March Gifted Gorgeousness

Welcome again to my Gifted Gorgeousness for March, Jo's wonderful SAL after everything gifted and giftee! For me, it's usually a place to talk about my yarn work rather than my stitching, as I love to craft for family and friends, and they in turn like to gift me yarn. 

This month, I have to report a failure on my biggest goal...I did not make a lot of progress on my Snuggle Up blanket, and so it won't be done by it's one year mark on my birthday next week. I managed another two or three rounds, but it doesn't look much different, and I don't want to show it again before it's done! Hopefully in April. 

I did, however, finish one small gift, and that was a new pair of Jacobi Wristwarmers for my grandma, using the leftover yarn from my Hermione socks. I gave them to her for her birthday this week, but here they are on my own hands before I parted with them:

I've also done some crochet. Last time I showed you the start of an Amigurumi I was making...I have added a couple parts, but not as much as I had planned. Time just got away from me this month! Still, I could not resist starting yet another crochet project just this weekend. A friend had given me some super bulky yarn a while back, and I decided to use it and make a basket to hold some other yarn. Basically a win-win on the stash buster front! Here's my start, hopefully this won't take more than a few days, and also the collected parts of the blue Amigurumi:

Hermione Everyday Socks - Finished

I'm one of those people who have the bad habit to always craft for other people and not for myself, but last October, I finally started a pair of socks for myself! I've been working on them on and off, and as usual, the first sock took me about four months, and the second was done in less than two weeks!

I used a pattern I've been meaning to do for years, the Hermione's Everyday Socks by Erica Lueder. It's a wonderful pattern with just the right amount of texture to keep things interesting, while also being quick to knit and really pretty!

The yarn I used was Regia Premium Silk Color, a sock yarn with just a *touch* of silk to make it really nice and shiny and soft! I can highly recommend both the pattern and the yarn and might use both of them again.

March Fully Finished Gallery

I was really hoping to have something new finished for this SAL this month, but I'm having one of my worst stitching and blogging months in recent history (nothing dramatic, just a lot of other stuff going on), so I'll have to do a bit of recycling. So today we're talking about a project that has been on this blog before, but it's been finished after the last FFG so I think it still counts as 'new'! This is the Binary Heart I made for Valentine's Day this year:

As you can see I finished it in a hoop - I bought a whole bunch of these small ones a while back, and it's quickly becoming a favourite technique! As usual, the back was secured and cleaned with some felt, and I stuck with the colour scheme on the front:

I'm not sure if I've talked about that before, but the cute dotted aida was part of a set of ornament cut fabrics I got a while back. I'm never sure what do do with printed fabrics, but think this was a nice fit. 

So that's it for this month...hopefully, I'll have something more impressive for April!

The People Chose: Science

Well, I had a good run with hitting all my SAL dates this year, but I was bound to slip sooner or later! The March check in for Jo's wonderful all-purpose SAL was last Saturday, and this month's theme is 'Science'. 

So what does science have to do with stitching? Let's see. Some say baking is a science:

Genealogy can be a kind of science:

Potion brewing is a bit of a science - witchy chemistry!

Meterology is a science too!

February WIPocalypse

 Hello again! How nice of you to check in with my for the February check in of WIPocalypse this year. 

The question of the month is What stitch-a-longs (SALs) are you participating in this year? This year, I didn't start any new stitch-alongs, but I'll be trying to get caught up (read: finish) a couple that I started, sometimes years ago, and dropped along the way. Currently I'm working on the Jacquie SAL and hope to finish it in April or May. Blogwise, I'm just doing my usual four - WIPocalypse (this one), Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness and 'The People Chose' SAL, as well as Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery! Not super exciting, but I got my monthly routine and I like it. And even with just those four, I'm often struggling to get my posts up in time!

On the other hand, this SAL is my place to show my monthly progress on The Loneliness of Autumn by Lovy Thy Thread, which I am stitching at the steady pace of one length of floss a day (or the equivalent amount of lengths per month). Last month, I had just started the 825, a very pretty (and comperatively bright) blue. This month, I finished that, and most of the next colour, which is 920!

Of course the 920 isn't all that exciting and just filling in gaps in the existing brown and reddish colours, but just 103 stitches left and then I get to move on to 471, which will show up for sure as it's a nice light green! Whee. There will be a number of nice colours this year, and I'm very excited for each of them.

Current status is 81,861/118,800 stitches or 68.91% done, with 1,604 stitches added in February.

The Jacquie SAL - Part 5

I just sat down to work on my monthly part of the Jacquie SAL, and realized I never even showed you the part I finished in January! That won't do of course, so here we go. 

So in January I stitched part 5, and that covered the second main panel. It has a lot less stitching than the first panel, so it stitched up quickly, but I still think it's very pretty!

That leaves two panels, and me with a choice: I could do the easy version of the SAL, and that basically copies the first to panels, or the expert version, which is the same motifs, but with more specialty stitches and even some stump work. I'll keep you guessing, but I assume it's pretty obvious what I'm setting out to do!

Guardian of Wayfarers - 80 Hours

Guardian of Wayfarers is supposed to be my current focus project - I'm stitching it to give to a very dear friend - but the reality is, I hadn't touched it since September! For some reason or other, I was always working on something else, or there was something that needed working on, however you want to put it.

But now, after months of negligence, I'm finally back with my favourite dragon, and loving it!

I spent ten hours, mostly on the red and brown leaves, and aren't they gorgeous? Each colour looks so drab and boring on its own, but when they all come together, wow! I also completed the upper left quadrant and am working into the upper right now, so there will be some more foliage and trees in my near future, and I'm very much looking forward to it! 

Currently, this project is at 13,235 stitches or 35.85% (that's including back stitch, of which there will be quite a bit) and I'm hoping to get to 50% before I get too distracted again. We'll see how that goes!

February Gifted Gorgeousness

It's February, and after the day chocolate and flowers we had yesterday, we got a day of general love and generosity today for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness!

To start things off, I got the little heart I send out for the Secret Stitching Sweetheart blog hop - my yearly Valentine's present for my husband. This year, I stitched up 'Binary Heart' by StitchBucket. I finished it in a little hoop, and before you ask, I have no idea if it actually says anything - the pattern states 'it says I love you in robot' and that's what I'm sticking with!

 

I've also been working on Snuggle Up, the blanket that was a gift (well, the yarn was) from a group of friends for my birthday last year. As the rows grow endlessly long, it's slooooow going, but I made a good start at the second to last pattern...not sure I'll get it done by my birthday, but it won't be too long after!

Last but not least, I started a little Amigurumi (but one with a ton of parts, it seems...) for a friend. Not much to see yet, but I won't tell you who it is - can you tell yet? If not, maybe next month!

Secret Stitching Sweetheart 2023

Happy Valentine's Day, my friends! Whether you celebrate alone, with a loved one, with friends or not at all, if you do have some time, come join us for Jo's lovely Valentine's Blog Hop! Each of us got a picture from our secret stitching sweetheart to post, and later we will hop around to see who got ours. 

This year, Jo forwarded me this pretty, colourful stitching. Invaders need love, too!

I'm currently still at work (don't tell my boss) but looking forward to hopping around all the blogs once I get home, and finding my secret sweetheart!

February Fully Finished Gallery

The first week-or-so of February has been gone in a flashy blur for me, but here we are, I remembered and even managed to get a finish done in time for the second check-in of Rachel's wonderful Fully Finished Gallery! Well, technically, Felix did the finishing, but I did some of the work too. 

A week ago, I went to a flea market, which was a bit of a disappointment (because I guess most of the sellers only came in on Saturday, and most of the ones who *were* there Friday evening were already packing up at 5:30! But at least I did find the one thing I really came for, and that was a super cool frame for 'For Every Problem'. The seller said something about 'Art Noveau' but I don't really know about these things. I do think it's a pretty good fit though, both in size and colour!

It's old enough that taking out the old picture was a bit of work, but then I turned it over to Felix, he did his magic, and voilá!

I think I wanna bring this one to my office and put it on the wall there. Seems like a very fitting saying for an IT person, doesn't it? Very pleased with how it turned out!

Possibilities - 40 hours, 1 page

In the spirit of putting some love into my full coverage designs, Possibilities (also known as Eveelutions) came out in January. I put in another ten hours, and that was finally enough to finish the first page (although I got some decent overflow into pages 2 and 8, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds!).

What's more exciting, I'm leaving the greens behind for now, making a foray into the blues! Lots of confetti still, but how fun.

 This is currently at 13,307 stitches (tent) and just 3.4%. Still a long way to go, but I think it's going to be fun every time I pick it up!

The people chose: Way with Words

It's the first Saturday of the month, so although I can't find Jo's link-up post yet, I assume that means it's time for the February iteration of her wonderfully creative all-purpose SAL. But it also means I have to go off just the title without any post of hers to cheat off of, so hopefully I'll be getting it right!

February's theme is "Way with Words" which I'm taking to mean all our stitching with text. I love stitching letters, but I don't do it all that often! However, I just finished this one a couple weeks ago (and just picked a frame out too, so hopefully it'll be all finish-finished soon).

I also finished a couple other wordy designs over the years - here are a couple of my favourites:

Stitching Stats, Q4 (2022)

Well, hello there. My goal was to get these stats up in January so I wouldn't feel 'behind', so, I guess once again, I just so made the deadline! At least this one was a self imposed one. Anyways!

For all of 2022, I tracked my stitching stats, quarterly, and posted about them. It was an experiment, so today, after this post, I'd like to here your thoughts - is this interesting to you at all? I'll keep tracking for my own amusement, but I don't have to write about it if it bores you! And if I continue, are there any other metrics you'd like to see?

As expected, the last quarter of 2022 was a little slower for me, crafting wise, as I started my new job and had a lot of long, busy days. Hopefully things will calm down a bit as I get settled, but we'll see about that. So anyways, in Q4, I had a total of just 187 hours of crafting (down from 251h in Q3). 

I worked on 18 projects (16), but that included Christmas ornaments, so I finished 8 (4) of them (and 2 more since). At the top of the field, there was an unplanned new start on For Every Problem with 32 hours, followed by TLoA at 30 (48) and Snuggle Up at 23 (45). Just a little less time on everything, but the pattern stays more or less the same!

As you can see, the distribution of crafts was also more or less the same, although I spent some time paper piecing over Christmas break and should have some updates on that soon-ish!

Of course, my stitch count also took a nose dive. Here's the whole year for comparison, and you can totally see where I started a new job, can't you? Still, nothing to scoff at, over all!

Just for the fun of it, I also did the other graphs for the whole year. I did *not* include the whole list of projects under the pie chart - for those, I advice you to consult my stats for Q1, Q2, and Q3 - but thought it'd be fun to see the top contenders!

January WIPocalypse

Look at me, still being on time with my SALs! And also look at me, still not having posted my 2022 stats, and there's a page finish I need to tell you about...ah, well. Girl's gotta have priorities!

Speaking of priorities, first things first - the question of this month is If you have been to retreats, what are your must-bring items and supplies? I can't really answer because I've never been to a retreat but I'm looking forward to reading all your answers because I actually signed up for my very first retreat a couple weeks ago! Stitch Basel 2023 is going to be held in Basel, Switzerland, this September, and that's just half an hour train ride from where I live, so perfect location! I'm very excited and will probably tell you all about it when the time comes.

Now to my monthly stitching...I've been a good girl, keeping up with The Loneliness of Autumn, and after spending most of the month stitching 928 (a light greenish grey that's hardly showing up) I now got to 825, a very pretty blue that looks absolutely *stunning* amidst the darker colours of this design! I'm not sure if there is enough of it stitched yet to really show up in the picture, but I'm very much enjoying it. Hopefully, there will be some more really pretty colours showing up soon!

In the progress of stitching this month, I also made is past the 80k line, and I'm now at 80076/118800 stitches or 67.40%. It's starting to feel like the home stretch, even though there still is a looot of stitches left to do!

January Gifted Gorogeousness

Jo's wonderful SAL for all things gifted and giftable is going into yet another year, and of course I'm on board with it! As usual, this SAL is held on the 15th of every month, and I while the linkup is open until the end of the month, I have a bad reputation for checking in right under the wire. Each year I make a new effort to check in earlier, and it usually lasts for a month or two before I fall back into old habits, but as this is the first month of the year, here I am, and I am in time!

 

Despite my new resolution, I still wanted to have a finish to show, so I spent the last couple days frantically knitting away on my latest baby jacket, and finished it just this evening! This one is for another of Felix' relatives - he got such a big family!

I also wanted to be able to show you the next part of my Snuggle Up blanket that I've been working on since I was gifted the yarn for my birthday last year, but I didn't quite make it - I'm still 3/4th of a row short, but as the last row won't change the look a lot, that's okay!

I'm at round 73 of 85 right now, so I think finishing it by my next birthday is not out of the question, which would be awesome!

January Fully Finished Gallery

 

I am very pleased that Rachel, out mistress of ten-hour stitching sessions and fully-finished objects, is hosting this SAL for another year, to keep us motivated to finish what we start and to also, maybe, eventually take care of all those objects in our box of shame! 

I actually have a couple things ready to get framed, buuut my framer (aka my husband) isn't really feeling up to it lately, so either I will have to learn to do it myself, or keep busy with other kinds of finishes in the mean time! This month, I ended up stitching an emergency ornament, which I started on Sunday and rushed to finish today because I really, really wanted to be on time at least once this year!

So, my choice was the next one of the 2015 Ornaments of the month which I have been stitching since, well, 2015! But as of today, there is only one left, and I'm pretty sure that will get done this year as well, so that's something! As usual, I stitched the front as charted on 18ct aida, and did a little back using elements of the back stitching and the name of the month and birth stone.

And also as usual, I finished it with a beaded edge and a braid made from the three colours used in the design:

Excuse the crappy picture, but I *literally* finished this ten minutes ago and it's been dark since I came home! So yeah, that's my first finish-finish of the year (also, third finish, but who's counting!). On to many more, my friends!

I got ninty-nine problems, but this project ain't one

As promised, here is my first finish of the year! This was actually *so* close on NYE but I didn't quite manage a last finish in 2022. But here it is, and I present to you in all it's glory -

For Every Problem by Cloudfactory

on 32ct Murano Jurassic Sands by Sparklies

Total Time: 35:37h

 

This was such a joy to stitch, I love the simplistic colour schemes and stitching letters is so much fun! I want it hanging in my office, so I'll have to see if I got a frame in stash or need to buy one!

January WIPocalypse: Introduction

Welcome to the 2023 WIPocalypse kickoff post! If you've been reading my blog for a while, you all know about the sing and dance. If not, buckle in to learn something (that might or might not be interesting)! So, the question to start the year is Introduce yourself, your projects, and any goals you have for the year! 

Hi, my name is Leonore, I live in Southern Germany with my husband. I'm also very close to my elderly grandmother, who raised me and now I'm returning the favour by taking care of her. For work, I'm a software developer, and also working on finishing up my PhD (I was a research assistant until last year) and in my free time, I'm an avoid cross stitcher, crocheter, knitter, and dabbler in any other craft that catches my interest. I also love reading and playing video games! 

As for my projects, there are, of course, way too many of them, but I will be introducing three here, for various reasons. First, we have The Loneliness of Autumn. I started this as a SAL with Rachel who is doing a different version of the same design, and I am stitching one length a day (or most often, 30 lengths during the last week of the month). I'm currently a 66% after three years of this and hope to stay on track to maybe finish in another two!

For the one month challenges of WIPocalypse, I will be using my oldest WIP, the meadow tablecloth:

This is probably a little over twenty years in the making, but only had a couple stitches in it until the last one month challenge, when I finished 1/4th of it...so chances are good it will be finished during the year! Woop!

Typically, I also have a focus project that I try to dedicate a significant amount of my time to. My current focus project (although it's been a while that I worked on it) is Guardian of Wayfarers by PatternNavGavr:

This is about 32% finished right now and I am hoping to make some significant progress this year!

I'd also like to get my WIP count down over the course of the year, but that has been a goal for ages and...usually doesn't go well. We'll see how it works out!

The People Chose: Designers for 2023

So the new year is officially one week old...would you believe me I still have no idea what I'm doing? In fact, I keep making and remaking plans every day. Probably, I'll end up just doing another low-key year, trying to finish some WIPs and not starting too many new ones! However, this state of mind also means I feel a little lost when it comes to all the wonderful SAL kickoffs that are happening at the moment. One of them being the first installment of Jo's 'The People's Choice' SAL, which, in tradition with last year, has the theme of 'Designers for 2023'.

Well, as luck would have it, there is one goal I have made my mind up about - I while back, I made the mistake of guesstimating how much time all my WIPs would take me to finish, and to no one's surprise, I didn't like the result! Let's just say it is about one year of stitching time...24/7! And also to no one's surprise, a big part of that are my BAPs. Truth is I love starting these, but I'm not good at actually working on them, and this year I want to change that at least a little. My idea is to do one page on one of my big full coverage projects for every finish (smalls possibly excluded) that I have. Might not be super strict about it, but I'll try! And of the six projects that fall into this category, three are by one of my favourite designers, Jody Ellis from UnconventionalXStich, so I guess she'll be my designer for the year! 

The three WIPs are

The Puppeteer (55.87% done)

Kitsune (paper pattern, about 7% done?)

Sacrifice (1.91% done)

So if I *were* to set some kind of goal I'd say at least a page finish on each of them, and a row finish on The Puppeteer (I've done all the black on that one already, so most of the pages are filling in fast). More if possible, but we will see how that goes!

The December SALs

Before we formally start into the new year, which will be with Monday's WIPocalypse kickoff, there are a couple of things to catch up on left from the old year. On of this is my monthly SALs post and yes, we are back at SALs, plural, at least for this month! 

Starting off, there is the Temperature Tree, which has finally gotten its last leaves this week. We had a cold week or two in the beginning of December, which got me some nice blues and pinks, but then it got back to uncharacteristically warm. Yes, that is at yellow on the last day of the year, at 17°C average on NYE! Crazy, I know. (fun fact, this was not, in fact, my first finish of the new year, but we'll get to the other one in time).

I've also picked up another SAL I want to work on monthly, now that both Magical Kingdom and the Tree are done...not a new one, but one I dropped of from after following along way too shortly. It's the Jacquie SAL by Faby Reilly which I started July of 2021 and only stitched to the third part. Now in December, I finished parts 3 (which was partially done) and 4 to finish the first panel, and hope to do one panel each month to get a finish in spring!

December WIPocalypse

Hello and welcome to the last WIPocalypse of 2022...or the first one of 2023, however you want to look at it! Since we are usually at my in laws house between Christmas and New Years Eve, I rarely find the time to prepare everything I wanted for the new year, so I'm usually taking the first week of it to wrap up the old one, and WIPocalypse was just one of those things that trickled over this time. 

So to send 2022 off properly, the question of the month is Recap your accomplishments for the year! (Your finishes, your final before/after photos, etc). Looking back, it was a good crafting year - while I still haven't managed to get my WIP count significantly below 50, it also hasn't gone over (49 at the moment), I managed to cross off a couple of goals (including finishing what used to be my oldest WIP), I got to catch up a little on adding my finishes to the top bar (still not quite there, but making progress!) and just felt better and more organized about my crafting and live in general. Not wanting to jinx things but maybe I am finally getting the hang of this adulting thing, as much as one can even get a hang on it?! 

What's interesting looking back, my three proudest finishes of the year all happened in March - Fans of the Far East, Ubuntu and my oldest WIP! 

I also kept up with The Loneliness of Autumn - even if sometimes I start getting annoyed with some of the colours, I always pull through and find a spot that I really enjoy working on again. At the beginning of the year, I was here, at around 46%:

Now, twelve months and almost 23,000 stitches later, we are here (I even gave it a little iron for the occasion):

This is The Loneliness of Autumn at 65.71%, or 78,068/118,800 stitches done! At least two more years to go at my current speed, but I'm glad how much the difference between these two pictures is showing. 

I'll be soon to talk about my goals for the new year, until then I wish you all a very happy new year, see you soon!