February WIPcolaypse

 Another month gone, and we are heading firmly into spring now! This week we've been having some of the first actually warm (well. warm for February) and sunny days of the year, and it instantly improved my mood a bunch.

February was a pretty good crafting month for me - you've seen most of my finishes, but I got a couple more posts in the pipeline, two finishes (that are waiting for a group post) and also a some progress shots. With Charming and the ponchos I got to cross off two more WIPs off my list, so (not counting a small knitting WIP I started for break time at work - and I'm not putting that on the official list as I am gong through one or two of these projects a week recently) I am down to 55 WIPs while still chipping away at some of the bigger ones. Pretty happy with my progress so far!

Since I stuck it out and finished two of the projects that came up with my random wheel, I don't have anything else to show, so next up is the question of the month - What stitch-a-longs (SALs) are you participating in this year? I'm only really doing WIPocalyose these months, as all my other usual go-tos seem to be on hiatus. That is fine, though, I enjoy having an extra degree of freedom in my crafting and blogging, and it's nice to not constantly feel guilty for being behind on check-in posts, haha!

March is one of two One-Stitch-a-Day challenges for the year, so I am going to pull out my oldest WIP (the blue table cloth I was talking about last month) to work on. I really want to finish is this year, and didn't realize we only had two challenges instead of the usual four, so I might give it some extra love to at least finish the third side this month. We'll see how it goes!

 

Charming

 These days, my random wheels keep hitting projects that are close enough to a finish to just stick with them, so that is what I'm doing! In February, I finished Charming, a Dimensions Gold Petite kit that I bought on our trip to California in 2018 (it was one of the big crafting chains that had it on clearance, can't remember which) and started in the hotel while we were visiting Yosamite. It came with me to Japan in 2019 too, so lots of memories in this one! 

I had worked on it on and off, so this month I only had to finish about ~1,200 stitches, plus some back stitch. Here he is:

 This was my first Dimensions kit, and I know many people curse them for the stiff aida and the four stand half stitches, but I have to say, I kind of like them! Which is a good thing because I got a bunch more in stash. We'll see when I can get to them, but for now that's one less WIP on the go!

The Tired Trio

In the beginning of February, we took a little trip to Berlin, and I brought along a little new start for the train ride. I did get some work done on the train, but also stuck with it for two weeks when back at home because I enjoyed it so much!

This pattern was a gift from my good friend Becky, who stitched the pattern last year. But not only was she so kind to send me her copy of the pattern, she also got me most of the threads used in this design! I felt very loved and knew I had to stitch this up soon.

By a lucky coincident, I also had a lovely piece of fabric in my stash in the perfect size, so I got stitching and now I can introduce you to *drumroll please*

 The Tired Trio by Plum Street Samplers! Aren't these three just precious? I very much feel the middle one! Plus, the colours in these flowers are so pretty. I am thrilled with how this turned out!

Two Red Ponchos

I had a big crochet finish the other day - not so much in 'this took ages to make' but literally big! About a year ago, a coworker gave me 20 balls of this red yarn that she herself had gotten from her sister, and neither of them really had a use for. She asked me if I wanted them, and who am I to turn down free yarn?

Turns out, though, the yarn was a bit awkward - it was an old wool/polyacryl mix that's too scratchy to wear on the skin. I thought about making an outdoor cardigan, but the yarn was rather bulky and the yardage wasn't quite right for any of the patterns I looked at. In the end, I decided to make a very simple hooded poncho for myself. And then grandma saw it and loved it, so as I had way too much yarn for just one anyways, I made a second, hoodless and slightly smaller, poncho for her.

 That's all 20 skeins used up, and a whole tote bag of yarn out of my stash! They also turned out very nice and warm and comfy, so both of us are very happy with the result.

Happy Valentines Day!

There used to be a Valentines Day Blog Hop on this day, but hasn't in a while. Still, if you've been following me for a while, you know I like to craft something love-related for Felix every year, and I'll still use this spot to show it!

This year, I had a grande planned, that I only got to implement about 3/4ths. Some years back, my grandma gave me a set of stationary that came in a red leather box that looks a bit like a letter. It was a beautiul packaging but not really practical to keep around longterm, so the stationary now lives in my drawer and the box was to be upcycled this year.

In January, I stitched up the Haunted Hearts Mailbox by Haunted Frames. Isn't it super cute? I then glued that to the box. That was stage 1 of the plan.

 Stage 2 was to write up a bunch of lovey-dovey quotes and saying on little pieces of paper and put them in there, so Felix can take one out and reading whenever he's having a bad day. The original grande plan was to write up enough for every day, but I quickly realized I wasn't going to make 365 writings!

I then wanted to get to a hundred at least, but with work becoming incredibly busy and me being sick this week, I didn't make that too. There are about 40 in there, but it still looks pleasantly full! I might write up some more and sneak them in there when he's running low, we'll see how it goes. 

January WIPocalypse

 Can you believe the first month of the year is already over? And quite a month is has been! However, I am quite happy with my personal achievements this month. I got caught up on blog-writing, almost caught up on blog-reading, and got a lot of crafting done!

Before we get into my progress for the month, the Question of the Month for January. Tell us about the oldest WIP you have in your stash. In fact, this is one you've seen a couple times last year, and WILL see a couple of times this year! This is a stamped table cloth kit I started well over 20 years ago, and have been bringing out whenever we got a "One stitch a Day" challenge going on. What you see here is the third of four sides, so I'm actually over halfway done now and hope to finish is this sometime later this year!

Now for my progress this month. You've seen most of what I've been up to. I had one finish - the One Love KAL shawl - and no new starts, or rather, only one new start that I finished pretty much straight away (you haven't seen that one year, but it's my Valentine's gift for Felix for the year, so I will be posting it closer to the date). So that brings my WIP count down by one to 57. Not a bad start for the year, considering I've mostly been chipping away on some bigger WIPs!

Apart from the gift, there are two more projects I've worked on that haven't come up on the blog so far. Both were picks of my RNG wheel and thus part of my goal to work on as many of my WIPs as possible this year. First, there was Lady and the Tramp - long time readers might remember this kit from the Thomas Kinkade Disney Dreams collection from my early blogging days, but I haven't worked on it in quite a while. I added a little over 500 stitches but also did some house keeping, like replacing disintegrating floss cards.

The other was a crochet project that I've not shown here before. I have since reached my original goal on it, but decided to keep going until I finish. So I'm sure it'll come up again here on the blog quite soon!

February has the Olympic stitching challenge from the 6th to the 22nd of the month. There are different challenges to choose - we can either focus on something representative of our nation or in colours of the olympic rings, rotate through a lot of WIPs, or focus on one WIP alone. I have several ideas of what I want to do, but have not yet decided. I still got a couple of days to think it over, and you know I'm not a big planner! 

Queen of the Pirates - 30 Hours

As predicted, I reached another ten hour mark on Queen of the Pirates before reaching my stitch goal. In fact, I still got about 600 stitches left to go, but I'll get there soon!

I've been working on her hat, adding most of the hat itself, but also the gold trim along the upper edge (doing a bunch of quarter and three-quarter stitches with two strands of blended DMC light effects is *quite* the adventure, let me tell you!) and the feathers (all DMC satin, but not too bad to work with). 

 

 Sadly, the lighting on this picture isn't great, so you can't see how shiny these feathers are - with the short days in winter, I can only really take pictures in daylight on weekend mornings, and I didn't want to wait that long to stitch on her again! So hopefully, we'll get a better pictures next time she comes around.

By the way, while her head and hat feel pretty big already, this ist just about 11% of the deign as a whole...lots left to go, but it's a fun stitch!