Finish It In - December Edition

It's the last official Finish-it-n update of the year! Sadly, Magical won't continue this SAL into 2020, but I might just make a new list for the new year for myself. Or just continue with the old list, we'll see! My list has been the same for many months now:

1) The Mermaid
2) Reindeer
3) Wuffi the Dog
4) March Fobs
5) Viajante

It still won't change this month. In November, I spent about 20 hours on the Mermaid, finished the last of the over one cross stitch and three (out of eight, I think) colours of backstitch:

Viajante only saw a little bit of love - I used about 5g and got down to 145g left on the skein. I'll get their eventually, as I will with the other projects on my list!

November Stitchy Pie

Work is still crazy, so I am still wildly behind on all my checkins - I'm getting there, though. Today, we're looking at my stitchy pies for November. Sadly, there were some technical difficulties, as for some reason TimeSheet won't let me export the graphs right now - if the problem persists, I'll have to look into it more closely when I have time. IF I have time ;)
So for today, we'll have to make do with crappy smartphone screenshots. Here is my pie for November, and as you can (barely) see at the bottom, despite being home sick for two days my stitching time has taken a light dip - a sign of crazy work time for sure!

 

I also figured out how to use tags this month, so I can now show you how my crafting time is distributed between my several vices - most is stitching, but I also did a fair bit of crochet this month.

Now I think all my November projects either have been posted, will be posted soon, or haven't seen a lot of progress since the last time, but one, and that is the Autumn MMSAL, which is all finished! Not during the weekend it was actually taking place, for after several massive frogging attacks (I think I need a frogging-tag! Why didn't I think of that earlier?) I decided to take things more slowly, and spread the parts out over a week or so. I also stitched the backside which was released all in one go:

Just for funsies, I also took a picture of my backs. That's the difference between stitching the single parts, sometimes just adding one or two stitches of a colour, or stitching it all in one go!

For December, I'm only at 23 hours so far...but I sure hope that after Christmas I'll have some time to make up for that!

November WIPocalypse

I'm pretty late this month, but in my defense, this time of year is just crazy, and somehow even seems to be more crazy than usual this time around! It feels like I'm only working and stitching these days, and both of these in abundance. So this update is not only late, but also incomplete, but we'll get to that in a moment. The question of the month is What new stitches or techniques did you learn this year? I actually did try a couple new crochet stitches, both in my rainbow blanket I did at the start of the year and on the Sekamelska shawl I've been doing, and the little beaded elephant I did a few weeks ago used a pretty cool 3D beading technique. Stitchingwise, there were the Sashiko coasters I did after my trip to Japan, that was a fun thing to try for sure!

Now, usually, this is the point where I show all my monthly SALs, but I only made one in November - the Mamluk. Here it is with just one part left to go:

The Blackwork and Temperature SAL have been put on the backburner in favour of a couple projects that reaaaally need finishing by Christmas. I have a week after Christmas to catch up on them, and I fully plan to, because my WIP count is up to 50 right now and I really need to get it down again before the new year starts kick in (and I do have some of thosep lanned, oh yes I do...).

So what has been eating away at my time? Mostly, Lettuce be Friends, a Christmas present for my grandma. I actually finished the first of the to cavies in the beginning of the week. Actually, I have since found my rhythm with this and stitched more than half of the second one as well, but I'll show that to you once it's all done!

Advent Calendar Blog Hop - December 3rd

Can you believe it's December already? Just three weeks to go until Christmas! Are you ready? I sure am not - I still need to buy and make almost all of my gifts, not to mention the packing and baking and getting in some kind of Christmas mood!

I'm taking part in our dearly beloved Jo's Advent Calendar again this year, and I got this fine day close to the start of the month. This kind of got me on the wrong foot since I haven't finished my Christmas stitching, but will have to go digging for pretty pictures from the last years. Just means there'll be more Christmas posts yet to come, though! For now we'll go with this cute guy that I stitched for my very first Christmas ornament exchange some years ago:

Now the topic to talk about this year is Christmas movies. Again, I don't have a lot to say, since in my family, we didn't watch a lot of movies around Christmas (we used to watch The Peter Alexander Show, which was mostly music, but has been canceled twenty or so years ago). One movie I always enjoyed watching around Christmas, though not on Christmas itself, was the Disney version of A Christmas Carol. I generally enjoy Christmas movies, there's just not one I've watched every year or something like that :)

Don't forget to stop by Jo's Blog and check out what everyone else had to show and tell!

November Gifted Gorgeousness

We're getting closer to Christmas, and that's always the time when I get really busy making gifts...so I actually have lots to show you today! First (and, somehow, most importantly) I finally finished the over one stitching on The Mermaid, and even made a start backstitching! I don't think I've ever been this excited about backstitching before. There's still a lot of it, but I do feel a huge step closer to the finish now.

I've also made lots of progress on Lettuce be Friends. I quit doing it colour by colour but instead started filling in the left guinea pig, and I really love how it's coming along!

Then, I finally got around to making another pair of crocodile stitch wristwarmers. Carla's had the ones I made for her a few years back stolen, and I promised to see if I had enough left over yarn to make another pair, and I did! It's nice getting back to these, I think I have two more pairs to go before Christmas.

And last but not least, I pulled out one of those tiny beading kits I brought from Japan and made this little guy! His name is Nimphodemus Stubby-Trunks (since I accidentily left out a row on his trunk, so it's a bit on the short side), and he will go to my best friend's mum this Christmas! He was so much fun to make and so quickly done too. I have two more of these kits but now wish I had bought more!

Fully Finished Gallery - November

So mark this historic day, I am for probably the first and last time ever on time for this SAL AND actually have a new finish to show! You know a few months back, when I finished my Sashiko coasters, I said it'd given me an idea? After some planning and gathering supplies, I decided that today was the day I'd finally try it. Things didn't go exactly as planned, but I am still quite pleased with what I got :D

So you might remember (or maybe not? I'm not positive I ever shared the finish here) I was a model stitcher for this little tea cup my friend Ashley designed. I didn't really know what to do with it, so it's been lying aroung since, but now I added some cute lace to the borders to make it into a coaster:

I actually bought those clear acrylic coasters to put it in so it wouldn't get dirty, but obviously it's thicker than the photos they are meant to hold, so they won't close with this in it...now I have to figure out how to protect it, or I'll just end up with the prettiest coaster I'll never use! In any way, I think it's really cute, so I might end up stitching the other three cups too if I can figure out what to do with this one <3

The People Chose Autumnal Colors

It's November, so it's time for the monthyl 'The People's Choice' SAL, hosted by our lovely Jo! This month's theme, very fittingly, is autumn colours, which I personally love, so let's see what we can find in the trunk...I actually didn't find a lot!

There's my Halloween sampler I stitched a few years back, and this tiny design I made with one of DMCs colour changing threads:

 I did a little better in the knitting/crochet department - my big autumn shawl (not traditional autumn colours, but reminds me of the season none the less), one of my baby jackets, and the little pumpkin hat I just finished:

I just started another autumn-themed project, though, and I want to use this space to show you, and maybe advertise a little: My good friend Magical525 is hosting an Autumn Mystery SAL this year, on the weekend of th 15th to 17th. It'll probably be a biscornu-type project again, she's giving the front and back, with a new pattern drop every four hours. As usual, she gave two 'pre-stitch' patterns, so we have a little more time to make a base and get our counting right (good thing she did, because I massively misscounted on my first try!), and that is what I've been stitching:

In case anyone wants to join me (It's super fun!), here's the link to the annoncment blog: https://magicalquilts.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-next-mystery-sal-autumn-mystery-sal.html and the facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/172379333367463/