Ten Things for Jo's Tenth Bloggoversary

 The lovely Jo has celebrated her 10th Bloggoversary a couple days ago, and gave us a list of ten prompts to participate! This will likely have me dive deep into my stash of old picture, so get on for the ride.

1. The tenth project you completed:

That's already starting off on a tricky one. As I stitched for some years before starting to blog, it's hard to accurately track back what I finished when. I just wrote down from memory what I think I finished before starting to blog, and this is the last one - and the tenth in my count is Elsa William's Suncatchers, which I stitched for my grandma for Christmas 2013. This took me two and a half months - I was a one at a time stitcher back then, can you believe that?

2. The tenth blog post you made

That was in January 2014, my first full year of blogging. I was working on the Peacock Tapestry - what a shame that I still haven't finished that border! Turns out I was experimenting with rotations even back then. If I remember correctly, this one lasted for about two weeks.

Peacock Tapestry Border Section 4

3. The tenth blog in your blog roll (or your reader or however you follow blogs)

The tenth blog from the top in my (alphabetically sorted) reading list is Brownie's Chair. Alyssa was one of the first bloggers I started to follow, and she used to post about a wide array of cute little stitches. She hasn't posted in almost two years, though, so I hope she's all okay.

4. A designer you have stitched more than ten designs

I really think the only designer who fits that bill for me is my friend Magical525. I stitched a lot more than ten of hers! Here are the twelve bookmarks I stitched in 2020:

5. A project that took/is taking more than ten years to complete

This is my oldest project - I don't know when exactly I started it, but it's been way more than ten years! Doesn't help I lost the chart. I'll need to draw the chart for the house from what I already stitched, and need to improvise on the tree. Then all the stitching I already have needs to go because it's horribly uneven, and I'll redo it. It's not that much stitching, I just can't get off my butt to do the charting!

6.  A design on the theme of "ten"

I had to dig pretty deep for this one, and finally settled on these two ornaments - they are birth stone ornaments for October, the tenth month, that I stitched a couple of years ago:

7. The tenth colour on your current project. Do you use this colour a lot?

My current project is Nan's Garden, the next one of the Just Nan band samplers I'm SALing with Jo and the Just Nan Junkies group. I only started this a week ago and I'm pulling the colours for my floss card as they turn up, and I haven't even pulled 647, the 10th colour in numerical order, yet! Scanning the pattern, I think it's only used in the central band, but not a lot in total.

8. Your tenth WIP for WIPocalypse, WIPGO or whatever list you make

I don't have a list of yearly goals, but I do have a running list of all my WIPs and #10 are my Blackwork Water Lilies. It's been a while since I worked on them, this picture is from 2019!

9. Your tenth finish this year (or last year if you haven't finished ten so far this year)

I was going to say there is no way I had ten finishes this year already, but I did! More than ten actually. #10 was this blanket that I absolutely adored and that was such a joy to work on!

10. How has your stitching style changed in the last ten years?

Well, let's see...ten years ago I was only stitching the couple of kits I could get my hands on. My 'big break' was in 2014 when I started to discover stitching communities on the internet and the joys of international stitchy shopping, so I'd say I pretty much did a 180° in the last then years! Ever since then, I think I'm stitching pretty much everything, so that's fine ;) 

Thank you Jo for this fun prompts, and on to the next ten years!

The March SALs

 I caught up on my SAL stitching a while ago, but as we had Felix' best friend staying over for a couple of days, I didn't get around to posting! I'll try to catch up with everything the coming week.

My SAL stitching was a bit sparse in March, due to the other 'SALs' going on - the Mischievous New Start challenge and the one-a-day on the Puppeteer. I still got things to show!

First of all, I am all caught up on the Sampler SAL. By rights I shouldn't be, but Magical is on a bit of a hiatus right now (she just needs a break after overdoing it on the SALs last year, but I'm sure she'll be back in due time, and I have lots of stitching to tide me over until then). So I stitched the first three parts of the second page, and will now put this away until she releases the next one (sorry for the bad picture, it's fresh out of the hoop):

From previous SALs, I stitched one of the 2015 ornaments of the month, which I already showed started and finished - I think there are three more of these left to stitch now:

And then the last one I got caught up on was the temperature stitch - finished March, including a special flower on my birthday! It's still being pretty chilly right now, but you can see on the monthly averages (the names of the months) that it's getting slightly warmer. I also finished the top border and will continue working down the sides next month.

The People's Choice SAL: Blue

 In this iteration of Jo's multi-subject, democratic SAL, the subject is 'Blue'. Now blue is not my favourite colour, but I still like it, so it will creep up in my stitching from time to time. Going through my pictures how ever I realized it's mostly smalls and a lot of knitting and crochet :D And of course there is Darf Forces which is stitched mostly in blues.

March WIPocalypse

 It took me a couple days to get caught up after a crazy month (with the one-a-day challenge and the mischiveous new starts), but I'm back on it now. I also have a couple more days off work after Easter, so maybe I can even get ahead a bit in my stitching game! For now, though, let me show you March's progress on my two BAPs, and answer the monthly question - What is your process for working on WIPs? Are you a one-at-a-time stitcher, a rotation stitcher, or something else? If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that I am anything but a one-at-a-time stitcher, and recently (well, a bit over a year ago) started to follow a loose rotation, copied from Rachel: Ten hours on a project before I switch to something else. I usually try to pick a focus piece and make every other rotation on that. I also have a couple of monthly goals and SALs I try to achieve 'on the side'. Usually it's too much, but I keep busy!

Now, for March, we had the additional challenge on WIPocalypse to pick one project and add at least one stitch on it every day of the month. I chose my Puppeteer and stitched on length of black every day, which made up for a total of 1,668 stitches!

That line on the lower left is less than 20 rows from the lower edge, so I am getting there! I still have 9,510 stitches of black left to go though, so this is definitively coming out for future one-a-day challenges. New total progress: 52,441 stitches/46.82%!

My usual monthly project is The Loneliness of Autumn, which I am SALing with Rachel - you can find her current update on it here. Last time, I was here:

I was working on another brown, 898, 28.24% done at 33,547 stitches. The colour was pretty spread out but I made good progress and have just under 300 stitches left of it now, all in the lower right corner:

My new total is 35,709 stitches and 30,06%! The goal for April is to finish the 898 and make a good start on the next colour, which is 814, so a nice red and very exciting.

Easter Treasure Hunt Blog Hop 2021

 Hello everybunny, and Happy Easter! As every year, Jo is sending us all on a while treasure hunt, to collect letters and look at pretty crafting. You can read all about it (and find the first blog to visit) here. To be honest, I was having such a lazy morning (and then such a lovely time at my grandma's) that I almost forgot this was set to start to today, but thankfully I had my stitching prepared already, so here we go!

You might have seen this little one around already - Cotton was a freebie by Shannon Christine Designs this year, and I just had to stitch him up! Only took me about 3 hours too, he's tiny (but uses a ton of colours) and so cute. By the way, this was my new start for the 4th weekend of Mischievous March - after deciding and re-deciding about four times, I finally settled on stitching something new for the blog hop, so this post is doing double duty, actually!

Now you probably want a letter and know where to hop to next...my letter is T and you can find the next blog here!

Mischievous March #3 - Little Sheep Values: Love

 For the third weekend of Mischievous March, I made good on the promise I made with my New Year's start and started the nest on of the Little Sheep Values - Love! And since these are cute, very fun, and not too big, I already finished it a couple days later:

Little House Needlework

Little Sheep Values: Love

Total Time: 9:23h

I really love these and hope to stitch one or two more this year! (I also might have just ordered all the remaining patterns and buttons, sooo...)

March Gifted Gorgeousness

This month, I have a lot to show for WIPocalypse - not only have I been pretty busy on the gift making front, but it also was my birthday a couple days ago and I got some crafty gifts of my own! 

Last month, I was working on that cute kangaroo mum ragdoll. I since have managed to finish her, and also made her a little baby to put in her pouch. These two are for the two little boys a friend of Felix has had over the last years (and somehow I have managed to not make anything for them yet!).

I had a new baby gift project start right away, and this one is for their youngest cousin. I wanted to make another blanket, but something a bit more relaxing than Little River (with all those colour changes and ends to weave in), so I starte what the pattern calls the 'Deluxe Baby Blanket' but it's really just a two-row-pattern called shell stitch, done from one continous cake of yellow cotton! For some reason, this very simple pattern is giving me quite some trouble as I keep making mistakes in the 'foundation' row and realizing them only when I need to take out almost one round of stitches. Hopefully I'll find my rhythm on it eventually, there's quite a bit to go!

 Now for fun new stash - I had asked Felix for a couple balls of yarn so I could make a start on the big Ubuntu blanket, a project I'd been eying for years. Unbeknownst to me, he got a lot of my friends in on it, aaaand...on my birthday, I got a big-butt-box of yarn (there's way more under there, 67 balls in total):

Now this is a long term project for sure, but of course I already made a start on it. There are 12 parts in total, and this is half of the first one - 6 hours of work so far, and I loved every minute of it!

My grandma really outdid herself too, and got me the pattern, beads and kreinik for Bella Filipina's 'Bellatrix'. A couple friends and I have made plans to start this pattern for Halloween together this year, and now I only need to see if I have some matching fabric in my stash, or need to buy another piece! Isn't she pretty? I'm super excited about starting her.

So that's it for the month - Ubuntu will probably a constant companion in this SAL for a while, as will the baby blanket. I also have a couple smaller gift projects planned, though!