September Gifted Gorgeousness

It is once again time for one of my most favourite SALs of the month, Jo's brain child, the one stop for all things gifted and giftee - the Gifted Gorgeousness!

Since most of my gifted projects are yarn work these days, and a do a lot of those in my lunch breaks at work, AND I had two weeks off this month, my progress has been a little less - but still worth showing!

So my big gift progress is the 'A Spicier Life' blanket I am working on for my third nibbling, scheduled to arrive in October. I'm about halfway through the third part now:

 It's growing nicely and I am really pleased with the colours I picked!

As a little bonus, I made this dino for my grandma. He reminded me a lot of a toy I had as a child that she and I used to play with all the time together, so I thought she like him, and she did!

 Isn't he cute?!

 

September Fully Finished Gallery

For the September edition of Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery, I finished the Autumn Minis from August's smalls SAL into adorable little needle minders! As these were stitched on plastic canvas, this was fairly quick and easy to do - I only had to carefully cut them out and glue some magnets to the backs.

 These were also my entry for the smalls exchange at this years Stitch Basel - more on that soon, I think - hence the card!

Bellatrix - 50 Hours

It had been way to long since I worked on my Bella - I couldn't find the last post, but I know it has been at least a year - so when she came up for some tasks in a stitching game, I stuck with her for a bit and finished another ten hours. 

 

I added her hand with the flame (which was the reason she came up to begin with) and then spent some time working on the right side of that big stone arch. That brought me somewhere in the neighborhood of 28%. Still lots of work to go but I do enjoy stitching her so might bring her out again soon! 

August WIPocalypse

Again, I promise, this is solely an issue of finding time to blog, because I've been stitching plenty! So this is my (somewhat late) August check in for WIPocalypse. The question of the month is Which retired designer would you love to have back designing? That's a tough one. Teresa Wentzler comes to mind, and then there are some designers who have sadly passed away, like Stitcher's Anon, Chatelaine and Brooke's Books, but to be completely honest - each of them left behind more designs than I am ever going to be able to stitch. So I can't say I'd really *need* new designs by any of them. I think I'll have to say I wish my friend Magical525 was healthy enought to return to designing and finish the last SALs she started, although I got plenty of hers left to stitch still, as well.

Now for actual stitching progress - this is The Loneliness of Autum by Love Thy Thread (another retired designer, I believe), my monly WIPocalypse project. I made some good progress this month, added about 1200 stitches and currently only got 5800 left to go. That's 95.12% done!

 

I also managed two page finishes - hopefully I'll get another one in September. I do need to step up my game a little more if I want to finish it this year! 

August Smalls SAL

I was so *nicely* on track with my stitching, but then I borked up posting about it all the same! Either way, I am here to check in with the smalls SAL, hosted by Rachel on the last Friday of every month, to share our smalls stitching. And I got some very small stitching to share!

A friend of mine discovered the shop Craftigurumi on Etsy, and she got the cutest tiny designs, to be stitched on plastic canvas. I just had to get a couple sets and stitched up the first right away. I went with the more generic 'Autumn Minis' over her fandom ones for now, although I got my eye on a couple of those as well.

 

We got a scarecrow, a toffee apple (I think?), a squirrel, a fox, an acorn and an oh so vibrant autumn leaf. 

These were so fun to stitch and barely took an hour each...which is a good thing as there are a lot more I need to stitch!  

August Gifted Gorgeousness

 It's (late) time for one of my favourite SALs of the month, Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness - the one stop SAL for all things gifted and giftee! I am, once again, working on several yarn projects that will make for (hopefully great) gifts for friends and family.

For one, I am making progress on the 'A Spicier Life' blanket that I started for my third nibbling, to be born this October. I now finished part 2 of 6 so am technically 1/3rd done with the blanket, but I expect to have to repeat a couple sections to make it a length I am happy with.

 

Still, you can now see all the colours in there, that I will now repeat over and over, in rainbow order. I really like how it's coming together!

The second project is a finish and has a bit of a story. Our neighbors used to have one chicken, called Stracciatella, that was the daughter's first pet. When they were on vacation, we were on chicken duty, making sure she had food and water and was in er shed at night (and sometimes getting some delicious fresh eggs as well!). Well, Stracci got old and sadly, the last time we were watching her, it was very hot, she was very weak, and she passed away. No blame was placed, everyone knew it wasn't anyone's fault, and we are currently chicken-sitting their new flock (three girls and one boy), so everything is well. But I still felt really bad about the whole thing, and then I remembered the Emotional Support Chicken knitting pattern that was making the rounds of the internet a while ago, and I thought to myself - if that's not a reason to knit an emotional support chicken, what is? So I did.

 

Isn't she adorable? She'll be waiting for our neighbors when they get home from the current vacation. Bonus points because I was able to knit her all from stash, using up some yarn that had been waiting for the right project for way too long!

Cup-ybara, 20 hours

We did some more traveling in August, and Cup-ybara with its small size and limited colours makes for such a great travel project. So I took it with me and stitched a lot of capy-butt over the weekend, and then worked some more on the cup when I was back home.

 

This is already more than 57% of the whole design, and I still really enjoy working on it, so I think it will be finished before long!