Tuesday 31 May 2016

May WIPocalypse

Another update that had been planned for a while - in fact, I took the pictures about a week ago, but then I'd have to do several shots to cover everything so you get one set now and the other one hopefully soon. But for now, it's time to check in with the WIPocalypse for May.

The subject for this month is What were you stitching this time last year and have you finished it?, and it was quite a fun experience looking back in my blog by a year. It looks like last May I was stitching on a lot of different things, so I'll not feature everything here. In my 2015 May WIPocalypse, I was working on Dark Forces - which I just recently pulled out again since it is huge and far from finished - the Aster wedding sampler, which was almost finished then and has been given to the happy couple in the meantime - Cut Thru Cottage, where I finished two more pages, but still have three to go - and some knitting/crochet: the Soyeux-shawl has been scrapped and will be restarted at some point, the baby suprise jacket has been finished (as well as two more of those) and the Lestrona shawl has grown considerably, although I made a mistake somewhere in the last few rows and have yet to figure it out and fix it. The post that was exactly a year ago was my May DESIGN post, and that was about Glendon Place's Red Velvet Cake, which I have to admit is still in the exact same place it was back then. I'd love to work on it some more, but stuff just keeps getting in the way! Maybe I should just pull it out for s quick few stitches sometime...

Now, my current progress mostly focused on two things: One is the mysterious grandchildren project. In case you didn't guess, that diamon-structure is actually a garden fence, so there will be a ton of leaves, flowers and small animals around the borders. Here's the first piece of that:


I've also done the next ten rows on the Baby blanked CAL. This time, there was a band called 'tulip stitch' because it looks like pink tulips on a meadow, and also some more granny stripes. It's getting more interesting now :)


Tuesday 17 May 2016

May Gifted Gorgeousness

Hello my lovelies, I hang my head in shame as I have missed an other week of regular updates - and since I can't seem to actually settle for one project at the moment, that means I have quite some stuff to show. I hope you will enjoy this picture heavy update - all but two of my projects qualify for GG anyways (as well as a new small start that I can't show yet because of reasons)!

So, let's start with the weekend we spent away at Felix' parents. As I had said, I took lady with my to stitch on, and on a wonderfull sunny Saturday evening on the balcony I made quite some progress. I moved the hoop again and now I can fit almost all of the remaining area (of this page, not the whole design, of course), so I'm starting to fill in the wide-spread colours (like the greens) while taking turns working on the smaller areas as well.

I also started a new knitting project on the car ride there - this one is for me, and I bought it myself, too, so no GG-relevance here, sorry. It's a lace scarf knit with a very thin and soft lace merino yarn, and I only made a very small start so far - twenty rows from a total length of about 2 meters (more than 6 ft, if my math is correct), so I have a long way to go still, but the pattern is easy and the yarn is fun to work with, so if I can find some time, progress should get along fairly quickly.


I know I had planned to focus my stitching time on Cut Thru' Cottage now, but after last weekend I knew I had to stitch up another gift first - Felix' grandma is turning 75 this year in AUgust, and I wanted to make one of these designs that have the names of all the grandchildren for her (she has eight, and loves her family over everything else, so it's perfect for her). So I had to leave CTC for now, and dive right into this new project. I worked on the 'boring' part last week, and will leave it at that just to make you curious, I will show more the next time around (hopefully, there will be more to show by then).



 I also worked on the next part of my blanket-CAL, the rows 21-30. There was a new stitch called star stitch in there, and I had a few problems making it look neat at first, but after a while I figured it out and I think it looks quite nicely now. I might use it again in other projects, it looks like it might make a great border or something.

And between all this (and the aforementioned yet-to-remain-secret project) I somehow also managed to work on Dark Forces (finished the next column - still tons of colour changes, but when I took a step back I was very excited to see one of those small little background-demons, so all the trouble is actually worth it!) and the melon socks (I finished the heel and started the foot of the first sock, so hopefully, there will be half-a-finish soon-ish!).






So that's it with the catch-up game! Seeing it all together in one place like this, I'm feeling much better about my accomplishments already. Still, I hope to get my next update out on time!


Thursday 5 May 2016

Just some regular progress...

It hasn't happend in some time, but it's true - here I am, no SAL checkin due, no super exciting start or finish, just writing because I made some progress I would like to share. Maybe I can get into that regular blogging thing again~

I've been weaving in ends and working on the second part of the Rainbow Blanket CAL (for some reason I kept typing 'blanked' last week...). This time I've been weaving in the ends on the go, so I can dive right into part 3. The rows 11-20 had some granny stripes (I love those) and a lot of basic stitches, and it looks like the next part will be just as colourful and maybe even more fun :)






With me being all excited about crochet, I didn't get that much stitching done, but I did finish the next column of Dark Forces (still a lot of colour changes, I think the whole pages is a little complex) and the last bands of the 'Perfectly kept house' sampler. There are still three tiny buttons to attach, but I'll do that with the framing, as soon as a find a fitting frame. Now I will work on the last three pages of Cut Thru' Cottage and hope to finish those before I pick up something else (although I might work on an entry for the Stitching Pirates Sampler Contest in between).


I also did some knitting on the watermelon socks and started the heel on the first one; at this speed I might be able to cast on the second sock next week:

We will be at Felix' parents for the weekend, so I'll take the socks and Lady with my and hopefully have some more progress to show next week.