June WIPocalypse - Half-year recap

We are officially past the half-year mark now, and very fittingly, the topic for Measi's WIPocalypse this month is Half-year recap:  How are you doing with your goals so far this year? Well, I think I'm doing well, but not necessarily on my goals for the year! Although my one big goal was to finish The Lonliness of Autumn, and I'm doing okay on this one. I did over 7k stitches of the 15k still remaining when I started the year, so despite being distracted by other things, I'm pretty much on track to getting this done. Other than that my goals mostly were to have fun and stitch, and that's working out great! 

So here is the candidate, got another 1k stitches and a new page finish in in June:

 

That brings me to 93.18% done now in total, and, as I said, just about 8k stitches left to go! Let's do this!

The other things was the one-a-day challenge that is going on through June and July. I've been working on my oldest WIP, the blue but otherwise nameless tablecloth.

I've been averaging a length a day on this one and I think during this second half of the challenge in July I should be able to finish the second side, which would bring me over half way done and nicely on track to finish this next year. One stitch at a time!

June Smalls SAL

As I was very caught up in some bigger projects throughout June, the Smalls SAL snuck up on me a bit, and suddenly I had to figure out what to stitch for this! So I went digging in my stash and pulled out this littly kit I purchased in Japan a couple years ago. It's a cover for a small pack of tissues and came pre-finished, I just had to add on the ambroidery, which is mostly backstitch and lazy daisies. 

 

It stitched up super quickly and I like how it turned out. That I don't have to worry about finish-finishing this is a big plus!

Poison Garden, Part 2-5

Wow, I've been busy stitchng, but totally forgot to post any updates on this! I managed to mostly stay caught up with the Poison Garden SAL, which means I finished the front- and back cover in two weeks each:

 

This is the most stitch-heavy part of the design by far, from now, it's just a couple hundred stitches per page, with one page releasing every week. So far, three pages have been released, and I stitched two of them - a personalized title page with the cutest little froggy:

 And this diagram of the anatomy of plants:

 

Things have been busy around here, so I am not getting a lot more stitching done than this, but I'm doing my best to not fall behind!

Junge Gifted Gorgeousness

Hello friends! I am pretty late to the party this month...I overconfidentally thought I would be able to finish my blanket this month. But it's way too hot to be sitting untder a 500g+ woolen blanket while working on it! So I'm only really knitting on this during my lunch breaks at work (were we got temperature control) and I had to run errands during my break most of the last week, so while I am really close, I'm not quite done yet.

Just 10 rows of pattern left to go, then 12 rows of border and the bind off. To put that into context, I am currently 297 rows in!

 

So the plan now is to finish this, then work on two smaller gifts, but also probably start the next blanket, because did I mention my sister in law is pregnant again? No rest for the crafters!

June Fully Finished Gallery

Well hello again! It's been a while...June has been terribly busy so far, and even though most of the things are good (except for work...which is not bad per se, there is just a lot of it!), they all eat time and energy and everything seems to take me forever! We finally had a day off today, and among other things (like catching up on sleep and just relaxing) I used it to finish-finish my Edelweis Forever biscornu! Just a simple whip stitch, but it turned out really pretty, and it gives me something to link up with Rachel for her Fully Finished Gallery.

 

It looks like weird lighting in this picture, but there actually is a weird pale spot on that back right corner. I gave my stitching a little wash before finishing it - which I often do - and the fabric just bled out in a couple small spots. It's weird because I know about hand dyed fabric bleeding (and potentially staining the floss and other things in the water), but I hadn't seen it actually lose its own colour like this! It's not very noticable finished like this, and won't be visible when I put it in the decorative bowl with my other biscornu, but it still surprised me.

May Smalls SAL

I am still pretty hooked on the Poison Garden SAL, but I made some time to stitch up a Small in May to link up with Rachel's Smalls SAL. 

 

This is the back of the Edelweiss Forever Biscornu that was a retreat pattern at Stitch Basel 2023. I stitched up the front back in March, now I just need to do the biscornu construction - can you guess when I'm going to show that? ;) 

May WIPocalypse

Another month has gone by and wow, the year is really gaining momentum now! I really have to carefully look back to see where the weeks and months went. But so far, I had a good month, lots of fun with family and friends and a chill long weekend in progress - what could be better?

For Measi's WIPocalypse SAL, the question his month is How do you personally distinguish between a Work in Progress (WIP) and an Unfinished Object (UFO)?Personally, I really don't. Everything I started is a WIP, until I finish. I don't deal well with unfinished business so if I really want to abandon a project, I need to frog it/throw it away to really be done-done with it.

For stitching progress, this month was about the opposite of last month - I didn't get a page finish, but added a decent amount of stitches, from 91.13% to 92.39%, so about 1500 stitches. Most colours had a decent amount of stitches so progress was reasonably fast, and look at how pretty these blues are!

Hopefully, next month I will get another page, there's not that much to go on this one now.

June and July will also be the next 'one a day' challenge of WIPocalypse, when we are challenged to pick a WIP and add at least one stitch every day. I think I'll be good and pick up my blue tablecloth again. This is how it looked after the last event in March:

I hope that by working on this throughout June and July, I should be able to finish one more side and make a dent into a third one, so push this comfortably past the halfway mark. We'll see, though!