July WIPocalypse

Time for the July WIPocalypse checkin - I'm back to actually stitching TLOA one length a day (instead of working on it in bulk, as I did the last couple months), so I'm back to posting of the actual last day of the month.

First though, for the question of the month - Have you ever attended a stitching retreat? If so, tell us about your experiences. Short answer - no, I haven't. Longer answer - I'd love to attend one, but haven't found one around my country yet. Knitting, yes - and I'd love to attend one of those one days as well - but no luck with stitching so far!

Now for my progress on TLOA, my monthly WIPocalypse project. Last month I wasat  42,270/118800 stitches or 35,58%, and just about to finish my 6th colour, 336, with just a little bit missing in the lower corners.

So obviously, that happened early this month - six colours all done:

Colour number 7 turned out to be a nice surprise - 919 looked a little drab on the bobbin, but it really helps to bring this design together and it's finally starting to get that autumn-y look I was waiting for! So far I finished it all through the top three rows:

There are just under 900 stitches of 919 left to go, so August will see another new colour - 815, another nice red - and the new total is 44465/118800 stitches and 37,43%!

Fans of the Far East - 3rd Rotation

 Soooo maybe I am slightly addicted to working on Fans of the Far East. I worked on it for over 20 hours already this month and just had to drag myself away from it to get my monthly stitching done on TLOA! But all this stitching makes for great progress, and it's kind of useful to be addicted to a project you are on a deadline with, you know?

Anyways, these past ten hours I was focusing on the leaf-y border part again. My goal was to finish the left side border, and that took me all of five hours to get done! So I moved on to the bottom, stitched up on of the ribbon/tassel things so I didn't have to leave that as negative space in the border, and stitched another four leaves wide worth of border:

Once I am caught up with TLOA, I'll be back to working on the pink fan - I'm really looking forward to that as the flowers are so pretty, but first I need to finish the 'spokes' part of the fan, and the white pattern in the dark blue.

July Gifted Gorgeousness

 It's time to link up with my favourite SAL again, and since I seem to be going crazy with the gifts lately, I have a lot to show! 

First, there is the little critter I started shortly before the last GG checkin - noone guessed quite right what it was going to be, so here is the solution:

Its a little baby penguin, hiding out in my fridge because it was really hot back in June (but has been raining nonstop for three weeks or so now). I think he's one of my favourites out of all the ragdolls I've made so far! This one is a gift for the son of one of Felix' friends who was born last year.

Knowing me, of course, I already started a new one - using a bit of a different pattern this time for a change, though:

This is a pattern from lalylala on Etsy, she has a lot of really cute animals (or actually, I think they are supposed to be children dressed like animals - hence the white-ish face with a hood on) and I wanted to make one of them for ages. This one will be for Felix first...great-cousin? One of his cousins had a daughter, is what I want to say!

Since we'll be visiting for Felix' grandma's birthday in August, I've been focusing on getting this done, but I've also worked a little (or a lot?) on Ubuntu, and managed to finish part 3! That means the diamonds are all done now, and I even wove in all of the loose ends.

For the next three parts, I'll be making six half-diamonds to fill in the gaps around the edge. The half-diamonds are VERY colourful, so a lot of loose ends are going to be involved, which is a little intimidating, but I'll get to them some time soon I think!

And then there is, of course, Fans of the Far East:

I don't know why, but I am SO enjoying this right now, and have a hard time putting it down! Which is why I have made a decision regarding the additional SALs this month (that is, the Christmas in July and Olympic Stitching ones)...this might sound strange to most of you, but I don't really 'feel' the new starts I had planned right now! I'm having so much fun with Fans of the Far East, so I wanna keep up the momentum, plus I also have my other SALs so work on (haven't touched TLOA this month yet) and one new start I need to tell you about...so...I'm out of those two. Sorry! Might catch up on the planned starts some time later this year, but right now I'm really happy with the WIPs I already have :)

July Fully Finished Gallery

 Another month is over, and I actually come prepared with a finish-finish I've been saving for this for several weeks! I feel so responsible and mature. Not a feeling I'm used to! Anyways, if you've been following my blog, you probably know what's coming now - my friend helped me pick out a frame, and I had Felix frame 'Age is Irrelephant'!

I really like how it turned out with the simple frame. At this minute, it's actually sitting at my friend's house already, and she'll give it to her mum from me early next week - I am very excited!

Fans of the Far East - 2nd Rotation

 Since I am really hopping to finish Fans of the Far East for my grandma's birthday, I've been keeping working on it all month so far. My current plan is to do 200 stitches everyday before I am allowed to touch any other stitching, and that has been working well. I might get tired of it sooner or later, but might as well get a good chunk done before I do, and so far, I am thoroughly enjoying myself. Here was the last picture I took, having just reached the left end of the upper border:

 

 

So this time around, I worked on the 'base' of the leftmost fan. I stitched the black frame and the dark blue pattern on the lower part of the fan, then outlined it with the flower pattern so I could see where the white needs to be filled in. I still need to finish the white, add the 'spokes' inside the black frame, and add the ribbon and tassels around the handle, so that's the plan for the next time I work on the fan.

 

For now, though, I am going back to working on the border, hoping to finish the left 'panel' - I'll try alternating ten hours on the border with ten hours on the actual fans to make sure I keep up with my border stitching!

The People Chose: Houses

 The first Saturday of the month is the (already traditional) date of Jo's all-purpose SAL, and the months topic is Houses! I'm not big on stitching architecture, but quite a few of my projects finish houses. Some are spooky, some are cute, some a big and some are small:

New Focus Project - Fans of the Far East

 So after Age is Irrelephant was finished, of course I had to pick a new focus project, and because you know me, you also know it had to be another gift with a crazy deadline! At least not as crazy as the last one, though. I first started Fans of The Far East as a New Year's Start in 2017, intending to finish it as a present for my grandma's 85th birthday in March of that year. To say the least, that was *very* ambitious, and I never managed to even finish the first of three fans before than. This is the last time you've seen it on my blog, and that's a couple years ago too!

Since then, I've picked it up a couple of times, but never enough to actually post about it. But now I did the math and...my grandma's 90th birthday is coming up next March, and now, with a couple months more than last time, maybe I can actually finish it this time! I've been working on it a bit over the last week or two, and this is where I got to:

 I mostly worked on the border - the leftmost six columns of leaves are new - and started the outline of the pink fan. (You can also see that I messed up centering a little here...the lower edge frayed really bad, which is why I put the tape on there. It's not perfect, but I don't trust my sewing to properly secure it! If it doesn't fray any further, I'll just barely have two inches of a border, so it'll work, I just need to be very careful.

So, some basic info on this, as it's been a while - this design is by Joan Elliott, from her 'Oriental Odyssey' book. It's about 320 stitches wide and 130 stitches high. There are three pretty fans side by side, plus the leafy border that goes all the way around - I'll have to figure out a way to alternate stitching on the fans and the border, so I don't have to do all those leaves in the end! I'm stitching this with DMC on 32ct white evenweave, and really enjoy working on it, so I'm excited to be back!

This is one of the projects I started before using timers, so my total time here is quite inaccurate. It currently shows about 20 hours, but that only covers the difference between the two pictures above. I think I have quite some work cut out for me, but I want to see if I can make it, because my grandma does love this design and it would make a great gift for her.

The June SALs

 Another month down, and my temperature SAL is more than halfway done now...I still think it's scary, don't you? I stitched all of June, of course, and, no surprises, it was quite a hot month after the cool May! It even went up to the second hottest number on my chart for two days. It was fun playing with some new colours after all the greens! I also finished the brown outlines on the border, so over the next couple months I'm going to fill in all the green leaves.

I also worked a little bit on my NYE SAL - was quite busy in June with a couple of other projects, but I did manage another 4 parts - 21-24 - so a little over 300 stitches. It's going slowly, but progress is progress!

June WIPocalypse

 The check-in for WIPocalypse was last Sunday, but since it was a one-a-day focus month, I wanted to wait until the month was properly over to show my whole progress! This month, we're going to hold the stitching olympics, and I still haven't finalized my plans for those...I keep bouncing about ideas for the original challenges, or maybe thinking to make up my own. I have three more weeks to decide before the Olympics start, so you'll see what I settled on by the next check in, I guess!

The question of the month is Half-year recap:  How are you doing with your goals so far this year? and I have to say, I am fairly content. I've been keeping up with my monthly stitching on TLOA, I've kept up with the temperature SAL and made some progress on older SALs. The Sampler SAL is on hiatus because Magical is taking a break. There was some good progress on other projects too, I finished two big-ish gifts (Zoe and the Elephants) and even picked up my oldest WIP again! So yeah, not bad so far. Although realizing half the year is over is a bit of a shock, isn't it?!

Now for my June progress - last month on TLOA I was at 33.73%, and had just started with the 336, my 6th colour, with about 2.5k stitches to go:

 In June, I made great progress, but didn't quite manage to finish the colour. Only 364 stitches to go though, so I should finish that in a couple day and then it's onto colour number 7 - 2.7k stitches of 919.

New total is 42,270/118800 stitches at 35,58%! 

My second length-a-day project for June was the Puppeteer, where I am still aiming to finish the black this year.  At the beginning of the month I was at 53,123/112,000 stitches (or 47.43%) done and 8,828 stitches of black left to go.

 I put in one length of black (that's a little over 50 stitches) in there every day and nicely filled out the lower left corner:

New total is 54,792 stitches done (48,92%) and just 7,159 stitches of black left to go, which is still a good deal to go, but it's going done nicely!