February WIPocalypse

 It's not often that I'm on time posting for this SAL, but since the last Sunday is actually the last day of the month this year, I got a chance! The question this month is What stitch-a-longs (SALs) are you participating in this year? This year, I limited myself to just two 'actual' year long stitch alongs (so, monthly or weekly parts to stitch), and I introduced them a couple of weeks ago here. I might also participate in some shorter SAL (like Magical525's seasonal Mystery SALs, although I'm trying to be good and finish the two I have started first!). For the monthly blogging 'SALs', there is WIPocalypse, of course, Gifted Gorgeousness, Jo's Monthly Themed SAL, Fully Finished Gallery and a couple of the fun monthly starting challenges Rachel has cooked up! There is also Carla's and mine Halloween SAL, starting in August - this year, we'll be starting Bellatrix by Bella Philipina in different colour ways with a couple of our girl friends. So I actually have a pretty busy stitching/blogging life, which is good as it always gives me something to do and keeps me on track. 

Of course, there is one more SAL I haven't mentioned yet - The Loneliness of Autumn, which Rachel and I are SALing on at the pace of ten hours a month (her)/one length a day (me) (but it comes out pretty close at the end of the month). Last month I was here - at 26.7% and 31.724 stitches, almost done with my third colour.

A week later, I finished the 3852:

Now the next colour is a little more boring again - another brown, 898. It's also super spread out, so while I completed all of it on the first two and a half rows of the picture, so of the 3752 stitches it started out with, I still need to do 2456. The difference is really had to see, but it's there!

So my new total is 28.24% done at 33,547 stitches. As the 898 is so spread out, it's going more slowly, but I hope to get this colour really close to finished over the course of March! After this, it's a nice dark read, so much more exciting again.

March is also the first one-a-day challenge of WIPocalypse itself, and I have decided to pull out The Puppeteer for that. I have over 50k stitches of black done on this and still 11k left to do, and I'd really like to make a dent in that this year (I kind of want to get it done, but think that would eat too much of my other stitching time). 

I just finished putting my current progress into PK - this is 50,773 stitches or 45.33% done. 11,178 stitches of black left to go on the bottom row-and-a-half of pages!

February Gifted Gorgeousness

 Is anyone else having a really strange month? I'm not even sure why, but I'm feeling tired and burnt out most of the time, and days just seem to pass me by without much of a difference. Now that I'm writing it down, I guess this lockdown/pandemic situation is just catching up with me, and I'm exhausted. I'm trying to not be to hard on myself for missing/not being on top of things, but there still is some blogging I want to catch up on eventually (as well as reading and commenting on all of your updates and answering comments - I'll be getting there, but sorry for now!).

So - of course I can't miss the checkin for Gifted Gorgeousness, I think I haven't missed a single one yet (also Jo is better on the statistics than I am, and I might have missed on or two after the years this SAL has been running after all). And as you know, I always have some gift projects on the way and am not likely to run out of things to share, either!

Today, the first project I have to share is a big-ish finish - my Little River Blanket! This is a bit of a double fit, as the kit was a Christmas present from Felix in 2019, and I now finished the blanket as a gift for a friend of ours who just had her second baby boy in January.

I love how this uses all the colours! So many ends to weave in, but so much fun too. I have enough of each colour left over for another fun project as well, so even more fun to come in the future.

After the blanket was finished, I started another one of my beloved rag dolls - I finished quite a few of them from a book I got for Christmas one year, and have recently aquired part 2 which has even more cute animals. There are two more books I need to get in the future, but for know I'm working on this little kangaroo from book 2 - just finished all the single parts and only need to sew them together now!

This is for a friend of Felix' who has two baby boys also, and somehow I missed making something for them so far! Now I'm making this kangoo momma and her baby for the two of them to play with.

The last picture I have to share today is a bit of a tease...I've been working on this House Rules chart since early November and while I still have to share my full 30 hours update, I can already tell you that, at roughly 40 hours, I'm nearly done now! I ran out of the red Kreinik working on the very last word with just two and a half letters missing, but I finally got more today so I should be able to finish this soon now. It's a housewarming gift for two good friends of ours.

February Fully Finished Gallery

 Since I am not doing any ornament or bookmark sized SAL this year, I have to work a little hard for my fully finished objects now, but I'm still trying to manage at least one a month - and I did! It's a fun one, too.

I think I showed this once before when I just started the stitching, and you might have seen it hopping around for the Secret Stitching Sweetheart blog hop - it's 'I Love you to Death' by Witchy Stitcher that I stitched and made into a flat fold as a Valentine's Day present for Felix:

I used a different tutorial this time, went from using tons of glue to non at all, and even though it was a little more work, I think I liked it better! I might go for a bit of a combination in the future, using glue only in a few select places where it really might speed things up. We'll see about that!

The People's Choice SAL: Birds

What a month! Everytime I think things might calm down a little, stuff just starts happening and right now we're just flodded with work and honestly I don't even really know where the time is going. Anyways! It's (or it was, almost two weeks ago) time for Jo's monthly themed SAL, and this month, the theme is birds! That's a nice and low effort theme, I think, so I just went through my pictures and grabbed all (or most, I might have missed a couple) of the little birdies I stitched (or crocheted, in some cases). I didn't think there'd be so many!

Which one is your favourite? It's always fun to scroll back through all my old pictures.

Secret Stitching Sweetheart 2021

 Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! Whether you celebrate alone, with a partner, family, or not at all, I hope you are having a wonderful Sunday and some delicious chocolate. In any case, you are in for another, calorie free treat - Jo's annual Secret Stitching Sweetheart blog hop! Each of us participants got a picture to post, and we have to hop around to see and find who got ours. You can find the full list of participants on Jo's blog, Serendipitous Stitching.

This year, I have been sent this picture with a cute little gnome and a lot of hearts:

I don't think I've seen the gnome, hearts, or basket before, so I shall go a-hopping to find out who sent them!

The January SALs

 With some delay, I started all my SALs for the year, and I'm ready to show you my January progress! 

First, there was the Sampler SAL. This is another fun idea by Magical and the goal is to practice new stitches and techniques through the year. Each month she designs one ~110x70 stitches 'page' and I think each page is going to have a different theme - this first week was single stitches, so everything where each thread lies individually on the fabric - backstitch, eyelets, satin stitch, and such. For me, I need to improvise a bit, because I'm using a very un-even fabric I got from ebay and the count is almost 50% more in one direction than the other! Just to be clear - this shape in the middle is supposed to be square...

I'm also picking random threads from my box of left overs, so this is not just a fun practice exercise but I'm also getting to use up some stash I haven't found a use for before. And it's fun!

Next, and the main reason I'm late, is the Temperature SAL - this has been a little cursed. The fabric I wanted didn't fit, the one I had, I cut wrong, and then after I ordered and received new fabric, I had a medium frogging event. And Magical had similiar issues with hers! In the end, I prevailed (and I'm sure she will too!), and I stitched up the January part (lots of cute little flowers this year) and a bit of the border - my goal is to do a little bit of that each month to not get overwhelmed.

And then, as promised, my last 'SAL slot' is reserved for catching up on older SALs, so I picked up the 2020 Autumn Mystery SAL and finished the front (it was missing just 6 of 30 parts before). Hopefully, this month, I'm going to make a start on the back, which looks pretty similar!

January WIPocalypse

 Can you believe the first month of this new year is already over? I certainly can't! It's been an okay month around here, pretty busy, some not so good things happened, but we made it through and feel stronger for it. And we finally got grandma's appointments to get her covid shots, so that's awesome!

Now, one month down means one WIPocalypse post needs to go up, which brings us here. The question of the month is Tell us about a WIP on which you’ve really struggled to make progress. Explain its history. What appears to be the reason you’re struggling? 

Most of my WIPs only make slow progress because I don't spend enough time on them, but thinking long and hard, what came to mind here was Sacrifice by UnconventionalXStitch. It's a bit of a sad story really...I so fell in love with the pattern, I got a great price to have it kitted up with all the threads, and even found a piece of fabric in my stash that had the right size and colour!

But then when I went to work on it...for some reason it was going painfully slow. Might be because of the way the floss was put together, I ended up cutting the threads way shorter than I like to use them, might be that it's just a little more confetti-heavy than the one I worked on before, or maybe it just wasn't the right time - after 11 hours, this is how far I made it:

...and it discouraged me so much I haven't touched it since! I hope to change that soon because that part I did finish? I think it looks soooo good, I just love the colours!

So, moving on to a project I *did* make progress on - The Loneliness of Autumn! Last time I was here, at 24.38%, just having started the 3852:

Now I had predicted that I'd probably finish my third colour 'as early as March' but turns out it's going much quicker than that - I'm almost done with it, in fact! At 26.7% and 31.724 stitches done, I only have 527 stitches of 3852 left, and those should be finished within a week! This is very exciting. At this rate, who knows how many colours I will be able to finish this year - 5, 10, 20? The possibilities are endless! (but really, I'm thinking in the 10-ish range now).

Look at all these pretty halos around the lamps! There's still a little bit of yellow to add in the lower half - I think it's the lamps reflecting on the wet floor - and then we're all done and ready to start another colour - 898, way less exciting, but I think after that it's a red so more exciting-ness coming up - soon :)