September WIPocalypse

Everyone who knows me probably also knows how rare it is for me to post a WIPocalypse during the month it's due instead of early the next month, but miracles do happen, and here we go! 

The question of the month is another repeat I think: Are you a seasonal stitcher? If so, which seasons do you find yourself more productive or less productive? I'm fairly productive all throughout the year, but I find that the way I'm stitching changes a little throughout the year. In summer, I am more into stitching and smaller projects that I can take on the go, as we are often traveling a bit and such. During winter, I find myself for drawn to yarn work, and those big massive projects that really require me to sit down and stay put!

Now on to The Loneliness of Autumn, my monthly SAL with Rachel, who doesn't have a lot of stitching time at the moment so hasn't checked in for a while. I tried to make up for that by being extra productive, and I got exciting news! Remember earlier this year, when I didn't work on this for about 6 weeks in late January and all through February? I've been struggling to catch up to my 'one length a day' goal ever since, and in early September, I finally did it! I did a total of 3030 stitches this month (a new personal best, I believe), finishing up the 644, doing all the 3820, and finally starting on the 816, another nice dark dark red of which I have only about 400 stitches left at this point. Next up will be 3051, a dark green so one of the less exciting colours, but I'll get it done nevertheless!

So my new total is 72,929/118800 stitches or 61.39% done. I'm starting to dream of seeing this one finished but of course at this point, that's still going to take another two years or so at my current speed!

October marks the last of the 'one a day' challenges of WIPocalypse. After 'finishing' my previous focus piece - getting all of the black into The Puppeteer - I was thinking about what to pick up next, and decided to give some love to my oldest WIPs. As you might remember, I finished *the* oldest - the tablecloth with the little houses and trees - earlier this year, so no this title is somewhat split between two other tablecloths (I can't really remember which one is older), so I just picked the one that requires less stitching to finish. This is the Meadow Tablecloth (not it's official name, it's a Rico kit and think only has a number).

As you can see, I've barely made a start, but it's not a ton of stitching to begin with (mostly cross stitch, but also some backstitch, stem stitch, statin stitch and a couple French knots) so I'm hoping that once I make it through a month of one length a day, it will be close enough to a finish to keep going! Guess we will see how it goes.

Possibilities - 30 Hours

Since I still want to work on *all* my WIPs, I had some friends pick random numbers to determine the next couple rotations, and I was lucky enough to have Possibilities come up one more time. Which made me very happy as I really enjoyed working on this last month!

Last time, I was here at 1.95%:

 This time, I had high hopes of a page finish, but for one I had underestimated the number of green shades DMC produces, and I also hit two highly confetti-y blobs of reddish browns and tans, which slowed me down a lot. So I only made it to 2.64%, which was enough to pass 10k (tent) stitches, but, as I got quite some overlap to the pages below and to the right, not to finish page 1:

It will probably be a while until I work on this again (as I already know the next six random numbers, and it's not among them) but I am already looking forward to it...and hoping that I will hit the page finish then, finally!

September Gifted Gorgeousness

When I'm being ten days late for my favourite SAL (brainchild of my favourite Jo, concerning every thing gift and gifted) that usually means I've been sitting on some yarncraft finish and desperately been avoiding finish-finishing it. Which is at least true this month, but yesterday I finally kicked my butt, so now I got everything ready that I wanted to post - buckle in and let me show you!

First of all, there is Snuggle Up, the blanket I am making this year, and the yarn for which was a present for my birthday by a group of really lovely friends. This was originally released as a twelve part SAL, and I'm trying to work one part every month, which is getting exceedingly more difficult as the rounds are getting longer and longer! This month I was still able to finish part 7 though, which was just six rounds worth of crochet.

The yarn-thing I finished was, no surprise, the latest of my baby surprise jackets, for Felix' youngest relative:

I also made a start on a shawl for her big sister - a really colourful and cheery virus shawl for grey winter days! About halfway done with this one, so hopefully I can send them both off next month.

I also worked a little on some gifted stitching. Felix and I were spending a weekend at a cozy hotel and were using my tablet to watch some movies in the evening, so I needed a project that was both ready to grab and not relying on Pattern Keeper or Cross Stitch Saga, so I brought Things Unseen, which was a Christmas present from Felix a couple years ago, and I hadn't worked on it in ages, so it was fun getting back into it! I did about 1000 stitches over the weekend, which brought it here, adding the flowery vine and everything below, and hope to get back to it sooner this time!

September Fully Finished Gallery

Welcome to the September edition of Rachel's wonderful SAL which helps us stay accountable for all the projects that get stuffed into the box of shame! If I'm a little late this month (who am I kidding, check in was on the 10th) it's not really my fault; I've been asking Felix to frame this for months, and he actually did start on the 8th, but it was giving him some more trouble than expected! He finally got it all done yesterday night though, and I think it was really worth all the hassle.

So, what am I talking about, you're asking? I don't think I've ever showed this project on her before due to its somewhat secretive nature. My brother in law married his girlfriend in a very small ceremony last year, and we were some of the only people who even knew about it beforehand. Despite not being invited, I still wanted to stitch them a wedding sampler. Now I don't know her all that well (they met shortly before the Pandemic hit and we just haven't really had an opportunity to spend much time together yet), but he's a *huge* Lord of the Rings nerd, so I went after that, and did a little frankensteining, as my friend Carla would call it. 

I bought two patterns - "The White Tree" and "Evenstar" from Ilutien Cross Stitch - that are the white tree of Gondor and Arwen's Evenstar amulet, surrounded by the script from the one ring, respectively. I rearranged the elements a little, added some text (it's the German version of Arwen's speech, 'I would rather spend one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone') as well as their names and the date (blurred out for privacy reasons). Honestly, I am quite happy with how this turned out, and in October we will finally get to see them again and deliver this in person!

Guardian of Wayfarers - 70 Hours

I am happy to report that this time, it didn't take me quite as long to get back to Guardian of Wayfarers! And that I still enjoy working on this one very much. At sixty hours, you last saw it here, with me dutifully working through the blue background:

Now, 70 hours in, I am done with these vast amounts of blue background...for now. Instead, I will now be working on vast amounts of foliage! It's not all blue though, I got to introduce a couple oranges and brown today with more to come, so that's kind of an exciting change, isn't it?

I've also reached 32% done, so almost 1/3rd of the design, and that is including the numbers for backstitch! Hopefully, I will get to 50% by the end of the year, and see this finished not too late 2023.

The August SALs

This month, I got to add another set of towers to the Magical Kingdom SALs. This time it's Hercules, Pegasus and Phil! This part stitched up pretty quickly too, as these towers are so lean there aren't a lot of stitched in them. I really like how this is shaping up now that we are adding some structure.

Temperaturewise, August looked pretty similar to July, although it felt less hot over all. Maybe I'm just getting used to it? However, I got to use the same colours over and over again instead of changing every other leaf, which was a nice change! We'll probably be seeing greens cropping up in September again, which would make the tree pretty much symmetrical.

The People Chose: Sea Creatures

This month for Jo's wonderful all-purpose SAL, we are looking at sea creatures. But after excluding any mermaids (as our wonderful host suggested) and any water-but-not-really-sea-creatures (like ducks, crocodiles, and otters), I ended up with a measly two!

The first was this cute little finish I made for an exchange a while back. The frame (with the little fish) was one of the first patterns my friend Magical/Galdra released for her NFSAL (Neglected Floss Stitch Along) years ago, and I combined it with the appropriate needle minder and saying to make a little gift!

The other object is this sea horse I test-crocheted for a friend of a friend. Isn't he cute?

I'm a little sad I have made this few sea creature so far! I think I'll need to rectify that some day.

August WIPocalypse

Almost a week late, and boy, but a week it's been! Life has been a little hectic lately, but I finally managed to get my monthly due on TLoA done, so I am ready to write this post. 

First though, the question of the month, which is Have you been participating in gatherings via online chats (Zoom, Google Meet, etc) during the COVID pandemic? If so, what have been the best formats in your opinion? and strangely, the answer is no, I haven't! Almost all my stitching friends are online, and I used to have a somwhat-monthly IHSW hangout with a group of them, but lately, we've been finding ourselves having other plans all the time. Maybe we can get back to it soon!

Now, as to my progress on TLoA, which I SAL with Rachel, who hasn't checked in for some time due to personal circumstances. I try to share my progress on this every month, though -and  I made great progress again, adding 2,444 stitches in August (and 538 so far in September to get caught up after a weekend away). I finished the 720, did all of the 1,567 stitches of 762 - which isn't very exciting for you, since it hardly shows up on the white fabric, but is exciting for me because I finally got to work in some of the as-of-last-month unstitched areas instead of always going around the edges of what was there already!

Currently I am working on 644, with only about 200 stitches left. The beige-gray doesn't show up that much better, but a little, and follows about the same path as the 762. Once that's done, I will move on the 3820, a nice golden yellow, and also the first colour with less than 1,500 stitches!

Currently, I am at 70437/118800 stitches, which marks 59.29% of the design. I also did a good job catching up on the stitching I was missing from earlier this year - only about a week's worth left now, and I'm sure I'll be able to get that done by the end of the year!