Lady Justice: One Float, Two Float

After being a little slower in my stitching in the beginning of the month, I think I'm back up to speed, and I finished another rotation on Lady Justice - that's fifty hours since the beginning of the year! Here she was before:

 I started off with a little frogging, which was seriously stupid: there are exactly two blends used in this pattern, one in the greens and one I haven't used yet. The green one only has a couple of stitches, less than a hundred altogether, so I blended it in the very beginning and kept using that same strand ever since. Now I ran out and went to make a new one, only to realize that I used a wrong colour the first time around! It did look a little strange, but who was I to question the pattern...
Well, now that I had seen it, I could not un-see it, so I went over the whole dress and unpicked and restitched, which took about an hour. Much better now!

After that, I started on the left-side floaty thing. It mostly used just three colours, so stitched up pretty fast! I actually made another mistake in this one, but since it only makes the shawl a little longer than it's supposed to be (and I don't think it shows), I decided I had done enough unpicking for now and just went with it.

In the next rotation, I should be able to connect the floaty shawl bit to her body and then maybe finally stitch up to her incredibly slender waist. But for now, it's time for the February Bookmark and Temperature SAL!

February Blackwork SAL & NYE SAL

In my latest ten hour slot, I started the February edition of Magicals 2020 Blackwork SAL. This month, she released four gorgeous blackwork patterns, and I stitched three full plusses and one partial plus. That was almost twice as much stitching as last month, and it did take twice as long too - 6:21h.

So my plan was to work on the Bookmark of the Month after this, but with less than four hours left in my rotation I decided to postpone that a little and picked up the NYE SAL instead - after all, there will be a Spring Mystery in April and I'd really love to get the NYE SAL done before that! I worked on it for 4 hours and finished parts 13 to 18.

Next up: Another ten hours on Lady Justice!

February Gifted Gorgeousness

I apologize in advance for more repeat pictures, I promise it's the last time you'll see these particular ones :D It's time (actually, it was time almost a week ago) for the February Gifted Gorgeousness, and as usually I'm working on plenty of gift-related designs...actually, there's just two I've been working on since the last checkin, so this is going to be a bit on the shorter side!

First and foremost, I'm still focusing on Lady Justice. I'm back to working on her right now, but here she is as of the last full picture of her I took. I think by stitch count, I'm a good way past the halfway point now, but there's a lot of detail coming up on her upper body, so I'm not quite sure about time. I'll probably have to focus on her real good for March and April to get her done by my mum's birthday (April 30th)!

The other gift you've seen already, as well - I stitched another Valentine's card for Felix this year. This was the last one in a series of four, so next year I'll actually have to think about what to stitch! I do have a few patterns lines up, though.

February Fully Finished Gallery

My dear Rachel just reminded me that I need to get the FFG post up for the month...I've had the pictures ready for a few days, so there's really no good reason for not posting yet, only this month has been a little strange and very busy so far. But the wait also had an advantage - I got a new, third finished object to present! So let's get started.

The first finish-finish is from January, but after that month's FFG checkin. I stitched Magical's Bookmark of the Month, and finished it right away as intended. You've already seen it finished, but I thought I'd talk a little about HOW it was finished, since I think that's pretty cool - she included this backstitch outline with the pattern, and instead of doing two identical halves, this time it was sewn together down the middle! Here's a pre finish picture to show you what I mean:

It was fun and I think it worked great, too! She included the same kind of finish for the February pattern, so I think I'm going to do it again.

Next is an early February finish - this year's Valentine's card for my husband, and also my card for Jo's Secret Stitching Sweetheart Blog Hop. I have yet to hop around and see who got it, so no spoilers please! Just like the last three (it's the last of a series of four, so I'm going to have to think of something new next year) I used double sided tape to make a card.

And last but not least, I had Felix frame Whacky Witches last weekend! I finished this last summer, but didn't get it finish-finished for Halloween, so I really wanted to get it done now. I found a great black/silber frame (originally I wanted an oval frame, but couldn't find one I liked; there aren't a lot of them and the ones there are are super expensive!) and Felix was so kind to work on it Sunday. I'm very proud of him, I think it was his biggest framing job so far! (It's a 40x50cm frame)

Lady Justice - Floating No More

Sometime last week (I am, once again, a few updates behind, but will do my best to get caught up before the end of the month) I finished my newest 10 hour rotation on Lady Justice! Last time you saw her, she was here:

When I had just spent ten hours working on that blue 'floaty thing' of hers. This time around, I finished the right floatie and connected it to her body. I also continues working up up up on her green dress - I always forget how tall and slim she is, I'm just now stitching her butt!

Next time, I'll be starting the floating things on the left, so I can eventually finish the lower half of the chart.

The Secret Stitching Sweetheart Blog Hop

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! It's the time of year when pink clouds are rising, roses bloom, and we all eat too much chocolate. And of course it's also the day of our dear Jo's first bloghop of the year, the Secret Stitching Sweetheart! Now, a picture of my stitching is probably already floating around out there somewhere, and I'll be going hunting for it soon.
My Secret Stitching Sweetheart has send me this gorgeous...I think it might be a quilt block?
What ever it is, it's very pretty, I love the contrast of red on a black/white background!

(If you don't know what this is about, or you just want to go and hop around yourself, you can find Jo's post about it with the full list of participants here).

January Crafting Pies

I'm a little late showing my pies for January, but since February isn't half over yet, I still consider this being 'on time' (and probably would even if it was, haha!).

So, again I have two pies for you, one labelled with project, one with tags. And since I will be doing the tags for the whole year now, I can do a yearly overview of them as well, but that is still eleven months away from now :)

 

My total crafting time for January is about average, maybe a little less than in previous months because I had some social obligations, and also some serious gaming-cravings lately. Still, with my new-and-focused rotation, I've been quite productive. Overall, I worked on 'just' 9 projects. 5 of them have been finished, and two of the remaining ones come with monthly commitments, which I've met. 

After I did a lot of crochet in December, I've mostly been focusing on stitching now. But I have a few presentations/movie nights/etc coming on in February, and Viajante will be my focus project for those, hopefully getting some good progress in on that :) 

 

The People's Choice SAL: Pinguins

It is once again time for Jo's 'The People Chose' SAL and this month, the topic is 'Pinguins'! From what I've seen so far, a few of us are struggling with this topic - while small and cute, pinguins are not all that common in stitching. Personally, after going through all of my olf pictures, I don't think I've ever made one. So I can only share some pictures from my stash with you.

The first one is fromm Brooke's Books Freebie Advent Animals - I want to stitch them all eventually, and #7 is Pierre, the Pinguin! Isn't he classy?

You might remember the crochet 'ragdolls' (I just recently learned that's what they're called) I made last year - the Crocodile, Hippo and Panda? There's a pinguin in the same book those came from (and a second book I really need because it has sloths and llamas...but that's a different story), and he's on my to-make list as well:

My friend Magical also released a very cute pinguin pattern last year, in case you need to quickly stitch something for the SAL: click here

January Temperature SAL

For the latest slot in my ten-hour-rotation, I cheated a little. I first stitched up Felix' Valentine's Day card for this year, which took me a total of 11 hours and 12 minuts. I'm not going to show it just yet, though - you'll get to see it on/after the 14th, for Jo's Valentine's blog hop and then for the Fully Finished Gallery as well, sorry!

Next, I started Magical's Temperature SAL, to which I am also linking up with this post. I adjusted the temperature range a little - hers covered -20 to + 46°C, and I probably wouldn't have been able to use more than have of the colours. My range covers all the temperatured I saw in last year's temperature stitch, so that should be a good fit. Then I mapped out the colours I would need for January, picked up a piece of fabric, and spent 2 hours and 40 minutes stitching!

It took me a tiny little bit to really 'get' her pattern - each two of these 'flowers' are a week, with the same days always being represented by the same parts of the flowers - but then it went smoothly, and I'm looking forward to February. I will, however, probably be stitching the whole month at the beginning of March yet again; it's just easier and quicker to not have to switch colours all that much.

Next up: Back to Lady J, but I have a few more things to write about in the meantime.