Possibilities - 20 Hours

Lately, I've been a little indecisive about what project to work on next. Not because I don't know what I want to work on, but because I want to work on *all* of them! So I used a random generator to pick and up came Possibilities by HAED. You might not remember this one because I've only worked on it once, almost two years ago.

Back then,  I worked on it for ten hours, 3745 (tent) stitches - all black - and almost 1% (0.96%) and it looked like this - nothing yet like the rainbow of colours it is supposed to become!

So this time, I dove head on into the colours, and used what feels like all the greens in the DMC colour palette. I about doubled my progress to 1.95% and look how pretty it is now!

As you can see I am not working strictly by page, but enjoying this way very much. Maybe next time we will see a page finish, though, now wouldn't that be exciting! Promise it won't take another two years!

Guardian of Wayfarers - 60 Hours

For supposedly being my focus project, it's been a long time since I posted about the Guardian of Wayfarers, but I'm still really enjoying working on this, despite all the fun I'm having with lots of different projects! 

Last time I was just over 22%, merrily working along on the dark blue background:

10 hours later, I'm still doing this - I think I used a grand total of 4 different shades during that time! It IS filling in nicely though, and I think there's not that much more of pure background left to go.

This is at 27.4% now, a little over 1/4th (and considering there is also a fair amount of backstitch, probably almost 1/3rd of the cross stitch). Still very much in love with the colours, and the use of shading.

August Gifted Gorgeousness

This wonderful SAL, brainchild of the equally wonderful Jo, is a great opportunity to show of all the projects made from things that were gifted to us, made to be gifts, or otherwise connected to gifts or gifting. For me, they are usually a way to display my yarn work, and today I have two projects to share.

First up is my Snuggle Up blanket. The yarn for this was a birthday present by some dear friends, and I am attempting to complete one part of the 12 part SAL every month to have it done by my next birthday. So far, so good, and I just completed part 6, which also saw the start of the 3rd yarn cake (I estimate that I will need 6 in total). It's getting hard to photograph in its entirety, so this time, here is just one corner to show off the new pattern:

This pattern was pretty fun - not too complicated, not too boring - but it was the same every row, and there is another section of it coming up in a bit, so I hope I'll still enjoy it then! Each round takes me over two hours at this point.

My other project is a gift *from* me, another baby jacket for a little girl in my life. She was born a couple months ago so I better hurry up so she'll get to wear this in the upcoming autumn! Thankfully, these jackets knit up fast, and this is more than half way done already:

 So by next month, I hope to finish this, and also add a shawl for her big sister!

The July SALs

 August has been a busy month so far, but here I finally am with my July SALs!

The Magical Kingdom was a little different this month - I was stitching the August section and while all the previous sections where somewhat rectangular blocks prominently featuring characters from the respective movie, part 8 was the first of the towers, imitating a nighttime scene from Peter Pan with some tiny characters flying across the moon! Very fun and very cute.

The Temperature Tree of course showed a very hot month...still haven't touched that last hot colour (and hopefully won't have to this year as well) but lots of reds overall. At least it's very pretty!

And there we go. I'm currently busy stitching the next section of Magical Kingdom, and I have another couple of things to post about soon, so stay tuned!

August Fully Finished Gallery

Last month for FFG (the wonderful SAL hosted by the equally wonderful Rachel that forces us all to brave the depths of our boxes of shame) I told you about this folder of old finishes that I discovered and had to add to my objects to be finished, and Jo requested a picture. So today, we start with that:

The mouse (it's from a popular German children's show) and the horses are two of my very first stitching projects, so not as neat as I would like them to be. Not quire sure what I will do with them! The Christmas Tree doesn't have enough margin for conventional framing. Maybe I'll make it into a wall hanging? One day!

Not this day, however, so this month I had to whip up something else. I didn't really have any plan either, but we were away last weekend and I brought this Mill Hill kit as an emergency new start, and not only did I start it, I also finished it, and since my return, finish finished it (with a beaded hanger and some felt glued to the back):

It's a small project and a simple finish, but I really do like it!

The People Chose: Outer Space

Being away last weekend, I missed Jo's wonderful all-purpose SAL (but who am I kidding, I wouldn't have posted on time anyways!), so here we go. This month the theme was Outer Space, and I believe that's not really a 'classic' stitching theme...at least not for me! I went through my pictures and found just three, including one WIP and one knitting project.

First, this is Dark Forces, which is of course from Star Wars and set in a galaxy far, far away - this is the cover picture as I only got about 24% of the actual stitching done:

This is the Hitchhiker, inspired by the famous book by Douglas Adams (and because it has a total of 42 'spikes' on the one side):

And last but not least, there is Blood Moon from Unconvential XStitch:

So not a lot to show all in all, and I don't even think I got a lot of outer space patterns, even on my wish lists, either! So I'm very curious to see what everyone else might have pulled out for the occasion.

2022 Summer Blog Hop

Welcome to the 2022 summer blog hop! I'm scheduling this post in advance, as I will be traveling home from a weekend away on the day off, so hopefully, this post should appear on Monday, the 8th. I will add a link to the blog hop itself so you can check out other participants as soon as I can. Update: Link!

For this blog hop, Jo has assigned each of us a secret stitching friend. We are to post a short description of said friend without mentioning their name, and show some stitching we think they might like. So here we go...

My stitching friend is actually a bit of a celebrity as she co-hosts a long-running stitching show on Youtube. She herself practices many different kind of embroidery, from cross stitch over crazy quilting on to proper needle point. Lately, she seems to have been drawn to big sampler style projects, and one can often spot chocolaty snacks in her stitchy pictures! Who could I be talking about?

As she has stitched a couple Mill Hill designs herself, I hope she will enjoy seeing Sophie the Sheep which I stitched and framed several years ago. Still haven't figures out who I've been talking about? Click here and find out!

Hufflepuff Pride Socks - Finished!

So you already know about my happy dance on The Puppeteer, where I finished all the black - the other mayor happy dance moment I had towards the end of July was finishing my badger socks!

Last time you saw them, they were here, I had just finished the leg and was getting ready to dive into the foot:

So anyone who's knitted socks knows that the foot comes in several small sections. At least it comes in this pattern, and it's kind of fun to work through one after the other (and very rewarding to throw out each corresponding page of the pattern, as this is the second sock and I don't need them anymore! - don't worry, it's a digital pattern, so I still have it if ever required...). And suddenly things went very, very quickly, and just over 81 hours the seemingly endless socks were all done, and with plenty of time to travel to Norway before it gets cold!

In fact, it took me some self-conquest to actually put on the socks in the heat, but you deserve to seen them on actual feet!

I'm very proud of my accomplishment and want to do more colourwork knitting in the future, but I'm also happy to not knit another badger again soon, thank you very much :D