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! 

...and into 2026

Just as I ended the last year with some knitting finishes, I started this year with a knitting finish! This is the One Love shawl by Joji Knits. It was a mystery call last November that I started with a couple friends, but I got off track while focusing on Christmas presents and being sick. I picked it back up in January, finished it, and just put it on the blocking matt this last weekend!

 

Isn't the colour just beautiful? I had this one skein of merino/silk dyed with natural dyes by some local dyer (how often can I use the word 'dye' in one sentence?) for ages, but I think combining it with this really simple lace repeat was the right call. It brings the colours out marvelously!

In other knitting news, I picked my Blanket To Go by knitcat Designs back up. I think I showed it once or twice before when I was still working on the first colour - I have now finished the second and, since taking this picture, started on the third.

 

 There are going to be five colours in total, so I got quite a bit to go still, but so far, I am really enjoying myself, so we'll see how far I'll get before becoming bored with the repeat!

Knitting out of 2025...

 After frantically stitching and crocheting to finish the Christmas gifts I showed you last post, I closed 2025 out with some knitting.

After Christmas, we stayed with a friend for two days, and I had promised to make him a hat. Since I wanted to finish it while there (so I had access to his head for trying on!), I spent those two days busyily knitting away while chatting and playing games, and actually managed to finish in time. He's very happy with his new head, and I am happy getting this project off my to do list! This is the Circle & Square hat from Martina Behm of Strickmich Designs, and I used a Schoppel Zauberball 100% wool in the colourway "Sphinx".

 

Back at home, I spent a little time fully finishing the Tsunami socks (from Knitted Socks East and West by Judy summer) that I had started earlier this year to bring to a conference. I really loved this pattern, it's so simple, but simply stunning!

 

This yarn, called 'Sonntags am Bodensee' (Sunday at the Lake Constance), was absolutely perfect for the pattern. Sadly, it's a one-off by GemachtmitLiebe, who is no longer with us, so there is no way to get more of it now. For this reason I had been hesistant to use it, but very happy with the result now that I did!

2025 Christmas Gifts

I still got a couple of things from last year that I never got around to show you, so I will try to sneak them in between current updates! Today, I want to show you the Christmas gifts I finished in December.

First of all, I finished the "A Spicier Life" blanket by Sandra Paul for my little nephew. After finishing the pattern (I added an extra section so I had equal repeats of each colour) I did the border, while simultanously tying down all the loose ends so I didn't have to weave all of them in. I'm really happy with how this turned out and how the colours came together!

 Next was Christmas ornaments - Silent Night by Barbara Ana Design for Felix' grandma, Grumpy Cat by Brooke's Books for his mum, and the two Shannon Christie Minis were for my sister in law and Nephew's first Christmas:

 

And last but not least, a finished nephew's mini birth sampler for the great grandma's wall of grand- and great-grandchildren! He was born in October, so his birth flower is the Calendula. Here is is before adding the name and birthdate:

 

 

Queen of the Pirates - 20 Hours

I'm not only working on my random wheel projects, sometimes I also focus on stuff for different reasons...in this case, it's a quest for one of my stitching games that has me giving some love to my Queen of the Pirates! 

After doing most of her face, I now started working on the hat, and reached the upper rim which is very sparkly and golden. Which looks great although it is not that much fun to stitch - lots of partial stitches, in DMC Light Effects metallics, and blending two different colours together so I can't even use the loop method! It will be worth it, though, just see how pretty it looks:

 

I just picked her up a couple of days ago and added 600 stitches so far, and brought me to 20 hours...and for this quest I got over 2000 stitches left to go. Pretty sure I'll reach 30 hours and show you more progress before I get there! 

2026 WIPocalypse Kickoff

Hello everyone - in 2012, we all joked about the end of the world, and now the WIPocalypse SAL is starting its 15th year! For me, it's the 13th year I participate - this SAL just won't die, and aren't we all glad about it. Measi's brainchild is such a nice, low-key way to keep us all engaged and checking in every month, and this year, there are lots of fun events planned revolving around the upcoming Winter Olympics and FIFA Worldcup.

Today is the kickoff for the new year of this SAL (well, it is for me...being late with all the check ins is kind of on par for me, but we don't talk about that). This is the time to make (or reveal) our grand plans for the year, but I have to admit, mine are VERY unspecific at this point.

I am starting this year with 58 WIPs (that is all crafts combined), which is about 10 more than I'd like to have. So my goals are a) reducing my WIP count to get under 50. Of course I got some ideas about which of these I'd like to finish (and others I'd like to make progress on), but we'll see how it goes.

Now b), some of these 58 WIPs haven't seen the light of day in WAY too long. Some of them needs some house keeping (changing disintegrating floss cards, switching from paper patterns to digital, and sometimes, figuring out some things I should have written down YEARS ago, lol), others I haven't worked on so long I don't even know whether I still enjoy them. Either way, I want to work on as many of them as possible this year to get a feeling for what I still got going! To help with this, I put all my WIPs into a random wheel spin app and whenever I don't have anything specific I want to work on, I will spin the wheel and then aim for about 500 stitches (or the equivalent for whatever craft comes up) on the WIP in question.

So far, it's going well and I am already working on the third random pick of the year. You've already seen the first one of them - the diamond painting Towards the Light. It was nice to pick up this WIP (and also another one that I hadn't worked on in a while) and see some real progress. Hopefully, things will continue to be fun and satisfying - and if this doesn't work out, I'll think of something else!

So yeah, this is the plan for the year. I'll check in every month with the current WIP count and possibly an update on what WIPs haven't come up in any other way during the month. We'll figure things out as we go, as usual!