May WIPocalypse

 Sorry for being a little quiet - I've done a lot of crafting, just flitting around from project to project and nothing is quite ready to show. Also dealing with some health issues, so not quite ready to interact with people a lot right now. Don't worry, I'm okay, just might be more quiet for a little while. 

I did, however, get my WIPocalypse stitching ready early this month (we spent a couple days at my inlaws, and TLOA was the only project I brought, just to make sure I could get caught up), so here we go! First, there is the question of the month: What was the first project you ever stitched? (whether you finished or not). Sadly, I don't have a picture of my first project, but I remember it quite well - it was a breadcloth, printed with some (I think floral?) pattern, and it had a light-pink edge so I picked up a matching perle thread and stitched it. I gave it to my dad, I'll have to ask him if he still has it, but this was about 25 years ago!

Now for more recent stitching...my WIPocalypse project is still The Loneliness of Autumn, which I am SALing on with Rachel. Here update for the month isn't online yet, or I'd link to it here. 

Last month, I was here, halfway through 814, my 5th colour:

I had about 1.7k stitched left to go, and they were so spread out that surprisingly, it took me the better part of the month to get them done!

That left me with just 6 days to start my 6th colour - 336. Normally I'd still call that a dark blue, but it's much lighter than the 939 that is already in there, and it's standing out a lot more than I expected! Maybe not on the big picture yet, because, still, just 6 days, but I imagine it'll show up much better in next month's picture. 

This colour is much less spread around than the last two, but I still don't think I'll be able to finish the remaining 2,560 stitches in June. I might get close, though, so July should introduce a new colour for sure! 

The new totals are: 40,074/118,800 stitches done (so I passed 40k, kind of exciting!) and that equals 33.73%. 

In terms of WIPocalypse, June will be another one-a-day month, and I'll be pulling out The Puppeteer for that to make some serious progress on the black. I worked on it a couple of times this month to finish the lower left corner (again, kind of exciting!):

Total numbers here are 53,123/112,000 stitches (or 47.43%) done and 8,828 stitches of black left to go. Here's hoping I'll make a good dent into that!

Age is Irrelephant - 40 Hours

 There's a new quest going on in the Stitchy Quest facebook group that has me jumping around projects like crazy, so it took me some time to get another ten hours into Age is Irrelephant, but I finally did! I finished the first elephant earlier in the month and made a good start on the second. I'm still predicting about two more rotations to finish this one, maybe a couple of hours into a third. You won't get a full shot of them yet, though! Gotta keep a little suspense in there ;) 

I know it's just grays, but I love how the shades are coming together on these. I never knew I loved elelphants this much, but I really love these guys! Sorry for the short post, I really don't know what else to say about them, but I had to share the progress shot :) 

May Gifted Gorgeousness

 It's time for Jo's famous Gifted Gorgeousness SAL, the SAL for everything gift and gifted! As usual, I have a couple of project that match this category perfectly, so this is my change to show them to you. This time, however, I have only one finished gift, two that are a work in progress, and one project gifted to me.

And the finish is tiny - I already showed you this fluffy scarf I made for a friend, and since I have figured out how to secure the loose ends with this fancy faux fur 'yarn', so it's now read to send to her soon!

Currently, I am also working on Age is Irrelephant, a gift for my best friend's (yes, fluffy scarf friend) mum. Since the last time you saw them, I finished the first elephant's feet, and started on the second one's ear:

You haven't seen it in a while since I paused last month to work on other stuff, but I continued working on the yellow baby blanket. I had some hiccups on this project I can't really explain- there was one row that I crocheted, frogged, and recrocheted at least three times, even though all rows are the same and there really is no reason why this one especially should give me this much trouble! But I finally made it past that row, and now I'm making good progress into the darker, real pretty yellows!

I've also worked on Ubuntu some more, the yarn for which was a gift for my birthday. I only managed to finish half of part 2 so far, but you can already see how big this is getting!

The Part 2 diamonds used almost two balls of yarn each. No wonder I have so many of every colour!

March & April Crafty Pies

 I missed posting my pies in March, and I know I'm running a little late for April again, but if I want to try and get caught up, I have to post them some time! So here we go.

In March, I managed a decent amount of crafting - a little over 80 hours - but, due to the Mischevious March starting madness, things were spaced out between a lot of different projects! I think you've seen all of them, though.

In terms of crafts, most of it was stitching, but also a fair amount of crochet as well as some finishing - mostly on those crochet projects. Sewing together the two kangaroos should account for most of the time!

I had two weeks off work in April, and it shows in my stitching too. I had quite a good run, at over 90 hours! And more focused, too. I managed a lot of stitching on Age is Irrelephant, and also on TLOA, which required some catching up because I didn't quite manage my stitches in March. I think you haven't seen the final picture on the Fluffy Scarf so far, but that will come with GG (tomorrow?) and the Hufflepuff Socks and Nan's Garden will hopefully get their own posts, soon!

You can see that I did some knitting, which was mostly the wristwarmers I made for grandma, and those new socks. Lots of exciting projects going on here! And to give you a little teaser - I think May is going to turn out a lot more colourful than I had planned, as well...

The People Chose: Traditional Samplers

 Well...the people chose traditional samplers this month for Jo's wonderful all purpose SAL, but me myself, I don't chose them very often, so I don't have a lot to show this time. In fact, not counting the band samplers (and I don't think those are what the 'traditional' theme was calling for) I only found one. To make up for it, this one is *very* traditional, though - it's a sort of reproduction sampler Magical charted after an embroidered piece of cloth that has been estimated to be between 600 and 800 years old!

It's not that I don't like traditional samplers, there just never was one that screamed 'stitch me' loud enough to actually get through to me. There are a couple I like, though, and I really want to stitch a quaker design one day!

May Fully Finished Gallery

 I usually try to catch up on my missing blog posts in order, but...it's the tenth of the month, and I have all my projects and pictures ready to go, I just can't miss this opportunity to post right in time and surprise everyone! It's also my 600th post on this blog (woooo), so maybe time to turn over a new leaf? (who am I kidding, pretty sure this will be a one-off freak accident!).

So - I have a total of three finishes to show you this month. All of them were recent stitching finishes, nothing out of that dreaded box of shame, but I will take it! First one is the Autumn SAL - I found some fun metallic orange beads in my stash, and some nice purple ones too, and turned it into a very Halloween-coloured biscornu!

The other two were mostly Felix' doing, but I picked out the frames and snoopervised! I had him frame the 2017 Steotchalong in this perfectly sized frame from my stash (I'm not sure were I picked it up in the first place, but it's an old-ish one):

The frame for House Rules, however, was ordered especially. We picked out a dark red wooden frame to balance the blue fabric, and I love the over all look! Can't wait to meet our friends and give it to them. Hopefully, it will be possible some time over the summer.

I think that puts me almost up-to-date with finish-finishing, so who knows...maybe next time I'll have to pick something from the box? *shudders*

Age is Irrelephant - 30 Hours

 I managed to finish another 10 hour rotation on my sweet elephants in April. I had hoped to finish the first one, but sadly, I didn't quite make it!

Sorry for the untidy fabric, I never iron my projects until they are done. Hopefully, two more rotations in May and June each will see them both finished, what do you think?

The April SALs

 Still in the spirit of getting caught up...most of this stitching happened in early May, but I'm still going to call it the April SALs because it was the April portion of all of these SALs! 

Magical is still MIA (hope she's doing alright...) so no new part on the sampler SAL, but I did stitch on her Temperature SAL. April was a little warmer than March, but still not warm enough to get the average out of the blues! I also worked on the border some and finished it down the left side. Going to start on the bottom this month.

Then I pulled out the Autumn SAL again and finished the back! 

It's actually already biscornufied, but that'll have to wait for another time (tomorrow? Is it possible I'll make a post in time for once?!).

April WIPocalypse

 It's already May, but I just caught up on my WIPocalypse stitching, so here we go! First, there is the question of the month: Have you found yourself to be more or less productive in your stitching during the Covid-19 pandemic? I'm very curious to read everyone else's answers to this one. For me personally, I think it stayed more or less the same. I've been working full time, sometimes a little more than before (as we had to convert all out lectures to online-only). I gained a little time due to no longer having to commute and stitching on my lunch breaks, but things with my grandma also got a little more hectic. There has been less going out or traveling, so I gained time in the evenings and on weekends (and when I took time off work), so I had some really good days and weeks, but sometimes I really wasn't feeling it ('languishing' as I recently learnt, it seems to be pretty common lately). So I think, all in all, my productivity remained about on the same level. I might have gotten a bit more focused (although I'm not sure that's the pandemic's 'fault'!), however!

Now for said stitching...I'm SALing The Loneliness of Autumn with Rachel. You can find her monthly update here. Personally, my progress last month was here:

I had only about 300 stitches of my 4th colour, 898, left to finish at this point, so I got this done relatively early in April:

I forgot to get the numbers at that point, possibly because I was too excited to start my next colour: 814, a lovely dark red. There are 3,658 stitches of this in total, and I got about 2k of them done. 

It's not standing out as much as I had hoped, but close up it's really pretty! I almost finished the first two rows of pages, and there are 1,743 stitches left now, so there will probably a new colour started again in May. Another blue, if I remember correctly. New total: 37,918 stitches and 31,92%. I also passed 200 hours on this project - 209h57m, to be exact! So...probably a bot over 600h to finish the whole thing? Hah, good thing I'm having fun!

2017 Steotchalong - Finish!

 I've been back at work for just two weeks, but it appears that I am lacking all energy for blogging in the evening and ended up being way behind yet again - apologies! I hope to get back into some sort of routine soon.

At least my crafting has been productive, and I have another finish to share - and older one, even! This one was the Steotchalong, a fun mystery  stitchalong, from back in 2017, the only one I took part in. I almost kept on top of it too, and then the last part dropped - there were a couple of different options how to finish this, depending on what fandom you 'serve', but none of them really appealed to me. However, people in the group came up with their own ending options, and there was one I really liked. I saved the pattern, but sadly not the name of the stitcher, so whoever you are - sorry I can't give you proper credit, now that I finally got around to stitching it up! (Edit: Jo gave me the real good tip to search back through the facebook group, the stitcher who designed this was Jessica Sipe!)

This was started before I kept time of my stitching, but the ending only took me 3h37m to stitch up, so really shouldn't have taken that long to get out again! I am quite pleased with the end result too.