November WIPocalypse

Yeah, I know, it's not like me to post in time, but stranger things have happened! I was working on TLoA all of last week, and thought why not just get all my progress in until the end of the month so I can work on something else. Hah, we'll see how that works!

First, though, there's the question of the month - When do you begin planning your stitching goals for the next year? Well, there are two answers to this question - first one being, I'm constantly making plans for the next couple years, things I could stitch, want to stitch, how to divide things up in a way that would be manageable...if I had 40 hours of stitching time every day! Sitting down and planning what I actually WILL try to work on in the year is usually what I frantically try and do in the last week of December...and then things start changing barely a week later. I'm way better at making plans than following through!

So, now to a plan I have been following for almost three years, and that it The Loneliness of Autumn, which I've been stitching one length a day, or rather at 28-31 lengths a month, one colour at a time! This month, I went through 1294 stitches of 833, a brassy green-ish yellow (yes, that doesn't sound terrible exciting) and made a start on 3345, which is a very pretty green for a change! 

766 stitches of that left to go, so we'll see an appearance of yet another colour in December for sure! New totals are 76,456 stitches and 64.36% done.

November Gifted Gorgeousness

As I am not having a very productive crafting month, this one will be quick! Welcome to the November edition of Jo's wonderful SAL about everything gift-y and gifted. I mostly use this to show off my yarn work, and I got one finish this month - this cute rainbow virus shawl has been finished, washed, and is on its way to a little girl (together with the baby jacket I showed in September, which will got to her sister):

Now this would usually be the place for me to show Snuggle Up, the wonderful blanket for which a group of my friends gifted me yarn for my birthday. However, I did not manage to finish the next part yet! Which is shocking, because while I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up the one-part-a-month pace with the parts getting bigger and rows getting longer, I didn't expect part 9 to break my back. It's so easy, and only 6 rows! Alas, it's not done, so I'll have to show you next month instead. 

I've also made a tiny start on another baby jacket, which really isn't anything to show yet, so instead I will re-post the ornaments from my FFG update - these will be presents for my Mil and Sil, respectively:

The October SALs

Now we're getting somewhere...and I'm ready to show you my latest SAL progress! First, as usual, there is the Temperature Tree, the October edition. As you can see the months was still uncharacteristically warm for the season - good for heating costs, bad for the symmetry of my tree! November has been pretty cold so far, as if to make up for it, so I'm pretty sure there will be some blues showing up soon.

Now for the next SAL, I'm...a little confused. I know I stitched one part every month, and I knew I was supposed to finish this in November, but...that was supposed to be the 'November SALs' post, not the October one! Going back I realized that I skipped posting about part 10 (Sleeping Beauty) and posted part 11 last month. Oops. So this post *could* have been up two weeks earlier! Well. What's done is done, and I'm not going to hold off on posting it now...here is the Magical Kingdom SAL in all it's finished glory!

Part 12 was Rapunzel's tower, and that sun almost broke me, with literally hundreds of fractional stitches and fractional back stitching, but I think it was very worth it in the end! I hope to have this one frames soon as well.

So as this SAL is done one month earlier than expected, we'll probably only see the Tree in December...although I do have plans to add something else to the mix, but I might just be mean and not tell you before January ;)

November Fully Finished Gallery

It's one of those months again, when I stitched something especially to get a finish, and while the stitching went well, the finishing took some days...or weeks...longer than expected. In the end, I'm very pleased with the results though! 

I stitched up two (twin) ornaments from the 2018 Just Cross Stitch ornament issue, designed by Lucy Heaton. I finished them by mounting the stitching on a piece of foam board, then did the same with some red backing fabric, put the two sides together with a hanger in between, and glued some ribbon along the edges. I really like the modern look of those! Here are Dashing Through the Snow and Dashing Throw the woods:

I'm rather fond of the backing fabric as well:

Next month is very likely to be Christmas-y too...either I'll stitch and finish a third ornament, or have Felix frame something season-appropriate!

The People Chose: Travel

I'm really not good with my posts this month, even though most of them would just require me sitting down and write them! However, I'm not letting it stress me out, I know I'll get to all of them eventually, just be warned that you might be seeing some posts a little out of order (or at unexpected times alltogether).

Soooo. Awkward intro - check. Where was I? Ah yes, it's time (and has been for about two weeks) for Jo's wonderful all-purpose SAL, the People's Choice SAL. This month, the subject is 'Travel'. Now my first thought was 'travel projects', but since I love to craft on trains and in cars, and with frequent visits to in-laws and friends, almost all my projects have been worked on 'on the go' at one point or another, so that's not a good selection criterion. But then I thought of 'traveling patterns', so patterns that travel from stitcher to stitcher, and I have stitched only two of those - much better!

This one was designed specifically and available only as a traveling chart, by the late and wonderful Gaynor French. I'm planning to eventually make it into a project bag for a traveling project...if my sewing skills are up for it!

And this little monkey was send traveling by a stitcher from Italy who I think is no longer actively blogging. I wouldn't normally count monkeys among my favourite animals, but isn't he cute?!

As a bonus (and because I only showed two designs today), here is a travel-themed project I'd really like to stitch some day...the Postcards from the World SAL by cloudsfactory! 

 

For Every Problem - 20 Hours

How has it been two weeks again since I posted here? I got so much to show and tell you...and so much more left to finish up! Life is busy, but I'm enjoying it, so no complaints from me right now. Just pretty things to catch up on!

Today, we'll be talking about problems and solutions. I've been stitching some more on 'For Every Problem' (maaaaybe I'm a little bit obsessed with it), in fact another ten hours more! And look how much progress I made:

If you're thinking 'wait, doesn't that look almost finished?', you'd be partially right. at 3,531 stitches, I'm 57.50% through the design, so the next ten hours should get me reaaaally close, maybe even close enough to carry on to a finish. Exciting!

October WIPocalypse

Happy November, everyone! Looking outside, I have a really hard time believing how far the year is gone already. We've been having a couple of really nice, warm and sunny days that felt more like early September than late October! Of course, with all the warnings to save as much energy as possible, warm days sho
uld be welcome, but I kind of feel cheated out of my favourite time of the year! We'll see what the next month brings, though.

Stitching wise, thanks to a lazy long weekend, I am pretty much caught up with everything, so let's quickly talk about the question of the month and dive right in. So, Do you prefer Halloween or Christmas stitching? I'd have to say Halloween, for the colours and motifs, although I do not do a ton of seasonal stitching overall - for Christmas, I usually just manage an ornament or three.

Now, for my monthly progress - I put just over 1.7k stitches into TLoA, finishing the 816 and stitching up all of the 3051.

 

New totals are 74641 stitches/62.83% done. Next up are 1294 stitches of 833, a gold/yellow, so I'll be filling in a little more around the lamps.

October was also a one-a-day challenge, and I used that to work on one of my oldest WIPs, a tablecloth with some cute critters and flowers that I call the Meadow Tablecloth. Before the month, I had very little done on it, now (after 9 hours and 946 stitches), one quarter is completely finished:

Obviously, that's a lot more stitching than I expected, but I think I'd like to put in a couple stitches here and there, give it another focus month or two next year, and hopefully have a finish in the not too far future! We'll see how that goes.