June Gifted Gorgeousness

Welcome to one of my favourite SALs of the year, the wonderful Gifted Gorgeousness, first stop for all things gifted and giftee, hosted by the equally wonderful Jo! For me, this is always a great opportunity to showcase some of my knitting and crochet, which is often meant as a gift. This month, I got two finishes, a new WIP and some news on another project.

For once, I finished the little bunny ragdoll I had started last month. He's already with his new little human already, and I was so pleased with the mum's reaction - I had made another ragdoll for her first son a couple years back, and apparently that one was very well loved!

Next, I started another baby gift, one of Felix' band colleagues had her second baby and I was feeling like trying something different this time. So I had a look around for inspiration and found that leg warmers for babies are pretty popular right now, and they sound quite handy too - so I thought I'd give them a try, see how they are received. They knit up pretty quickly too, I used some merino super wash I had left over from another project and they are so soft and squishy!

 

Another amigurumi was also started...not the purple Yoshi yet, but also purple! This one is a pokemon. I've been dragging my feet for a while to get the next part done because it looks a little complicated...but I'm sure it'll be alright once I get around to it!

Last but not least...I've been working on my Snuggle Up blanket and finally made it past the row that has been slugging me down for a week! No picture yet, but should be smooth sailing to the end now - maybe a finish by next month?!

June Fully Finished Gallery

I was so good this month...honestly! I got a project finished and finished-finished for Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery SAL before we even left for our trip last week...and then I just put of writing this post. Sigh. Can't be helped. And I have such an exciting project to share! It's been a while since I talked about it, but I picked up Flower Trellis, an all-beads kit by Mill Hill. There are two ornaments in the kit, and I've been stitching the first of the two. Here is was after all the beads had been added to the paper...but I think that was just about half the beads used in the ornament! Honestly, there is sooo much bling.

After stitching all the beads down, I carefully cut out the shape and folded it closed. Then all the seams where closed with a whip stitch, and THEN all that whip stitch was covered with more beads. And then I added a hanger and tassles, all beads too of course! This thing catches the light like you wouldn't believe it, and it's actually kind of heavy, but I'm also really proud of how it turned out!

I hope to get started on the second ornament soon, and then I also got another kit in purple and orange ready to go...lots of beads in my future!

The People Chose: Rainbows

Welcome to a (very late) June edition of Jo's wonderfully versatile all purpose SAL! We were traveling for the past week and while I brought my laptop and thought I might get some blogging done, that didn't happen, of course. So now I still got a week off work at home, and let's see what I can get caught up on! 

This month's theme was 'rainbows', and while I love rainbow colours, it seems I have not (yet) stitched a dedicated rainbow project. I do have some projects, though, that I feel are 'close enough' in the colours they use - more in crochet than in stitching, though! Let's see what we can dig up...

 

I also have stitched this small that is actually called 'rainbow world' because it's a freebie that has been charted in all the colours of the rainbow - I have only done the purple so far, though:

Daisy - 10 Hours

I'm sure we'e all been there - we made plans what project we want to work on in a given month, we got it all worked out...and suddenly, something else is calling our name. Well, I've made it a rule that if that 'something else' is a project that I neglected for years, I better follow that call! 

Back in 2020, I agreed to model stitch for my friend Ashley. She had designed a Princess Peach stained glass design, and a bunch of recolours, and wanted stitched models of a couple of them to put up on her website. Dutifully, I started right away...and put mine away after just two hours of stitching. I'm not even sure I ever showed her here on the blog! I felt really bad about it but just couldn't bring myself to pick her back up. Well, last week I did, and I'm in love! No idea what state of insanity I was in back then to just toss her into a corner. So, four days later I finished my first ten hours, and I am ready to introduce...Miss Daisy!

Isn't she pretty with her soft white roses and her little crown? I'm so in love! Of course there will be backstitching all over in the end for the stained glass effect, but for now I will stitch with the crosses (and tons of fractionals, but they are very much worth it!). I wonder if I can stick with her until she's finished? She's not all that big...

May WIPocalypse

May has been a strange month for me - we had so much going on (two weekends of people visiting, and one weekend of us being away and visiting people), and it both went by in a blur, and felt like forever! It was all fun, though, but I still hope June will be a little quieter. I got some time of work, so hopefully that will give me lots of time to do some crafting, finish a couple projects, and maybe even get caught up with blogging for once! At any rate, here I am checking in with May WIPocalypse. The question of the month is What project brings you the most joy and why? and while I love all my projects (otherwise, I wouldn't be working on them!), the answer to that can only be The Guardian of Wayfarers. Why? Just look at those colours!

Yes, that is the very same picture I just shared a couple of days ago, but seriously, I never get tired of showing this off OR stitching on it. It's positively *glowing* on the fabric. Also, while using quite a few colours, there is not a lot of confetti going on, just very well planned colour changes and no more than maybe 5 colours in each area (like a given set of foliage). Such a joy to work on!

Another project I really enjoy for its colours - although sometimes it can really get on my nerves, too - is The Loneliness of Autumn, which I'm showing you for WIPocalypse every month. I continued to work on this, one length a day, throughout May (although I still got a little to catch up on from back in March) and added a grand 1,765 stitches - that finished both the 3842 and 311 and brought me to 921, which is the first colour that has less than 1,000 stitches total in the design! Which means the colours are spread out a lot more, of course, but I'm still able to change colours more quickly, which is kind of exciting.

My new total is 86,334/118,800 stitches or 72.67% done. I don't know when exactly it happened, but there had been a shift in my mind from 'look at how much white space I still have to cover' to 'this is getting really close to a finish'! It's still going to take well over a year, which is a bummer, but maybe at some point I'll decide to start focusing on this instead of doing the one-thread-a-day thing, to speed things up. We'll see.

Speaking of one thread a month, June and July have us diving into WIPocalypses very own 'one a day' challenge, and I'm going to pick up my Meadow Tablecloth again. It's a very slow going projects, as it's stamped and has giant stitches, but experience has shown that one month at a length a day is just enough to finish one side of the table cloth, so hopefully by the end of July, I should have a finish!

(this picture was after the last event in March - I have since finished the flower block in the left corner, but it gives you and idea of what I'll be working on this month.) I'm actually a little low on the colours needed for the satin stitch flowers - this design uses Anchor, so I might have to go out and buy more, but at least that brand I can get locally, so it shouldn't slow me down too much!