Halloween Blog Hop 2022

Welcome to the 2022 iteration of our dear Jo's famous Halloween Blog Hop! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you might want to check out her blog for the full details before coming back here.

So now if you are up to speed, I know you want three things from me - a picture, a letter, and a link to the next blogger in line! However, I'll try doing things a little different this year. So, let's start with the picture:

And now, let's do a bit of a riddle. The letter you're searching for is in this picture. There are no humans in the square(s) with the letter we're looking for, but there are animals, and a total of three candy corns. Oh, and there are more eyes than legs in the square(s)! Can you find it? If not, let me give you two last hints! The letter you are looking for does NOT appear in the name of the next blog you need to visit, which is

http://apatchworkofcrafts.blogspot.com/

However, it is also the very last letter of this post here...

New start? No Problem!

To celebrate my new job, I really wanted a new stitchy start too. Not that I needed one, judging by my list of WIPs, but sometimes you just have to follow your heart! So I dug out a pattern that had been in my stash for years, all kitted up (well, with a fabric I bought for it, the yarn is just plain old DMC) and which I had meant to stitch for my office at the old job. It's just as fitting for the new one though, so I thought this time I better start it bright and early! I'm talking about 'For Every Problem' by cloudsfactory:

It was just the right stitching for those first few evening when I was just very tired as well - letters stitch up quickly, the lines are all simple to count, and not too many colours. Perfect! I also really enjoy the colours on my fabric (which is Jurassic Sands by Sparklies, such a nice neutral). Within the first week, I already stitched 10 hours - about 1.7k stitches, which was almost 30% of the whole design!

I actually think I might stick with this until it is done (except for working on TLoA and the table cloth I'm meant to work on every day in October...both of those need a little catching up. I got a long weekend ahead, so maybe then!

October Gifted Gorgeousness

Phew - I'm really late for Gifted Gorgeousness this month, my favourite SAL of all things gifty, and I'm blaming it entirely on Snuggle Up and those stupidly long rounds! I think I spent almost 20 hours doing part 8 this month, and the rounds are only going to get longer from here on out! I'm still really enjoying working on this though, especially now that I can actually 'snuggle up' under the blanket while doing so.

The longer rounds also make the colour changes appear more quickly now, so I'm almost through my third full cake now...good think I got a couple more in stash! All the yarn was gifted to me by a couple of good friends for my birthday in March.

The other gift I've been working on is the little rainbow virus shawl I'm making for a friend's daughter. This has become my main travel project, which I bring to work to crochet in my lunch break when I don't feel like going out. I'm now working on the third ball (of three), so this should be done soon, hopefully! Please excuse the crappy lighting, I really wanted to get this post out before diving into another busy week.

The September SALs

Working full time again, the month is getting away from me a bit, and I still owe you some blog posts! One of them being my September SALs, which I finished almost two weeks ago! 

First, my temperature tree, which was actually finished very early in the month because I'm always looking forward to working on this one! Isn't it so pretty? I can't believe there's only three branches left though, and we're heading into the greens again!

My Magical Kingdom took a little longer, but is just was exciting! For one, the November part (which I stitched in October - remember, running 11 months behind) is one of my favourite parts of the whole SAL. I think it's really well done and love the colours!

But more importantly, being the November part, there is only one left! So this is going to be a big finish next month. I'll have to think of something else to post about in these monthly updates then...although I got a couple ideas already!

October Fully Finished Gallery

Everything is still a little topsy-turvy after starting the new job and not finding enough hours left in the day, but that's not really an excuse for missing this checkin...because the stitching was all ready over two weeks ago and I just took 5 minutes to finish-finish it today!

'It' being Hello Autumn, the last one of a cute little series by Durene Jones that I stitched up over the last years. I used double sided tape to stick it to a piece of card board, and it's now part of my fall decoration:

 As I said, that's the last of the set, so thought you might want to see them all together:

Nothing too exciting...next month, we might be seeing the first Christmas ornament though. IF I can decide on a pattern to start!

Stitching Stats, Q3

Here we go again with my crafting stats for the third quarter of 2022 - I had a really busy week, started my new job (which I like so far, but VERY different from how things went at university!) and had plans most of the evenings too, but I got some unexpected (although not at all unwelcome) downtime this weekend, so I can get some blogging (and crafting) done.

The third quarter of 2022 pretty good for me, crafting wise - I got back to the 251 hours total from Q1 (compared to 239h in Q2). I worked on a very reasonable 16 (15) projects, but only 4 (6) of them have been finished. Which is okay because I've been pulling out some older, but larger projects to put some work in, and also put a lot of time into a couple of favourites.

At the top of the field, there are, of course again, the Loneliness of Autumn at 48 (40) hours and the Snuggle Up blanket at 45 (42) hours. Possibilities and Guardian of Wayfarers both got around 20 (30, for the latter).

Of course, most of that was stitching, as usual, but also a fair amount of crochet, some knitting, and even some beading (on Calavera Rosa) and Paper Crafting (which should be a finish soon, I'll show you then)!

My stitch count is in the same range as previous months have been, always slightly above or below 300 for a daily average. Curious to see how that will change with regular work hours again!

The biggest chunk, stitchwise, was yet again TLoA - I'm at over 18k for the year! I'm really feeling like I'm making progress this year.

The People Chose: Wild Animals

This month for Jo's wonderful all-purpose SAL, the topic was 'Wild Animals'. To me, that means excluding any pets, mythical creatures, and also every thing we saw last month for sea creatures because that would be boring, wouldn't it?! I went through my pictures with not much hope of finding things but boy, did I find! There are foxes and sweet little birds, but also elephants and crocodiles...something from every corner of the earth, it seems!