Gifted Gorgeousness & Fully Finished Gallery for September

Well hello, beauiful people! This post is exciting for several reasons! For one, it is the first one I am writing from my new laptop. That's right, no more greenish tints and pink spots, I can see actual colours again - even prettier colours than before, as the display is better as the old one was to begin with, so I can't wait to explore all your blogs again! And secondly, I have returned from my first retreat, and I have much to share. That will, however, be a topic for another post - including all the stash I brought home, the stitching that happened, and the friends I met. Today, I am talking about something I stitched before, and for, the retreat. Just give me a moment and you will see why this is a perfect fir both for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness, and Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery!

You see, one of the events held at the retreat was a smalls exchange, so even though my stitchy bug was a little awol at the time, I had to put some thought into what to make. You've already seen my first attempt, but it felt too small, too little, so I decided to give it another go, and went and bought a pattern I had been eying for a long time, and that was Ring a Ring of Foxes by FabyReilley Designs. 

I just loved the colours in this - autum colours are my favourites - and the little beads that look just like tiny berries! And then of course the foxes - aren't they cute?! I loved them, and working on this absolutely revived my stitchy bug! This reminds me so much of the Zoe Box I made some time ago, with the leaves and their different colours.

As you can probably guess by the stitching, this was finished as a not-so-little biscornu. Following the instructions, I did not put beads on the edge, but used different colours for the backstitched outline and the whip stitch, which gave the edge a very unique strip-ey look.

It was almost too precious to give away, but I did so anyway. It want to Veerle form the Netherlands - I don't know if she got a blog, but she is @verle1606 on Instagram.

The whole exchange was held by randomly picking out a packed object, and the package was supposed to give you a general idea of what was inside. Mine had a dried leaf on it, and inside was this beauty:

!!! I love it so much! Thank you for this wonderful gift, Franziska aka Colourfever Floss (if you don't know her, check out her Etsy shop filled with wonderful hand dyed silks and cottons. And if this doesn't convince you, just wait until I post about my stash purchases!)

So that's it from me this month (well, for these two SALs at least, I have lots more to post) - see you soon, my friends!

The People Chose: Small

With just a small (haha) delay, I am here for Jo's wonderful all-purpose SAL, and this month's topic is 'Small'. Now I am not as much a stitcher of small objects as our wonderful hostess, but I have stitched some smalls over the years nevertheless. Here are some of my favourites that I don't get to show off as often (I left out my ornaments of the month for that reason, I'm showing them all the time!):

The Cursed Zig-Zag Bag - 10 Hours

With the Zig-Zag Scarf done I needed a new easy break project (both Sekamelska and Delicate have been worked on plenty on lunch breaks and during meetings, but both have sections that need more focus as well) and so I decided to revive another long time WIP. Although this one could barely be called a WIP - I spent about two hours trying to start this in 2020, but it uses a bit of a different 'cast on' row and I just couldn't get it to look as neatly as I wanted, so I had nothing to show for it. On one boring care ride, I took this with me as my only distraction and tried again, and this time was satisfied. 

So I starting to set up the pattern, got a couple rows in, was feeling pretty good about myself...only to realize then when joining in the round, I had twisted my project, and now what was supposed to become a bag some day was now in a moebius loop. Rip rip goes the frog, back to square one (thankfully, I was able to save that 'cast on' that was giving me so much trouble, so not all was lost). So by the time this was finally going the right way, I had already 'wasted' about five hours! Still, I eventually got it right, and it's been growing nicely since, so gotta count it as a win. So this is technically-ten-but-actually-only-five hours of progress on this zig zag bag:

I don't think it shows in the picture, but the yarn is a colour gradient cake in pure cotton, the the blue will get lighter towards the top. This should become one very pretty bag when I finish it, which might be a while but at least it's well on the way now!

September WIPocalypse

So once again I am checking in for the monthly WIPocalypse SAL, still a little late, still not quite caught up on everything I wanted to post about, and certainly not caught up on everything I wanted to stitch on!

So my confession this month is that I have not touched The Loneliness of Autumn, my monthly SAL with the wonderful Rachel, at all. I've been carefully reviving my stitchy bug, had two new starts and managed to finish them both, but the second one, which was an exchange gift for my reatreat next week (and you will get to see it after that!) took up all my time. I just barely managed to finish it yesterday, and have to admit that by the end of it, I was quite 'over it' - it's super pretty but I just wanted it done and work on something else! So I pulled TLoA back out and hope to start working on it again today, hopefully catching up on some of the stitching I missed over the last couple months.

Sadly, this means that I don't really have anything to show for WIPocalypse this month. So I am only going to answer the monthly question, which is What is your comfort zone regarding the number of projects to have kitted and in progress at any one time? Now, I have a lot of kits and kitted up projects ready to go. I couldn't even tell you the number and I don't much care about it, either. Stash is just potential to me and I love having choices. I know I'm not spending more on it than I can afford or have space, so I'm not feeling all that guilty about it.

Projects in progress, however, is a different topic. My standard answer to the question used to be - around 50. For years, I had about that number of WIPs (mind you, if I'm talking number of WIPs, I mean all crafts combined, not stitching especially), and all attempts to get it down failed miserably. But I also didn't go over much, and I was pretty okay with that. This year, however, things changed, and suddenly I felt like that was *way* too much and I've even made some headway on getting the number down - to 43 currently. Which still feels like too much but I can only work so quickly, so things are moving in the right direction, but are moving slowly. I have not yet found my new 'comfprt zone' in terms of WIPs. I think I might want to get down to 30, but that will probably take another year at least to reach. We'll see how I'll be doing!

Zig-Zag Scarf Emma - Finish

I last showed progress on this shawl in April, around the halfway mark, and actually finished it a couple of weeks ago, I just never got around to taking pictures! Better late than never, I guess?

The Zig-Zag Scarf named Emma (don't ask me why it's named Emma, this designer is giving all her designs girl names) was started in late 2016, and after being abandoned at maybe 10% done I finally picked it (her?) back up this year to work on during work meetings and on my lunch break. Nice and easy knitting and just a two row repeat? Perfect! So she grew and grew and after two whole balls of yarn she's finally done!

She's still folded over here, in total she's about 8 feet/2.5m now and very hard to take pictures of! As are the colours, which are lovely in person. I think this picture, taken in natural light, is pretty close, though:

So that's one old knitting WIP down...I already picked up another project to work on during breaks (crochet this time), but that is a story for another day!

August Gifted Gorgeousness

Hello, lovely people! I'm a little late, as usual, so sign up with Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness, the SAL dealing with all things gifted and giftee, so that's nothing new, but...I actually have some stitching to show! Gasp! Actual stitching, no knitting or crochet! And it hits multiple spots for this SAL too, so bam! 

Story time first. In just about three weeks, I will be attending my very first stitching retreat in Basel, Switzerland. There will be a small exchange, so I have to stitch and finish something...and that information came right in the middle of my stitching slump. Great timing! I pushed it off for a long time, but eventually went through my patterns and picked something out that just barely fulfilled the size requirements of the SAL. But at least I was stitching. I got about halfway through the design, then I started feeling bad because I took such an easy way out, so I went back to the drawing board, bought a new pattern (at least it was one I had been planning to get for a long time) and started stitching that. I'm actually loving it and I'm about 70% done, so I decided to 'log in', finish my first attempt and show it for this SAL, so now that it will be 'public' there will be no turning back! So, after all the dramatic introductions, what *did* I stitch?

Wear a Smile by Lizzie Kate! I won this chart in a giveaway from the lovely Tiffstitch back in 2017, vowing to stitch it 'soon'...so I guess soon is 6 years later! The fabric was a gift from my dear blogging friend Rachel, after I won a giveaway of hers. I guess I am a lucky girl, having such generous friends! So together with this originally being intended for an exchange, I think it triple-qualifies for this SAL!

August Fully Finished Gallery

Welcome to my (very late) entry to Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery finish-all-the-things SAL! Again, I am not only late posting, but just squeezed in a finished object on what is almost the last day of the check in period. My stitching bug had been missing for much of late July and early August, and while I am slowly getting back into it, not a lot has happened yet. Last week I sat down and stitched and finished the second of the Kogin buttons (I showed you the first one I did last month for this SAL).

This one is yellow thread on blue, and the pattern was a bit more complicated than the first one (although not by much). I like how both of them turned out, and that I finally got to stitch this kit I bought years ago!

Hopefully, next month will be a bit more productive and exciting again!