length around a foot and a half and separate it into three sets of two strands each. Got it? Okay.

Starting near the center of your fabric bring your thread through from the back. Put your thread through the front again so it makes a slash ( / ). To finish the stitch bring the thread through from the back at the other bottom corner across the first to make a backslash ( \ ). When you’re done you should have an X shaped stitch from which we get the name cross stitch. It doesn’t really matter which corner you start with, but it is very important that you keep it consistent. Always start at the same corner and always end at the same corner. If you don’t, you’ll regret it when you cross stitch looks like ass.

If you’re filling in a larger block of color it’s usually most convenient to do a row of half-stitches ( / / / / / ) and then come back over them working backwards ( \ \ \ \ \ ). This way you can drop right down a row and not have a tangled mess in the back.

That’s basically all there is to the stitch. When you’re starting a new color you should hold the end of the thread down with several successive stitches so it doesn’t pull right out. When you’re finishing a color you want to wiggle your needle through a couple of previous stitches, pull it through, and trim the excess off with your scissors. Don’t tie knots!

Confused? Try watching the animated instructions at Subversive Cross Stitch. They’re just about the best I’ve found. You can find similar guides aplenty if you just search the Internets.

Clean up after yourself

One quick word for pet owners: don’t leave your needle and thread lying about. It’s all too likely you’ll end up with a perforated intestine or other gastrointestinal disaster if you do. Furthermore, should your cat get a hold of a piece of floss and swallow it do not pull it out of his mouth. It may not look like much, but that little piece of string can lacerate his poor kitty esophagus. Be a responsible pet owning crafter. Thanks.

Finishing up

Continue stitching in that manner, switching colors as needed, until you’ve completed your pixellated craft. It’s a good idea to give it a quick washing in gentle detergent and cold water. Let it dry, and then put the iron to it. Everything will look much cleaner if you do.

If you’re going to frame your handiwork you might want to look into self adhesive boards. Most craft stores have them. They’re just thick cardboard with a self-stick backing. You could use double stick tape and regular cardboard if you rather. Or find some creative new way to display your love of classic gaming.

Did that help? If you make something awesome, please share it with me in the comments or by email. Feel free to direct any questions or complaints there as well.

(01/03/2007) Added new step-by-step photos of the entire process.

(06/03/2009) Minor reformatting to fit with recent site redesign.

Not too long ago I became totally crushed out on Backpack, the amazingly elegant organizational tool by the mad geniuses at 37signals. Faced with the prospect of planning a wedding I got a little panicky in the part of my brain that loves to make lists.

“You’re going to forget things!” that little part yelled at me, probably while collating something or other, and continued “You really ought to put write it down; make lists; take notes. You’ll be sorry if you don’t!”

So we got a notebook and filled it with tabs and folders and paper. But, I grew out of Trapper Keepers a long time ago. This is the 21st century; shouldn’t there be a better way, possibly with lasers?

That’s where Backpack comes in, though there are sadly no lasers. It has everything I needed. It’s a to do list. It’s a place to keep notes. It stores photos and files and sends me email to remind me of things. It can be shared with Staci or anyone else on almost any computer anywhere. It can read todos, notes, and files from email. It’s just super, super keen.

Does it get any better than that? Oh trust me, dear readers, it does. The base set of Backpack tools is enough to get my organizational knickers all atwist, but it’s nothing compared to how sexy it can be when you add the magic of Quicksilver to the mix.

Quicksilver is a bit tricky to explain if you haven’t seen it in action. At its most basic level Quicksilver is little more than a search and launch app not entirely unlike Spotlight. You press a keyboard shortcut, you type, you find, you launch. Truthfully, you could use Quicksilver to do just that and you’d never understand what all the fuss is about. I initially didn’t much care for it when I first installed it. I think, perhaps, I was overwhelmed by what it could do, but underwhelmed by what I had been using it to do. Because you can do a hell of of a lot with Quicksilver.

For now though, let’s just concern ourselves with using Quicksilver to add list items, notes, pictures, and files to your Backpack pages. I realize this has already been covered elsewhere but my guide has pictures so I’m going to run it anyway. I’m going to assume that you’ve already installed Quicksilver and signed up for Backpack. You have, haven’t you?

(Note: The following screenshots have been taken with Quicksilver β49. Depending on which version you have installed your screens may look slightly different.)

Install the Backpack and Apple Mail modules. In the Plugins section of Quicksilver’s Preferences look for these two modules. You’ll be using the Apple Mail module to communicate via email with your Backpack pages. The Backpack module allows Quicksilver to see the address of all of your pages so you don’t need to remember the random email address Backpack set up for you. You don’t necessarily need to use Mail.app. So long as you’ve properly configured your favorite email app as your Default Email Reader in Mail’s preferences this will work just fine. You still need the Apple Mail module to interface with this preference, but these steps will work with anything, including GMail.

Enable Email To… (Send Directly) for Text. Once you have installed the two necessary modules you need to enable a few actions to allow Quicksilver to send your text directly to Backpack. Under Actions in the General pane select Text and find Email To… (Send Directly) in this list. You could use any of the other Email To… actions but they’re considerably slower. Make sure they’re still checked though. We’ll use them later.

Enable Email To… (Send Directly) for Files & Folders. If you have a paid Backpack account you can send files to your pages. If you don’t plan on paying for Backpack or don’t need to send images to your pages you can skip this step.

Add QSBackpackPlugInSource to your Catalog. Before Quicksilver can find any of your Backpack pages you have to tell it how to look. Go to the Custom section of your Catalog. Click the little + at the bottom of the screen and select QSBackpackPlugInSource from the drop down list.

Enter your Name and API Key. Now you’ll need to identify yourself. Enter your Backpack user name under the Contents tab of the catalog you just added. You’ll find the API Key at the bottom of your Backpack Account page. You’ll need to click the link that says “Show API.” It’ll be a long string of alphanumeric characters. Just copy and paste it into Quicksilver.

Click refresh. Once you’ve entered your username and API key you’re all set up. Click the Refresh button and a number will appear next to QSBackpackPlugInSource equal to the number of pages you’ve set up in Backpack. Once you see that number, you’re ready to go!

Send an item to your list. Okay, so now what? Now you’re ready to email content to your page, without ever opening Mail.app. Let’s start with a quick list item. Open Quicksilver and press “.” (that’s a full stop a.k.a. a period). This opens the text function. Type the word “todo” followed by two “>>” a space and your text. like so todo>> Do this here thing. Tab over to the second field and select Email To… (Send Directly). You should be able to accomplish this by simply typing “E.” Finally, tab over to the third field and select whatever Backpack page. In this example I am going to send it to my “Quicksilver + Backpack” page so I typed “QU” and waited for the Backpack logo to pop up. Press return and you’ll probably hear the Mail.app’s “whoosh” sound unless you’ve turned it off.

Send a note to your page. Sending a note is just as easy. Open Quicksilver. Press “.” Type “note” followed by “>>” a space and then your text. Like so: note>> I am typing a note. If you want to add a title to your note you can do so like so: note:title>> I am typing a note with a title. Tab over to Email To… (Send Directly). Tab over to your Backpack page and press return.

Send a file to your page. By now you should have no problem figuring out how to send a file. It works exactly the same as the previous examples, except you don’t press “.” at the first step. Find the file you want to send. If you have the iPhoto plugin installed you can browse through your Library or Albums. Alternatively you can browse through the files on your hard drive. Once you’ve found the file, tab over to Email To… (Send Directly), and then tab over to your Backpack page, and finally press return. Voila!

The results. The next time you visit your page you’ll find all the lists, notes, and files you sent waiting for you. With these two awesome apps configured thusly you need never interrupt your work to jot down an idea or task. You don’t even need to touch the mouse. A few quick keystrokes and your brilliant ideas are saved the wrath of forgetfulness!

Note: You’ll recall I said it was a good idea to leave Email To… (Compose) enabled. The reason is it makes is much easier to send multiple items to your list. If you want to add more than one thing at a time you only need to make a Textile unordered list and send it via email with the subject “todo.” You can do this with Quicksilver directly, but you’ll need to remember to put your linebreaks in with option + return (just like in many other OS X apps in which return is used as activate). You can add multiple todo items in the Quicksilver text area like so:

todo>>
* Item the First
* Item the Second
* Item the Third
* Tacos
  

If composing an email, just put “todo” on the subject line. Full instructions for adding content via email can be found on the Backpack help pages.

If you’ve been following along at home you should now have a fairly good grasp and the strength of these two apps, both together and alone. Learning to use Quicksilver with Backpack definitely helped me understand what Quicksilver can do for me much more fully, and helped me keep current with my Backpack pages. Go get one or the both of them and start playing around. You certainly can’t beat the price; Quicksilver is 100% free and Backpack only costs money if you want more. Though, if you do decide to start paying for Backpack would you be so kind as to use the link below? Backpack has a referral program whereby free Backpack can be had by spreading the word.