October Fully Finished Gallery

 It's time to check in with Rachel and her Fully Finished Gallery, and thankfully I can meet my two-finish-objects quota this month and not fall behind any further ;) 

The first one you've seen before - my Bookmark of the Month for September. I finished it by running-stitching two pieces of the 8ct? (I can never remember what count this is, but the stitches are huge!) aida together, than fringing the edges a little. An easy finish, but I like it!

My other finish was one of my ~mystery~ projects last month - I took part in and ornament exchange on the TW group on facebook, and since me partner has now received her ornament, I can show it to you! In fact, the pictures you're about to see have been taken by her - I could never get proper lighting on the days before I sent it out, but she captures it perfectly!

The snowflake and mesh are from the corner of TWs Winter Carousel Horse. For the back, I copies the frame and mesh, but added my initials and the year to the center. I finished it as a mini pillow with a beaded edge, corded hanger and a little tassle.

The People's Choice SAL: Wizards

 So...before we hit the third Saturday of the month, I better get out this post that was meant for the first! Our lovely Jo continues to host this SAL in which we get to vote for a new subject every month and this month, quite halloweeny-magical, the topic is wizards! Sadly, I dug through all my stitching, and while I stitched lots of magical creatures - and plenty of witches - there's not even one proper in sight! There are a couple lurking in my stash, I think, and also lots of Harry Potter and Gandalf themed pieces I want to stitch someday, so there will be wizards happening someday. And then there is one that should have happened years ago...story time!

When my friends Carla and Nancy were planning for their big 'Year of Terea Wentzler 2014' and I decided to join them, so, in late 2013, I bought up tons of patterns and one kit (the Peacock Tapestry) and finally decided that I wanted my Wentzler-ish New Year's start to be The Enchanter. I got the digital pattern (good thing I did then 'cause it's no longer available!), got all the yarn and even bobinated it, and then got stumped on the fabric. I didn't know about a lot of things (like different fabric manufactures and hand dyed fabrics) then, I just really wanted to get the fabric the pattern called for, a 28ct pearl gray linen by Zweigart. Alas, it wasn't made anymore! Carla finally spotted one lonely piece left at sewandso (my first time ordering in the UK!), so I ordered and waited for it...but I knew it wouldn't arrive before mid-January, and I really wanted that New Year's start, so I settled for the Peacock Tapestry, because it was a kit and had everything I needed to get started. The correct fabric eventually arrived, so The Enchanter has been sitting in my stash fully kitted since earls 2014, but I never got around to start it. And all that for a full coverage piece so it *really* wouldn't have mattered what fabric I chose!

 http://www.twdesignworks.com

Recently I've really been thinking I should get this one started soon...maybe it's in the cards for 2021? I haven't really  started making plans yet!

The September SALs

October continues to be a crazy month, but at least a crazy month with way more stitching than September had! I just go with the flow and try to get some stuff done whenever I can, and right now I can post about the SALs I did in September!

In order of completion, we have the bookmark of the month - again it was designed for perforated felt, so I got out the 10ct (or something like that) aida again, plus some perle floss (partly from old old stash, partly gifted by a friend), stitched it up real quick, and improvised a finish I am semi-satisfied with. But it does feel good to use up some of that stash!

Next up was the Temperature SAL - September was quite a bit cooled down from August, but still had a couple of nice days, so we were mostly in the yellows with a couple of greens mixed in. But I'm seeing mostly greens and maybe even blues for October, I'm cold all the time at the moment!

And last, but certainly not least - and actually I worked on this first, but had to pick it up again to finish a small mistake - is the Blackwork SAL. I continue to love this colour combination and I'm even thinking about getting more brown fabric to do similar things in the future! I'm also starting to form a plan on what to do with the extra patterns that won't fit into the crosses grid, so that's something to look forward to :)

And as I am typing this, the SALs for the current month have already released, so I better get stitching - oh my!

September Crafty Pies

 If you've been following my blog (or I'm following yours!), you might have noticed I haven't been around much in September, and my pies just are further proof of what a terrible crafty month I've been having! The month wasn't that terrible overall, just very busy (work - I had two ~60 hour periods in which I didn't even get a single stitch in because I was totally exhausted by the time I got home!, fun - my best friend came to visit for a weekend, and not much stitching got done then either!), I've been tired and just wanted to sleep a lot (which I blame on the weather, I always take a while to adjust to autumn/winter temperatures, as much as I love them), and then I somehow got into a bit of a slump from feeling so much behind with everything, which I am slowly clawing my way out of again!

So, here are my pies of shame (and I still can't figure out how to place pictures side by side with this new blogger thing properly!)

55 hours surely is an all-time-low since I started making these pies - I only managed a single rotation on the Zoe Box and didn't touch Dark Forces at all! I also didn't do most of my SALs (and have been catching up on them this month, slowly). I did stitch up two ornaments for exchanges - one has been send out, so I hope to be able to show it soon, the other one still needs finish-finishing and mailing, so it shall remain a secret for a bit longer! I was hoping to cover them both in one single 10h rotation but boy was I wrong, they both needed (almost) one rotation on there own!

I did have one new start that I can show you. I had so much fun stitching the Morning Meadow band sampler with Jo, that I decided to keep stitching some band sampler on the weekend. I have all the panels of the Never Ending Band Sampler by Kitty and Me Designs saved up (it's supposed to be never ending in the sense that she keeps releasing new panels band by band, but it's on a bit of a hiatus right now). I actually have a great finishing idea for these, so I ordered some linen band, picked a colour scheme (DMC and beads), and gave it a go! Here are the first four bands, I'm stitching one every week and really enjoy it so far:

September WIPocalypse

 It took me a couple of extra days to get all my September-Stitches into TLOA, but it's all ready to post now! First, for the question of the month, though: Are you a seasonal stitcher, or can you stitch on any holiday/seasonal stitch at any time of year? I'd say I can stitch on things any time of the year. If I stitch something seasonaly correct, that's usually because I got roped into a SAL of some sort! So I might try and pull out a Halloween Design to finish it in time for Jo's Halloween Blog Hop, for example, or stitch along with Magical's Spring Mystery SAL during springtime! But then I took almost all of last year to finish Whacky Witches, so when I'm on my own I'll work on anything, anytime.

I've been working on adding the second colour onto The Loneliness of Autumn, which I'm SALing (all year, by the way!) with Rachel. You can find her latest update here. She already finished three colours and is going to add some red next! I might be a little jealous.

For me, it's just more 3371 on top of the 939, so if you don't look to closely, practically black on black! Last time, I was here, just having finished the 3371 on the top row of pages:

And now I'm here - doesn't look like much of a difference, does it? I filled in the 3371 on the second row, and made good progress on row #3 as well (but that was easy, there was one page that doesn't have a single stitch of anything yet!). I got a total of 21.572 stitches or 18.16% done now.

The 3371 is getting more dense towards the bottom of the design, so by next month I hope to be a good ways into the fourth row. I have a total of 6.448 stitches to go with this colour, and I think that's doable in three month, as I am averaging 2k-2.5k a month. So maybe I can start into January with the new (not black looking! *gasp*) colour, then?

September Gifted Gorgeousness

 Almost everything I've been working on this month has been gifts, but two of them I can't show yet. Of the other three, you've already seen one - my Zoe Box, a Wedding present for two close friends of mine. I finished the sides of the lid this month:

The other gifts I can show are crochet. I finished the Horse ragdoll I was making for a little neighbor girl. She got a wooden horse in the backyard and like to braid his mane, so I hope she will be thrilled with this little cuddly horse with a very braidable mane, as well (but I just realized the pattern didn't give it a tail...maybe I'll have to play around and see if I can add one?):

I already started the next ragdoll - a littke tri-coloured kitty for her baby brother. It's a bit slower going, working with three colours, but also lots of fun! Here's the top of her head:

I'm hoping to make lots of progress on Zoe and the Kitty in October, as I already have the next bunch of gifts lined up!

Zoe Box - 50 hours

 For some reason or other (there are several reasons I think, but don't worry, nothing too dramatic, just very busy times!), I am having a terrible crafting month - not only have I not worked on a single one of my SALs this month, am behind on half of my blog posts, and didn't touch Dark Forces, I'm also ten days behind on The Loneliness of Autumn and only stitched one rotation on the Zoe box! I super hope that next month will be better, but I'm also trying to do a little catch up this weekend. So forgive me if for now, blog posts are sparse and far inbetween! I do have one update to post from the beginning of the month, when things were still going alright and I finished another ten hour rotation on the Zoe box, stitching up the long garland of leaves that runs along the outside of the lid:

This part repeated all the fun parts of part one, except for the critters and rice stitch, and it stitched up way more quickly! You'll see a lot more of these leaves too, once I start the next part - the top of the box. Next in the rotation (and what I am still currently working on) are two pieces for ornament exchanges, so I won't be able to show them right away once they are done, but hopefully sooner rather than later.