hi, i'm oskar
about the cafe
pixelpastrycafe is a one-person operation out of illinois. i started cross-stitching in high school, mostly video-game and pokémon sprites — they're already tiny grids of colored squares, which is exactly what a cross-stitch chart is. i never really stopped; i just started charting my own.
same instinct now, a little more deliberate: i find a character i can't stop thinking about, redraw it square by square, and chart it so you can follow along. everything's hand-charted — no auto-converters, no 87-shade gradients that need their own spreadsheet. small palettes, clean symbols, and i stitch enough of each one myself to catch the mistakes before you do.
there's a croissant in the logo because it's a pastry cafe; i didn't overthink it. every chart ships from my etsy shop as an instant-download pdf — color chart, symbol chart, and a guide for anyone about to wing it. say hi anytime.
find a character
usually mid-rewatch, usually at an unreasonable hour. i block out the silhouette on graph paper, square by square.
pick the threads
i match DMC colors to real skeins, not whatever my monitor insists is "pink". four to eight, tops.
test-stitch
i stitch it myself. if a symbol's wrong, i find out the hard way so you don't have to.
chart & release
printable pdf: color key, symbol chart, and a stitch guide that assumes you know nothing.