March Gifted Gourgeousness

Welcome to the March edition of Gifted Gorgeousness! I know I'm a little late, but that gives me the opportunity so show you some new stuff. As usual, I have a few gift projects going on. The one you already know is The Mermaid - I've been working on her every day, but it's still slow, slow going. I'm really not so sure anymore I can finish her before July, but I'm sure Dad will understand. After finshing the hair, I finally started on the rock, and that's going a little quicker, I can often do 20-50 stitches without changing colour or jumping around too much!

Earlier this month (or possibly still in February?) I had a new crochet start - there are still a few more babies to be born that I need to make gifts for! This is going to be a cute, cuddly crocodile; I already finished the head and most of the body, so I'm missing arms, legs, and the tail. I have a whole book of these and want to make two more; a hippo and a panda, soon.

Then just this week, I had yet another start...I wanted to wait until the baby gifts are made, but as it's a very, VERY late birthday/christmas gift for a friend, I couldn't wait any longer. This is going to be another Ambarussa loop scarf, the same I made for Felix last year, only in blue. I'm learning something new for this, a chain-less double crochet foundation row, so it'll be a little bit more stretchy when done! It's slow going for now, but I think it's working well.

And last but not least, it was my birthday yesterday, and I actually got some crafty gifts! The fantasy amigurumi book was from my coworkers and has some really cool creatures in it - I think the dinocorn (dinosaur-unicorn) is my favourite. And the kit is for the 'Spirit of the Volcano' scarf/wrap by LillaBjörn. I'm having a hard time not starting it right away, but the goal right now is to not touch it until I finished Ambarussa, Halata and the Half Granny.

March IHSW

This last weekend was IHSW - International Hermit and Stitch Weekend. As per usual, I went into the weekend with a good deal of plans, but unlike usual, I actually finished a lot of them, so I am pretty content!

You've already seen the two finish-finishes I managed in FFG post. Now for actual stitching, I first had the Mumluk SAL to catch up on, as the new part came out last Tuesday. This was done fairly quickly, just a few more motifs down the left side to reach the full height of the design:

Then I worked on Whacky Witches and stitched the black below the lower middle block. Hopefully I can fill in the rest of the design this week!

A while back, my friend Magical announced her new Spring Magical Mystery SAL (you can find all information on it here - come on and join the fun!) and the first pre-stitch came out on Friday, so I took a little time and stitched that up as well:

And through all of this, I continued to work on my Mermaid as well and finally finished her hair! Now I can start working on the rock, which makes up most of the remaining stitches...I'm starting to doubt that this will be done by July, but maybe not too much after!

Fully Finished Gallery - March

I am super late for this one, but I actually just finished something this weekend that I am super eager to share now (instead of waiting for the April checkin).  I still haven't touched those older non-FFOs lurking around, but at least I am up to date with my finishes for this year!

For one, I took Hello Spring and turned it into a little card matching Hello Summer. I actually have no idea what to do with these yet, but I think they are very cute with the pale yellow paper behind the stitching!

The other thing I finished as she Little Monkey. I had been searching for a nice banana fabric to go with it, and actuyll found a set of three little bags for just 2€ or something, so I got that, and sewed the monkey on the medium sized bag. I am still not very good with a sewing machine, especially not INSIDE a bag, so I did it by hand, which also wasn't very easy...and the fabric must've gotten a little disorted, to the left fissure isn't quite straight and goes a little too close to the edge...but I still like how it turned out!

Finish it in 2019 - March Check-In

Again, I'm a little late, but I deperately wanted a finish and I got one! So while I am still in this 'finally finished it high', let me give you a quick overview. I currently have a list of 7 projects to finish this year:

1) The Bunny Blanket
2) Early Morning Santa
3) The Mermaid
4) Half Granny Shawl
5) Reindeer
6) Wuffi the Dog
7) Whacky Witches in Stitches

This month, I worked on three of them - The Mermaid is seeing regular progress, and I finished a block on Whacky Witches and started on the next one:

And just tonight, I finally finished the Sleepy Bunny Blanket! For some reason, I really didn't enjoy working on this too much, especially the finishing, but I still think it turned out adorable.

So my list is down to 6 items, and as I'm a little busy keeping up with everything right now, I think I'm going to keep it there for now :) I'll probably add on more stuff once things calm down a bit, but for now I have enough going to keep me on my toes!

The People's Choice SAL: Freebies

It's high time for the next wonderful installment of Jo's 'The People's Choice' SAL! This month's theme is Freebies, and I've seen some wonderful posts already, full to the brim with lovely freebies of famous and less-well-known designers. Personally, I had planned to stitch a new thing up - and I did, thus the delay in posting! - but now I also want to share a few of the other ones I've stitched.

The new one for this month is Durene Jones' 'Hello Spring' - it used to be free on her facebook page, I am not exactly sure if and where you can find it now. I had already stitched 'Hello Summer' from the same series last year, and I could sweat I posted it, but apparently I haven't!

Now looking through my pictures I realized that the vast majority of the free patterns I've stitched - like, 90% or so - are by my dear friend Magical, so I'll dedicate the remainder of this post to her. Of course you know my ornaments of the month from 2015, but I also stitched a couple of her princess 'fobs' (well, the Pocahontas one is a tad to big to make a fob!) and of course there are her Magical Mystery Stitchalongs...coincidentally, there will be a new one on Easter weekend, with the first pre-stitch coming out March 15th! If you like her patterns, you should really check it out, it's tons of fun. I'm putting a link to the new SAL here, it's on her blog where you can also find all her other patterns and info on all the SALs she's hosting this year, she's crazy productive!

February Stitchy Pie

I'm a little late posting, both this and a few other things, but work is so busy right now I don't really get anything done during the week...hopefully, I'll be able to catch up a little over the weekend! So to start things off, let's have some pie.

It was a short and busy month, so almost 75 hours is quite a good total! As you can see, the Mermaid is back in focus, and I'm guessing will be there even more this month. I've been working on some other things as well, most of which I've talked about. One I haven't talked about so far is the Pumpkin Doodle Cats, which I picked up for a couple hundred stitches in one of the School of Magical Stitches challenges, and since it was only a pair of detached ears the last time I worked on it, I thought I should show you my progress:

I also realized I haven't shown Halata in quite some time, although I've been steadily working on it! It's getting too big to photograph easily, so here is only one half of it to show of the beautiful colours:

February WIPocalpyse

I know, it's March already...but in my defense, I did say I'd show you the Blackwork SAL in these posts, and the last part was only released last Tuesday and I didn't get to stitch it until yesterday! In any case, it's high time for this (last) month's WIPocalypse check-in.

The question of the month is What do you listen to while stitching?, and my answer hasn't changed much from last year - still not into audio-books, still not into podcasts, so it's either TV/Netflix or whatever conversation is going on around me. Although I have started following a couple Youtube channels - flosstubers, fan-theorists, a true crime channel, a mortitian and all kinds of random stuff - so I can add that to the list.

My SALs have been progressing well...I stitched the Mamluk right when it came out, and caught up on the Temperature and Blackwork SAL this last weekend. They are all still a lot of fun!

I also joined the ranks of the School of Magical Stitches and Literature on facebook, which has weekly and monthly challenges and is a great motivation to pull out some of those WIPs :) So possibly you'll see random WIPs pop up around here that I'm not actually focusing on, but it's still nice to spend a few hours with them. For now, my focus is still The Mermaid, though, and I'll also use her for the One-Month-Challenge in March, aiming to put at least one stitch in every day (except for the days I am traveling, on which I will bring along a different focus project (probably my little Charming kitty, which travels much better). Here is my start picture for the month - I finished most of the border (well, the three colours I've been putting in right now, anyway):

And no for the grand total on my '-19 in '19: - after finishing the Rainbow Blanket, the BSJ and the Valentine's Elephants, I'm down to 47 WIPs (or -2)! I've been really good with not starting new stuff as well. I still have a few baby gifts to make, but since I'm going to do them one at a time, they're not going to mess up my numbers too much :)