Join The Circus - Ten Hours

It's been a while since I had a regular stitching post here, but stitching I have been! In fact, the project I am sharing with you today was started on April 10th, right after the finish of Lady Justice, and I stitched the ten hours within five days. The project in question it 'It's never too late to run off and joind the Circus' by CircusStitches, but it's not in her store - it was the free team chart for our Team KLT vs. Team Jodyri vs. Team Circus challenge in March, that was kind of rudely interupted by this ongoing pandemic! (the challenge finished [almost] as planned, but I didn't feel very competetive by the end of it). I did like this chart, so I decided to start it now. It's not a big project, and I am in fact almost half done (and will probably just stitch all the rest, which is mostly the word 'Circus' in fancy letters, next time I pick it up):

And I'm using the pretty lavender evenweave I bought for my birthday! I really enjoyed stitching this, writing is always so nice and quick to stitch up. Hopefully I'll get to pick it up again soon, but next up is The Mermaid - after LJ is all done, she's the next on the focus list.

April WIPocalypse

I know owe you two regular updates, but I also want to use this opportunity to actually post WIPocalypse on time, so first things first! Very little has changed in the last month - I'm still working from home, still not sure where my time is vanishing to, and still having lots of fun stitching! The question of the month is Talk to us about your longest-running WIP or UFO. - and I have to admit, the answer to this question is the same as it has been for the last couple of years. My oldest UFO is a table cloth I started almost twenty years ago. I have since lost the pattern (but think I can reconstruct it from what I already stitched) and I'll probably have to re-do the parts that are already done since my stitching was quite sloppy then. I have three table clothes in my WIP pile in total, but this one is by far the worst! I do hope to at least put one rotation into it this year, though, to eventually get it done (I'm way to stubborn to give up!).

Now for my stitching - this is the place where I get to talk about The Loneliness of Autumn, which I'm stitching together with Rachel, the Ten Hour Stitcher - we're both stitching different versions of this pattern, her ten hours a month, me one length a day. I think she didn't post her progress for the month yet, but I'll try to remember and link to it once I see it!

As for me, I had a couple of nice mile stones this month! For once, I almost finished the first two rows which were pretty densely stitched ('almost' meaning I'm missing exactly one stitch in the lower right corner that is easier to reach from below). Row three is much quicker to stitch, and I almost finished another page there, but will have to dive deep into row three to get the next one done without having to 'jump' too much!

I also finished my first skein of 939 (I think I'll need a little over two in total) and I am more than halfway done with the colour now - 9.244 stitches down, 7.426 left to go. I'm at 7.78% total now, which means I'll probably fall just short of 10% next month. My total time is at 50:30h now.

April Gifted Gorgeousness

It's high time to show you all my gift- and gifted projects for April for this my favourite SAL of Jo's doing - the Gifted Gorgeousness!

As usual, this is mostly a repetition of pictures you've already seen earlier in the month (I really need to get some new knitting and crochet gifts on the way to change that!), but I hope you'll still enjoy it :)

The center piece this month is, of course, my Lady Justice, a present for my mum's 60th birthday. As things stand, I have no idea when I will be able to give it to her (and after putting in all this time I really want to see her face when I do, so no sending sneaky pictures on ahead - my concience is clear as I haven't gotten her presents for my birthday on March 21st yet either hahaha) but she's ready for when that day will come.

I almost forgot, but the next picture actually is a new one on this blog! It'll get a post of it's own soon (I decided to lump my three monthly SALs, the Bookmark, Blackwork, and Temperature, into one rotation, which I'll be posting about at the end of the month, even though I stitch them as they come out), but here is a little preview, of sorts - the April Bookmark, which was supposed to look like foliage, but the shape just screamed 'Fireworks!' at me so I chose the colours accordingly!

April Fully Finished Gallery

Again I'm a few days late for this SAL hosted by Rachel, the TenHourStitcher, who has us working on that box of shame and fully finish things! I have a standing agreement with her to finish at least two things per month, and this month I'm easily meeting my quota. I have five fully finishes for you, and while you have seen three of them already, two are brand new!

So, chronologically, first was the March bookmark. This time, it wasn't quite as interesting as the January and February ones, but I think it was still quite clever - stitched on a piece of aida band, folded to a point, then front and bag sewn together by a triple running stitch on each side:

Next there were these two fobs that I showed you for the Easter Blog hop. Both are stitched back and front, finished with a beaded edge - I used leftovers from a couple of Mill Hill kits, and used to opportunity to finally sort through a couple of leftovers and properly integrate them into my stash - and a long cord to attach them to my scissors.

I also finished the first and second Mini Mystery SAL, by sandwiching them together as a biscornu and adding some candy coloured beads from a set a friend bought for me. They aren't quite as regularly shaped as Mill Hill beads, but then they were only about 2€ for a huge box, so I'm not complaining - and they work well for edges! It's stuffed with some of the leftover threads I sorted out from these kits before.

And last but not least - I ordered a frame for Lady Justice, and Felix framed her for me :) Now she's only waiting for my mum to turn 60 and stop by!

Lady Justice - The Finish Line

So, I know you have seen Lady Justice a lot lately, and I sincerly hope you're not sick of her yet, because she'll pop up a couple more times in the upcoming days! But for now...wait, we have to do this the right way around. So, last time you saw her, I had just finished all the cross stitch, which had her looking pretty much complete already:

But of course, there's always some more prettiness to add! In this case, it was a little bit of backstitching and almost 500 beads before she looked like this:

And then she was all done! Here's a detailed shot of her head and scales because that's really where the majority of beads went to:

I'm absolutely thrilled with how she turned out! If anything, I'm a little bummed she only used three kinds of beads...I'll have to do one of Nora's really heavily beaded designs sometimes soon!

My final time on her was 123:14h, which is quite a bit more than I had estimated when I started her...but she's done, she's done in time, and I'm super happy and that's all that counts! As she didn't quite fill her ten hours rotation, I throw in 106 minutes of knitting to make it even.

Next up: Seeing her getting frames, and seeing me actually work on something else for once...

March Crafty Pies

Just two weeks into April, I'm finally getting March's pies up! To my surprise, my crafting hours aren't especially high this month...in fact, they turned out a little lower than usually. I'm not sure if I just spent too much time gaming and reading (but then, I didn't get as many books read as usually, too!) or if maybe I've just not been 'doing' as much with my time as I usually do. I also lost all my usual knitting time - presentations and meetings and train rides - so I've almost exlusivelly been stitching!

 

The one notable exception from the stitching-only rule is the Zigzag bag - and I don't even have something to show for it! You see, my best friend is not much of a needleworker (although she's one hell of an artist!), but sometimes we'll crochet together, and we had plans to start this bag when we visited her. We spent a morning with it together, and I spend some more time trying to figure things out, but somehow I'm just not very happy with this start! I kept misscounting and the foundation didn't turn out as even as I would have liked...so even with almost four hours in, I'll just have to start over from scratch I guess (for the third time now). But I can't wait to show you some progress once I get to it!

The other new 'thing' on my list the the Mini Mystery SAL - my friend Magical is hosting a little SAL for the time of the lockdown, in which she releases a little bit (about 20 to 30 stitches) every day. Each iteration of the SAL takes two weeks, and here is my progress after finishing the first and starting the second one: 

Apart from that, you can see that I've mostly worked on my usual SALs, and also got a ton of work done on Lady Justice - more on her in my next post...

The People's Choice SAL: Modern Samplers

This time for Jo's 'The People Chose' SAL, and this month the subject is 'Modern Samplers'. Now from what I've seen, there are different opinions on what is a sampler and what makes one 'modern', but going through my pictures, these are the one that struck me as fitting:

This Halloween sampler I stitched a couple of years ago (and it's still awaiting a finish-finish):

This band sampler - band sampler are usually a very traditional kind of sampler, but I think the colour gradient gives it a very modern feel! There actually are a couple more modern band samplers I have my eyes on, so maybe someday I'll have another one to show :)

This is a Bothy wedding Sampler I stitched for two good friends...can you believe it's almost been five years ago?

 And last, I think my 2019 Temperature stitch also is kind of a sampler?

I didn't think I'd find these many projects fitting this theme! But I'm very happy that I did, and I'm looking forward to next month.

Easter Blog Hop and a Double Finish

Happy Easter, everyone! Okay, it's a little early for Easter proper, but it's the day of Jo's Great Easter Blog Hop, so I'll take it. If you want to learn everything about it, check out her blog here: click.

In short, each of us is to share a piece of spring and/or Easter related stitching, a letter, and the link to the next blog to visit. I'm going to kill two flies with one stone, since I actually finished something new for this post! Or rather, something old? It's a 2015 WIP that you last saw sometime last year when it was here:

This was the very first of Magical525's 'Fob a Month' pattern - back when she did one or two SALs a year and not the dozen she's hosting now! The original pattern was an orange flower, that I pulled some threads from my stash to stitch (I used a handdyed for the background orange). She has since added a pink version, but I always had my mind set at stitching a purple version, and I prepared the back for that a bit ago, but last weekend I finally got around to pull the threads, stitch it, and then finish both of them as scissor fobs with nice long cords. I meant to make myself a scissor fob for five years now, and now I got two!

So here we go with the spring-themed stitching, not I guess you all want to know the letter and where to go nest? I can help with that!

You're letter is

D

and you'll find the next one at 

https://elfinstitches.blogspot.com/

Lady Justice - It's Beading Time!

I don't know what it is...I'm working in home office now, so I'm technically sitting around all day, saving a lot of time, but it certainly doesn't feel like I have more time! In fact, it feels like I'm not getting anything done at all, which is why I'm so terribly behind with some things. I want to use the long Easter weekend to catch up, so pardon me if I happen to spam you with blog posts (and emails when I get to replying to all your comments!).

In any case, since I have been almost laser focused on her, I have another update on LJ (spoiler alert: it might not be the last for this weekend!). After stitching for eleven hours last time, I might have done just nine this time, but instead I did the full ten since that was *just* enough to get all the cross stitching done. Here she was before:

And here after - I added her right arm, the scales (although they don't look very scale-y without the beads and backstitch yet), and the last bit of shawl. I love how the lighting plays on the fabric with the darker and lighter teals!

So now it's time for the finishing touches - there's a minimal amount of backstitching, mostly on her hands, face, and sword, and three types/two colours of beads, mostly on her hair, scales, and filling in all the empty circles on her dress. I love beads, so this should be fun!

March Temperature SAL

I actually worked on this SAL a week ago and finished most of the month, but wanted to wait and add the last three days to actually show you a complete month this time. I was a little bummed, though - we had a couple really nice days in March, but the first three months just look the same!

Hopefully April will see a couple lighter greens, or even yellows! I almost got sunburnt sitting on the balkony yesterday, so things are looking good.

Now, this took me only about two and a half hours before I could get back to Lady Justice...I promise once she's done I'll stitch proper rotations on other stuff too! I'm thinking about 'filling' rotations up with knitting and crochet when my stitching project doesn't last for the full ten hours. I never seem to be able to fit them into my rotation otherwise, they are usually travel projects but it doesn't look like I'll be doing any traveling anytime soon!

Lady Justice - Confession Time...

Yes, I worked on Lady Justice again, but I have something to confess...I cheated...twice! Everything started as planned, I finished her upper body...but then I just couldn't resist, and instead of stitching her right arm with the scales, I started on the head. I made it past the 100h mark (as planned), but when I reached my 10 hour cut off, the head was sooo close to being finished, in fact, she was just missing a few of her flowers, so I continued for a total of 11 hours and finished her head. So she went from here (kind of headless Greek-statue look):

To here - gorgeous, no longer be-headed, with flowers and hair and blindfold. There will be a lot of beads added to her head, but I think it already looks amazing. There were probably more colours in here than in all the remainder of the design!

So now there's just that pesky right arm (and corresponding shawl thing) left to stitch, but I think Im up to it now. I have to admit that I am getting into a bit of a 'I just want this finished' stage now, but that's okay, I think my next rotation will probably the last ten hours of full cross stitch. Maybe a little more than ten hours, but not a lot! After that, there's a minimal amount of backstitching, and a moderate amount of beading (at least for a Mirabilia I guess it's moderate) and I am VERY much looking forward to that. The finish is getting so close now! I ordered a frame and mounting board, and I really hope it will arrive with the current situation. But then I'm not even sure I'll see my mum for her birthday, so I might not be in that much of a hurry after all!