February Fully Finished Gallery

For February, I stitched and finish-finished two quick smalls - an evening of stitching each, and an afternoon to finish both of them into Valentine's cards!

This is the one I made for Felix - it's a freebie from Cottage Garden Samplings. It's designed in two colours, but I opted to do it all in one overdyed (a gorgeous red from xJu Design) and using gold as an accent just for the little heart.

I then cut red card, made a cut out in the right size and shape, and glued my stitching in by sandwiching it with another piece of card from the back.

 

The second card was for my best friend. It's a tiny freebie from Frosted Pumpkin stitchery (I don't think it's online, though...I picked it up from the freebie table at a retreat, it looks like a post card that comes with a purchase or something). I stitched it on some left over fabric, then just cut it to size and glued it on a card. Added some text and stickers and voilá.

 I was glad to stitch both of these patterns that I've been meaning to get to for a while, and to bring them to good use too!

January Smalls SAL

Welcome to the January entry for the Smalls SAL, hosted over at Rachel's this year. I don't have any plany to stitch something especially for this every month, because that didn't quite work out last year, but if I got something that fits, I'll happily post it!

In January I had a start that is pushing the envelope a bit for 'small' - it's 73x120 stitches and as I'm stitching it on 28ct over 2, it feels huge! But I'm still going to count it.

This is the January installment of the Year of the Hare SAL that was published by Stitchers Anon some years ago, when she was still around. I didn't have any plans of starting this SAL this year suddenly found it calling my name, so who am I to deny it!

I'm going to stitch this as four seperate panels of three patterns each, which is the way it was originally designed. I don't have any illusions of stitching a part of this every month, but I'd like to finish the first panel this year, if possible! So you might be seeing sweet Holmsey Hare again in the coming months.

January WIPocalypse & my oldest WIP

January is almost over (when did THAT happen?!), and so far, 2025 has...been a bit of a challenge. My grandma spent a week in the hospital (she's back home and fine, thank heavens), which in turn messed up my work schedule a lot and I'm still catching up on stuff. My husband went to a concert last week and came back with a bit of a respitory bug so now we are just hoping me and grandma won't catch it. Otherwise, things have been great! I got a bit of decent crafting in, had a couple great gaming nights with friends, and got some stuff crossed off my todo list! I've also done a lot better keeping up with my blogging, as I hope you noticed. So, very mixed bag so far, and that is without counting everything else going on in the world!

So, despite my brain telling me the year only just started, it's already time for January WIPocalypse! The question Measi poses this month is Tell us about the oldest WIP you have in your stash. That would be the last of my printed table cloth kits. I don't know if it has an official name, I'm just calling it the Blue Tablecloth. Coincidentally, Measi has also be talking about the One-stitch-a-day challenge that she'll be holding in March, and traditionally I bring out my oldest WIPs for that, so you might see this again very soon!

Now I promised you this would be the place where I talk about The Loneliness of Autumn every month, and the progress I'm making towards a big finish this year! I actually picked it up again in January and added another ~1200 stitches, so we are up to 87.9% now. I even managed to get a page finish - that is page 13, if we're counting!

The next page also still has a lot of work to do, so I'm not sure I'll get it all filled in in February, but it's (almost) the last page that still has this much white space - after this, should be moving a lot quicker! Fingers crossed that's not just the optimism talking.

January Gifted Gorgeousness

It's still January, and here I go again, dragging out my posts just to finish 'one more thing'! I'll never learn, but at least I can sit down and finish the thing, which is what I did today. So hey, it's time for my checkin to one of my favourite SALs, Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness, the one stop SAL for all things gift and giftee! 

This month, I have a very interesting entry, as this is a gift, but not technically a gift from me - a friend of mine comissioned this to gift to another friend of hers, and I found the idea so cute I'm making it for free (so I guess it is a gift after all). So it's a gift to be gifted! 

It's a little highland cow - isn't he adorable? I offered to give him a bit of a trim, but my friend said she prefers the slightly shaggy look, so that how he'll stay. I think he turned out pretty nicely and hope her friend will like him as well once he gets delivered.

Two Sweaters in Progress

My grandma gave me some yarn for Christmas to knit myself a sweater. I cast this on on New Year's Day and have been working on it a little bit almost every day since, so it's steadily growing.

The pattern is by Portoguese knitware designer Maria Gomes and the yarn is Hobbii's Garland, a mix of cotton and alpaca - very light, very soft. This is knit in one piece from the neck down and after 12 hours of progress, I made it about 2/3rd between the neck and the point where the sleeves split from the body.

I thought this would be a fun way to also introduce you to another sweater I started a couple months ago (then abandoned in favour of Christmas knitting). That one I've had the yarn for for ages, but was to chicken to actually cast it on. I've done a lot of knitting the last two or three years, so I'm finally feeling ready for this kind of project! 

This one is knit in a very different yarn so it's going a LOT quicker. It's also worked from the bottom up, and after ten hours I made it to the point where the sleeves join the body, and halfway through the first sleeve.

It would be awesome to finish both of these this year, but I also got some more summery knitting and crochet plans, so will probably pack them away before it gets too warm out. Which is probably still at least two months off at this point!

Cirque des Cercles - 20 Hours

After doing some fulling in on TLoA earlier this month, I wanted some easy, confetti-less stitching for a change, so I picked up Cirque des Cercles by Inc Circles. This is one of those projects I have been terribly neglecting, I started it in late 2023 and LOVED it - yet I hadn't touched it since! I'm glad that changed now and I was able to put in a decent amount of stitches:

This is about 3500 stitches ot 17.66% done total, so it's actually moving along rather quickly! Next time I'll pick it up, I'll work to the lower border, so I can actually cut my fabric to size (it's almost twice as big as I'll need, currently).

January Fully Finished Gallery

As promised, I saved some of my stitchy Christmas present so I'd have something to show for Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery SAL this month and have at least one successful checkin this year! One I'm still waiting on a picture on (I stupidly gifted it away before taking a good picture, but the recipient promised to take one for me), but for today I got four stitched ornaments to share with you.

The first one is Toys and Tots, it's a Joan Elliott design I got via some charity group on facebook years ago and intended to stitch since then. As it turns out the charted colours were very different from the preview, so I basically changed out all of them, and really liked the result!  I did a simple finish using some cardboard and putting fabric on the back, then glueing some pretty ribbon along the edges:

Second was Golden Star, a freebie design by my friend Magical525, that I stitched up using my sparkliest metallic, and mounted to the top of a small jewelry box I kept for just a purpose as this:

I also stitched up too very small freebies by Sharon Christie, the Gingerbread Girl (which has a little message on the back for my niece's first Christmas) and Polar Bear Wreath. Both have been finished on cardboard with coloured cardboard in the back: