Guardian of Wayfarers - 50 Hours

Originally, I had planned to get my WIPocalypse post up today, but then it occurred to me that it would be nice to link that together with my Q2 statistics post, and for that to happen, Q2 needs to be completely over, which it isn't yet (a whooping 4 hours left to go!). However, it just so happened that I finished my newest rotation on Guardian of Wayfarers today, and I think none of you will be sad to see this one instead!

Last time, I was making my way through the massive blue background:

And about 1.7k stitches and 10 hours later, I still am:

But, as you can see, I'm following along on the edge of the circle, which is quite fun, I got to add a bit to the dragon's wing, AND, as you might be able to just make out on the right side, I reached the foliage, which is still background-y, but a bit less boring. So next time, I'll probably alternate working on that, and filling in more of the monochrome areas in the left half of the circle. Strangely, still looking forward to it! 

This is, by the way, a little over 22% of the design done now, including backstitch, so still quite a while to go. Good thing I'm enjoying this!

2019 NYE SAL - Finish

This month on trying to get my WIPs down, I picked up where I had left of in May, that is with the 2019 NYE SAL. Last time I had finished the front and made a start on the back, so I thought there'd probably not be too much left to do for a fully finish, and I was right! About 7 hours later, all the stitching was done:

Tadaa! I think it's a really pretty winter-y pattern, plus it feels good to have it done finally after almost three years! 

This post is weirdly short, and you are probably asking yourself whether I have finish-finished this yet - yes, yes I do, but I'm kind of saving that picture for July FFG because I don't know if I can get another finish done by then! So yeah, that's it for today, but I will be back soon :)

June Gifted Gorgeouness

This month was a good one for gift crafting. All crochet too! Not that that's something special, my GG checkins always seem to be very yarn-heavy :D

So first thing's first, I finished part four of my Snuggle Up blanket, which was my big crafty birthday present this year. 

As you can see, it's getting pretty big - covering the whole foot end of my couch now so I'm going to have to find a new picture spot next time! I also broke into the second cake of the yarn, so we're going back from the dark red to the orange. Here's a close up of the new pattern:

Look at those cute little stars, aren't they pretty? They sure were fun to make!

In other news, I finally sat down and finished that fox ragdoll I had started way too long ago, and there really wasn't that much work to do on it, maybe two hours or so:

More impressively, I started the next one - a little dog called Emma, because that is the name of the real doggie sister of the little girl I made this one for - and finished it right away too! Yay me!

Yes, her snout turned out a little crinkly, but I think she's cute as she is.

So that's it for this month - I'm already working on Snuggle Up again, and hope to get another baby gift done in the coming month as well. Wish me luck!

June Fully Finished Gallery

Hello my lovelies! I just came home from a weekend away at a LAN party - which was tons of fun, but the third weekend in a row that we were either traveling or had visitors, so I am really looking forward to some peace and quiet now. That, and lots of stitching time!

Either way, this month for FFG (hosted by the most wonderful Rachel), I have...maybe half of a fully finished object? A re-finished object! 

I'm not sure if I ever showed it on here, but one of the first stitches I did after re-discovering cross stitch in my twenties was these sun bathing turtles, a kit by Elsa Williams. I stitched them as a gift for my grandma and framed them the best I knew how at the time:

As you can see, it's creased and crooked and just doesn't look all that good overall. So I've been meaning to redo it for a while now, and finally got around to it!

I kept the frame, but bought a custom made mat to add, and I took the whole thing apart to iron and properly center. Much better now, don't you think?

So even if it's a little cheated, this is my finish for the month - I can almost promise you a proper one for July, though, so stay tuned!

The People Chose: Beads

This month for Jo's wonderful all purpose SAL, the topic is beads. Of course, everybody loves beads, and I enjoy using them a lot, so I will have to pick out a couple of my favourites to show you!

 My first heavily beaded project was Angel of Frost:

This were my first Mill Hill kits. I stitched quite a couple since!

This tiny elephant was made from a Japanese beading kit:

I also enjoy adding beaded edges to things:

Lady Justice had some pretty beads, although she's pretty 'tame' for a Mirabilia!

I finished this beaded clip just a couple months ago:

And so, so many beads in this sampler I SALed with Jo herself!

The May SALs

So, this is were a lot of my time went in May - making sure I could post this early in the month instead of a week late! (And here I am, three days later, realizing this had been saved as a draft and never posted <_< ) That is, I actually managed to stitch the next part on the Magical Kingdom SAL (the June part, as I am one month ahead/eleven months behind) in early May, so I am ready to show it to you now:

If you can't quite make it out, that's two little frogs sitting in a swamp, beneath a heart of fireflies - so obviously, the movie here is 'Kiss the Frog'! Lots of blue, but it was fun to stitch (strangely, I am enjoying french knots lately...I am not going to question the wisdom of my stitchy bug, though!).

The reason why this is still up in early June and not in May is, of course, my Temperature Tree - can't really finish that before the month is over! May was a lot of fun with tons of new colours, I think there were three or four. We had some pretty hot days! 

So far, June has started up a little cooler, but we'll see how it goes - it's only been two days after all!

May WIPocalypse

 Another month gone by, and I'm still stitching like it's the end of the world! Or just like I'm having a ton of fun doing it. Your choice ;) 

This month's question is, I believe, a repeat, and sadly, my answer hasn't changed since the last time it came up - Retreats and seminars – have you ever been to any stitching events? If so, tell us about them! I still haven't had an opportunity to take part in any retreats. I've read about a couple, mostly knitting ones, in Germany, but they are usually way up in the North, and I didn't really want to travel that far in the last years!

Now for my stitching progress, this is the spot where I share my updates on The Loneliness of Autumn (as charted by Love Thy Thread), my long-term SAL with Rachel. In May, I went back to my usual method of not stitching this every day, but rather stitching 3-4 days worth every 3-4 days. So I did all my stitching for the month, and even caught up a little on what I missed in January and February (I'm still behind quite a bit, though). In total, I added 2019 stitches in May, finishing the 3826 and making a start on the next colour, which is 221 - a very reddish dark brown, which is kind of nice to stitch! In fact, I already finished most of it, just 730 stitches to go, which pretty much guarantees that we will see another new colour during June.

My new total is 61,853/118800 stitches done, or 52.06%. There's still so much negative space left to fill, though...

In other news, June and July mark the next focus challenge of WIPocalypse. The goal is to pick a project that you stitch on every day. As usual, I might not make it every day on the day, but I am planning to stitch the equivalent of one length of thread a day on The Puppeteer. After the last focus challenge, he looked like this:

 

... and  I haven't touched him since! I'm still trying to finish all the black, which will hopefully happen sometime in July. 3429 stitches left to go!