Poison Garden, Part 2-5

Wow, I've been busy stitchng, but totally forgot to post any updates on this! I managed to mostly stay caught up with the Poison Garden SAL, which means I finished the front- and back cover in two weeks each:

 

This is the most stitch-heavy part of the design by far, from now, it's just a couple hundred stitches per page, with one page releasing every week. So far, three pages have been released, and I stitched two of them - a personalized title page with the cutest little froggy:

 And this diagram of the anatomy of plants:

 

Things have been busy around here, so I am not getting a lot more stitching done than this, but I'm doing my best to not fall behind!

Junge Gifted Gorgeousness

Hello friends! I am pretty late to the party this month...I overconfidentally thought I would be able to finish my blanket this month. But it's way too hot to be sitting untder a 500g+ woolen blanket while working on it! So I'm only really knitting on this during my lunch breaks at work (were we got temperature control) and I had to run errands during my break most of the last week, so while I am really close, I'm not quite done yet.

Just 10 rows of pattern left to go, then 12 rows of border and the bind off. To put that into context, I am currently 297 rows in!

 

So the plan now is to finish this, then work on two smaller gifts, but also probably start the next blanket, because did I mention my sister in law is pregnant again? No rest for the crafters!

June Fully Finished Gallery

Well hello again! It's been a while...June has been terribly busy so far, and even though most of the things are good (except for work...which is not bad per se, there is just a lot of it!), they all eat time and energy and everything seems to take me forever! We finally had a day off today, and among other things (like catching up on sleep and just relaxing) I used it to finish-finish my Edelweis Forever biscornu! Just a simple whip stitch, but it turned out really pretty, and it gives me something to link up with Rachel for her Fully Finished Gallery.

 

It looks like weird lighting in this picture, but there actually is a weird pale spot on that back right corner. I gave my stitching a little wash before finishing it - which I often do - and the fabric just bled out in a couple small spots. It's weird because I know about hand dyed fabric bleeding (and potentially staining the floss and other things in the water), but I hadn't seen it actually lose its own colour like this! It's not very noticable finished like this, and won't be visible when I put it in the decorative bowl with my other biscornu, but it still surprised me.

May Smalls SAL

I am still pretty hooked on the Poison Garden SAL, but I made some time to stitch up a Small in May to link up with Rachel's Smalls SAL. 

 

This is the back of the Edelweiss Forever Biscornu that was a retreat pattern at Stitch Basel 2023. I stitched up the front back in March, now I just need to do the biscornu construction - can you guess when I'm going to show that? ;) 

May WIPocalypse

Another month has gone by and wow, the year is really gaining momentum now! I really have to carefully look back to see where the weeks and months went. But so far, I had a good month, lots of fun with family and friends and a chill long weekend in progress - what could be better?

For Measi's WIPocalypse SAL, the question his month is How do you personally distinguish between a Work in Progress (WIP) and an Unfinished Object (UFO)?Personally, I really don't. Everything I started is a WIP, until I finish. I don't deal well with unfinished business so if I really want to abandon a project, I need to frog it/throw it away to really be done-done with it.

For stitching progress, this month was about the opposite of last month - I didn't get a page finish, but added a decent amount of stitches, from 91.13% to 92.39%, so about 1500 stitches. Most colours had a decent amount of stitches so progress was reasonably fast, and look at how pretty these blues are!

Hopefully, next month I will get another page, there's not that much to go on this one now.

June and July will also be the next 'one a day' challenge of WIPocalypse, when we are challenged to pick a WIP and add at least one stitch every day. I think I'll be good and pick up my blue tablecloth again. This is how it looked after the last event in March:

I hope that by working on this throughout June and July, I should be able to finish one more side and make a dent into a third one, so push this comfortably past the halfway mark. We'll see, though!

May Gifted Gorgeousness

Usually I have plenty of gift projects on the go fir Jo's Gifted Gorgeouness, the one stop SAL for all things gifted and giftee, but currently, I am focusing on only one - the blanket I am knitting for my second niece. We'll be visiting them most likely in July, and to finish the blanket by then I need to knit 3.5 rows every day, and by doing so, I am seeing steady progress!

 

I know it's not very exciting, but it's very satisfying to see the blanket grow a little every week, and I am almost halfway done now.

May Fully Finished Gallery

In terms of finish-finishes this month, I got one that's a couple months old, and one that isn't quite there...which kind of averages out to one new finish-finish, no?

So, here are my entries for Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery SAL this month: 

Back in December, we framed Guardian of Wayfarers to give to a friend. I forgot to get a proper picture before giving it to him, but he's now put it on his wall and send me this picture:

 

We special ordered the round mat and interestingly found out the stitching wasn't exactly round - either this evenweave isn't perfectly even, or it's been pulled out of shape while stitching. The difference was pretty minimal so and I think it still turned out great!

The 'not quite done' one is the Book of Fungi SAL. There are lots of instructions to turn the stitching into a really little book, and I am almost done with the cover now:

 It's a lot of work but I love how it's turning out! Hopefully, this time next month, it'll be all done.