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:

2025 WIPocalypse kick-off!

Hello everyone! This is - crazy as it sounds - my 12th year participating in Measi's low key all purpose SAL, they (in)famous WIPocalypse! Where we all stitch like it's the end of the world and have a ton of fun doing so.

Now I am known to love making big plans...not so much known for sticking to them (that would be Jo!). As I just talked about in my recent post on the end of 2024 WIPocalpyse, last year I made a lot of very specific plans, and while I enjoyed just working on those in the beginning, soon enough I became rather frustrated with them. So this year, I am doing things differently to not repeat this mistake (I'll probably do that in 2026, I tend to alternate between years of very heavy and very little planning!). 

There will only be one specific goal (getting to that in a moment) and otherwise I aim for a general...giving some love to WIPs, getting a couple finishes, and also starting and finishing some smaller or mid-sized projects. And posting a bit more regular instead of always holding up for that magical point when I have all the things done and dusted to show off!

Now for that one specific goal, some of you might already have guessed, it is, once again, The Loneliness of Autumn! Rachel and I started a SAL on this back in 2020, and both fell a little of the wagon (or we'd have already finished these, I think), but I'm getting close, oh so close! In fact, towards the end of December I picked this one up and thought I could get 'another quick page finish' in before the year was over. Well, about a week and almost two thousand stitches later, I had to admit to myself there wasn't going to be anything quick about this page finish, but after taking a little break, I'll be back for it!

As of today, this is 86.9% finished and needs another ~15k stitches to be done. I absolutely think that is possible to do this year, and I'll try to make it happen! To keep things a little more exciting, I will not be showing full pictures of the design now but only the area I'm working on at any given time. We'll just have to work and wait for that big reveal!

So that's the plan for the year. I'll also link up with Gifted Gorgeousness, Fully Finished Gallery and the Smalls SAL, where appropriate, but I might not have something relevant to show each and every month, and I'll be okay with that. At least I'll try to be!

Circle & Square

Before we properly start into 2025, I want to share with you one last finish from 2024. A good friend gave me a Schoppel Zauberball Crazy for Christmas, which is a very pretty, very colourful sock yarn, and I was looking for a good pattern for it. The colours were too pretty to just make socks from them, so I looked at beanies that would look good in crazy colours, and I came across the Circle & Square by Martina Behm/Strickmich. I mostly knit on this while we were visiting Felix' family and friends over the holiday, and actually had a finish by the time we got home on the 29th!

This has since become my new favourite hat. the colours are so nice and bright and perfect for the current sad gray outside, and the clever construction makes this not only pretty but also extremly comfy to wear (the fabric is laid double over the forhead and ears, and single layer in the back for that perfect slouch). I already have at least two more to make for Felix and his best friend who also loved the fit of this, and I think I want another one for myself as well, maybe somethign less crazy coloured. But it's a quick knit and a great use for some especially pretty sock yarn, so I don't mind making more of these!

December WIPocalypse - The end of 2024

Hi everyone, it's me! I debated for a while if I even wanted to post a 2024 recap after it felt like I failed misserably at all my goals starting in about October, but ultimatively I decided to do so before (hopefully) starting afresh for 2025. So let's do a little crafty soul searching about what went wrong and what went right in 2024 :)

I started the year with such grande plans - I had my WIPGO board and was very excited about participating for the first time, I was going to catch up on (and finish) The Loneliness of Autumn, and I was also going to stitch a small every month! Besides that, I had a lot of gift making to do, so my crafting time was basically all planned out.

Things started out relatively well and I was on track for the first couple of months, although I was starting to feel first signs of frustration as I had a series of projects picked for WIPGO that I either really loved or that were pretty close to a finish. WIPGO was supposed to let me pick up some of my neglected projects and see if I still love them, but most of them I just loved *too much* and was sad to have to put them away again so quickly! 

Then came May and brought the 'New Start' square on the board, and I started the Book of Funghi SAL. I really loved and enjoyed that one and for the first couple weeks even managed to stay caught up (in fact I stayed caught up until one part required a decision, which I stalled on). This caused me to miss a couple of my goals, and from this point on I felt permanently behind on everything, which added to the frustration.

I continued picking up (and putting away) projects I really wanted to stick with month after month - I had long given up on TLoA and the smalls in favour of just trying to get caught up with WIPGO) and then in September, StitchBasel happened. That brought to big changes - I finished Guardian of Wayfarers, which was the focus project on my WIPGO board, and a huge finish for me, and I started SAGA, which I instantly fell in love with. I think that was the point when I decided to give up on the SALs, focus on just stitching what I loved, and also getting a couple more of those gifts done!

And that's pretty much what I did for the rest of the year. I made some decent progress on SAGA, which I still need to show you, finished a ton of Christmas gifts, which I already have shown you, and dropped off the face on the blogging world. So in summary, what happened to my different 2024 goals?

1) Continue on TLoA with a slight possibility of a finish this year: I worked on this some, filled in a couple pages and added a grand total of ~5% to the project. Which is not nothing, but not even close to what I was hoping, either!

2) Joining the Smalls SAL - I was planning to stitch Little House Needleworks Sheep Virtues and only kept up until May. After that I still joined the SAL occasionally, but with different projects, mostly gifts I was working on. 

3) WIPGO - This one I wanted to complete the most, and also actually did the best on. I think I had only 3 or 4 unfinished squares at the end. But while not unsuccessful, as outlined above, this was also the source of a lot of stitching frustration this year!

For WIPocalypse, I had three projects picked out to work on - I finished the Meadow tablecloth (my oldest WIP) and The Guardian of Wayfarer and made some progress on  TLoA, which was the third. So I think except for a missed check in or two, I didn't totally fail this one!

On the whole, I am satisfied with the progress I made in 2024, but not totally happy with what I got there. So my plans for 2025 are a little different, and I will let you know about them soon-ish :)

December Gifted Gorgeousness

Sorry for being quiet here for so long - I've been well, but busy-busy! I promise to try and do better again in the new year. For now, I want to get you caught up on what I've been up to, crafting wise - and that was quite a bit! Especially towards Christmas, I had a ton of smaller finishes, as I planned with way too many handmade gifts this year. But I am happy to report that everything was done in (the nick of) time and everyone was happy! So what better way to get back into it than with Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness, one of my favourite SALs ever. A couple of the cross stitched gifts will be saved for the January FFG, today we'll mostly talk yarn crafts.

First of all, socks. I finished three pairs - one for Felix wasn't really a Christmas gift, but I haven't shown them yet, and they are way too pretty to keepkeep from you! So we have the Zigzagular socks made from the wonderful Wooly Hugs Paint yarn for these perfect stripes, we got Candle Flames in a Mille Colori for my mum, and simple rip socks in Online Bamboo Sock for my brother in law.

My sister in law (brother in law's wife, not Felix' sister) got a Rips n' Cables hat that I made from some leftover Drops Nepal - so comfy and warm, I want one myself!

There also was an array of new cute critters...two of them from crochet kits that had been gifted to me and lingering in my stash for way too long, so double whammy for gifted gorgeousness!

We got a little sheep for our hairdresser, a Corasol (Pokémon) ghost for my best friend, and a little dog for grandma's physiotherapist.

One of my favourites was this little dino vest I made for a little girl that is very dear to me...I wish I could show you pictures of her wearing it, it was *adorable*!

The leftovers also made a little vest for grandma's handpuppet tortoise:

Speaking of grandma and her tortoise, she asked for a new shawl for Christmas, something not too large so she could wear it around the house, so I made this 'Fortuna' dragontail shawl, and then I made another one so she and Sammy the tortoise could go twin look:

And last but not least, I stitched up another Lily of the Valley, mirrored from the first one, from Kooler Design's Flower of the Month sampler, for the mini-birthsamplers I'm doing for Felix' grandma's great-grandchildren (anyone else confused by this family yet?). The finished version of course has her name and birthdate, so I'll show you the unfinished version of this one:

So there we are! I have 5 (yes, 5!) more finishes for the January FFG and also another post-Christmas knitting finish, but we're getting there. Hopefully, we'll see a lot more of each other in 2025 - until then, I wish you the very best of times, a happy new year and great stitching!

October WIPocalypse

Sticking to my theme of being a little late to anything, here I am again...but as I'm also not working on what I'm supposed to be working on, so this is going to be a short one! 

The question of the month for October was How do you organize your WIPs and stash? All my crafting supplies live in 5x4 Kallax shelf. That is all the yarn, the books, the fabric, flosses, WIPs, beads, and a couple unrelated things too. For stitching, I got one box full of fabrics, one that holds all my yarn (except for the master stash, which lives in floss boxes on the top shelf), one and a half boxes of kits (the second one is shared with a couple knitting kits), and one box of WIPs. For my WIPs, I try to keep everything together in a bag (one bag per WIP, that is) - for the longest time, I all kind of tote bags and plastic bags, but recently discovered proper projects bag, fabric ones with vinyl windows, and I might have gotten obessessed with them just a bit! I don't yet have enough for all my WIPs, but I hope at some point I'll either aquire enough bags or whittle down my WIPs enough to make it fit! Or maybe a little bit of both and meet in the middle. 

October was a one-a-month-challenge for WIPocalypse, and I had dug out my oldest WIP for this, another table cloth kit. I have to admit defeat, as I did work on it for only a couple days before being distracted by something else. Still, this is the most stitches this has seen in probably the last ten years or so, so it's at least a partial win I think!

October Gifted Gorgeousness

Oh gee, the end of the month really snuck up on me this time! I've been really good making gifts, but not so good posting about it! Does that mean? Yes it does, I finally finished my Spice of Life blanket, and with plenty of time to spare until the baptism too! It's not perfectly rectangular because for some reason those things always get more narrow and more wide as you go, but the border still tied is nicely together, and for pretty much randomly picked colours, I am very pleased with the colours as well! It also used up a bunch of yarn I had been gifted, so it's a doubly whammy for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness. Woo!

And with this big gift project out of the way, I had time to pick up several smaller ones! I made this cute little dwarf (also from a kit I was gifted earlier this year, by the way) for a friend who role plays a dwarf in her D&D campaign:

He is from what I assume must be unlicenced Lord of the Ring patterns. They all have generic names like 'The Dwarf', 'The Elf' and 'The Wizard', but look an awful lot like the characters from the movies!

I also made up this little own from a kit I had been gifted years ago. It's for a friend of mine who's about to hand in her Bachelor thesis! So I guess it has been a successful GG month for me, even if I almost missed the actual post!