Oh, the Possibilities!

Remember those two sneaky new starts I had in May? Well, in late June I finally managed to work on one of them and managed to do a full ten hour rotation, so it's time to talk about it! This project is a superlative in a couple different ways. For once, it's my biggest project so far, by far (with a total of 391.500 stitches), my first HAED, and, because it is so big, my first project in tent stitch. I have a new stitchy friend who does all her full coverage projects in tent, and they look amazing, so I wanted to give it a try as well, and I am pretty happy with it! (the coverage looks a bit patchy if you zoom in on the picture, but I think that was the flash, it looks way better in person, especially if you take a step back). So what is this project I am talking about? It's The Possibilities Eveelutions rainbow, featuring all the evee-evolutions from Pokémon. I totally fell in love with it when I saw it and even went for the max colour version (which uses about 250 different colours, but as it's so colourful, it's worth it I believe). This is what it will look like (eventually, probably in about ten or twenty years judging by my current pace...):

I started in the top left corner and so far I don't really notice any max colourfulness - I only stitched black. 3745 stitches of it (which sounds like a lot, but remember, it was tent stitch and one colour only). Which is almost, but not quite, 1% of the whole thing (it's 0.96% in fact).

Not sure when I will pick this up again as I have a bit more black to go (and then a blob of 939), so it'll be a little longer until it gets really exciting! Also, there's this whole bunch of drama going on at HAED about whether the new DMC colours are charted correctly, and this pattern uses almost all of them, so I might wait and see how that blows over, and if/how other people decide to change out colours. Not like I don't have enough other projects to work on either!

June WIPocalypse

Heyheyhey! I actually made it, caught up with blog posts and posting the WIPocalypse in time. June was a bit of a catchup month for me, as I was behind with SALs and finishing and blogging but now I feel like I'm in a good place again. I have about another week or so of reading to catch up on, but I will get there!

The question of the month is Half-year recap: How are you doing with your goals so far this year? Well, my official goal for the year was to work on rotations of ten hours, and to get my WIP list down by ten. The first part is going well, and I still really enjoy it. The second part...not so much, technically. I'm at 50 WIPs, so one up from the 49 I started with. But then I had three big finishes this year so far - Lady Justice, The Mermaid, and Viajante - and that's pretty nice. I also feel like the WIP front might be clearing up a little soon, but I don't want to jinx it by talking about it too much :D So yeah, I'm okay with my progress so far.
Now let's move on to pictures...well, one picture, actually. My monthly WIPocalypse project is The Loneliness of Autumn, which I am SALin with Rachel the Ten Hour Stitcher. She fell a little behind in May, but has made good progress, and I'm excited to see if she's managed to catch up by now (which I will find out soon enough as I'm making good progress with my blog reading!) I have succeeded iin stitching one length a day for the whole month again, so I'm at a total of 77:44h right now and it looks like this:

I finished the right side of the design now and worked my way down along the left. There is a huge, triangular-ish shape left and then of course the bench, which (for some reason) I am particularly excited about! Let's talk statistics: 14.178 stitches/11.93% in, and just 2.492 left in this colour. I think me prediction of finishin in July might hold, but probably pretty late in the month. I did buy the next colour already, though, so I am prepared in any case!

Presenting the Zoe Box

I actually had a new start this month that I am very excited about! I could have included this into the Gifted Gorgeousness yesterday, as I am stitching it as a wedding gift for a couple of friends, but I did want to introduce it properly first, so here we go.

So...I don't often see a chart that I just have to buy unplanned without a second thought, but when I saw the Zoe Box on FabyReilly's shop at the beginning of the year, it stole my hear right away! It's this gorgeous box (and I'm a tiny bit intimidated by the actual construction of that box in the end), full of gorgeous leaves and flowers, small critters, and a ton of specialty stitching. Everytime I click on that side I can't stop looking at the pictures! The fabric and Coloris threads I bought with my birthday money in March, and then I had to be real patient and finish Lady Justice and The Mermaid before starting Zoe and making her my new focus project!

So here are my first ten hours of progress - I stitched the outline of the first segment, the outside of the box itself, and finished the cross stitch on the fall panel and most of summer.

She'll come out to play a lot more often now! Hopefully in the next rotation, I'll be able to finish the cross stitch in this section, and maybe start with the extensive backstitching...or put in a few specialty stitches!

June Gifted Gorgeousness

So much for getting caught up on these posts! But I'm almost there, I promise. So this is Gifted Gorgeousness, where you all talk about gifts we make and stuff we make with gifts. And I have an surprising amount of gift projects to report this month!

Let's start with some repeats - the Hummingbird Bookmark and The Mermaid, both all finished up and for the probably last time (well, until some throw-back picture SAL has be dig them out again):

Since I had my big knitting finish last month, this time I went with some crochet. I have some baby gifts to make, but also have plans to clean some of those almost-finished small projects out of my WIP list, and the first one I picked up was this BB8 amigurumi from Frog and Toad I started in 2016. And he really only took about 3 more hours to get done, so I have no idea why I let him lay around for this long! He wasn't even supposed to be a gift to anyone, but when Felix saw how cute he turned out he just snatched him up, so I guess he was force-gifted?

Next up I started another ragdoll for a coworker's little girl, a little sheep this time. I already finished the head, body, one arm and one leg, so she shouldn't take too much longer! Which is good, because I have an evergrowing list of gifts to make (current count: five more babies to make stuff for).

And just hot of the needles, I just stitched up the June bookmark today! A very quick stitch this time, all perle floss on 8ct aida. I'm making this bookmarks to have a little stash of quick emergency gifts, and this is the 6th one. I hope to finish-finish it this weekend!

Dark Forces - June Rotation

Pretty much first thing this month (after finishing the Hummingbirds and catching up on my SALs) I picked up Dark Forces for another tehn hour rotation.  It looked like I was close to a page finish, so I was anxious for that and a start on the new page:

It turned out the remainder of page 6 was a little more confetti-y as I had expected, so finishing it up already took me over 9 hours - but it was worth it, look at that scary face (well, half of it)!:

I then only had time for a tiny start on page 7. I was so excited I even decided to be brave and forgo gridding the new page!

I am very much excited to pick this up again next month.

Total progress so far: 29.717 stitches/21.58%

June Fully Finished Gallery

So...obviously, my grand plans of having one post up a day got disrupted as I have been terribly tired this week...but I'll try to get back on track nonetheless, and today I am starting by getting my Fully Finished Gallery post up, the wonderful kick-in-the-butt SAL hosted by Rachel, the Ten Hour Stitcher! And I think I can make up for the delay by showing you a whole bunch of finishes today, so let's dive right in.

First, there is the May Bookmark. As I told you last time, I ended up with a little too much free space at the top of the bookmark, so I decided to add a little six-stranded braid to cover it up. I'd never done one before, and for that I think it turned out okay!

There is also the Hummingbird bookmark. Here I went for a simple finish - I glued the fabric to a piece of cardboard (as the linen was pretty...floppy), cut it out (securing the edges with more glue), then glued the whole thing to a piece of pink felt.

I stitched the 4th of the Mini Mystery SALs by my friend Magical right beside the 3rd one and finished them as a little needle book:

Aaaand the finish you've all been waiting for - I had Felix frame my Mermaid! I found this gorgeous frame, it's a dark gray/blue with gold edges and I think it gives her a nice modern twist over the more traditional gold frame I was looking for at first:

Last but not least (well, actually, very much least, as it's not a new finish) I revisted the April bookmark. As people have suggested, I put a piece of cardboard on the back, to give the perforated paper a bit more stability:

The People's Choice SAL: Dragonflies

Every first Saturday of the month (you see how far behind I am?) is Jo's 'The People Chose' SAL, and this month, the theme is dragonflies! I went through my old finishes, but couldn't find a single shimmering wing, so this could be a very short post, but I did some digging. Not in my stash (that just makes me want to start ALL THE THINGS), but my Etsy wishlist, and I found two really lovely dragonfly charts I might want to stitch some day :)

The first one is a hardanger ornament by Durene Jones. Maybe someday I will be brave enough to try it?

The other is this really pretty ornamental dragonfly designed by FuzzyFox Designs. Isn't it pretty?