Naughty November #1

 Rachel and Tiff cooked up another new start challenge for this month under the heading of 'Naughty November' and this time, the timing was just right for me (having finished my last focus project) and I'm in! The official schedule is four starts for the four Saturdays of November, but I had two SALs starting on the first so I shifted it over to Sundays, and having a total of six new starts (well, and my bookmark later in the month, but I'm not really counting that as it was planned from the beginning of the year!). I *might* also have carried this over to the Stitchy Quest to Destory the One Ring facebook group as a type of 'start all the things' event, where about 20 people have joined in doing between 1 and 30 starts for the month, and I don't even feel guilty :D

So, back to my starts. On November 1st, I had two starts - one was Magical's Autumn Mystery SAL, which she releases at the pace of one part (about 60-80 stitches) per day. I'm not entirely caught up, but will be again soon, so here it is up to part 12:

The original colour scheme for this was greens, reds, and browns, but Magical helped me convert it to oranges and purple with the greens for a bit of a halloween-y look, and I'm loving it.

The other SAL I'm doing with Jo - we had so much fun with out Morning Meadow SAL this summer, we decided to do another one for Winter. As there were only two Just Nan Christmas Samplers we both owned, the choice was easy and now we are stitching Snowfire Christmas. I have to admit I am super in love with this, the way the grays and white go with the bold reds and greens...this is a bigger sampler, so after three weeks I spent about 14 hours with this already, and made it through the first 8 bands - that's about halfway there! Well, actually, made it through the first band, and then 3-8, as band 2 is almost entirely beaded, and we'll add the beads last.

So those were my pre-starts...now the first proper starts, on the first Saturday of the month, will be my new focus piece. It's a German Houserule-style design by Schrägstich Design. You can see the original here, but I'm doing my own colour way in blues and reds, on a Jodyri Limited Edition Christmas fabric from last year called Snowy Skies.

This will be a (late) housewarming gift for a good friend of ours, who just moved in together with his boyfriend this summer! Red and blue are their respective favourite colours, so I'm doing my best of bringing them together without going for a 'naval' look. There will be sparkle, too! This first word is going to be 'Versprechen' (promises), I will translate the rules for you as I finish them.