Daisy - Finished!

Miss Daisy had a hold on me and didn't let go until I finished her...so there was very little other stitching this month, but that's okay! I might not be good at sticking to goals lately, but I am quite good at finishing stuff, and I'm okay with that.

As predicted, the next ten hours of stitching finished off the cross stitch. Of course then I could not resist starting the back stitch, and then I just kept going and at 33:44h, I got a finish!

 Princess Daisy
charted by Make it Pink
33:44h total

I am very happy with how she turned out, and extremely happy with this light, intricate stained glass look obtained by putting the backstitch (often long stitch) on top of the cross stitch. I'm also very hyped to get working on another pf Ashley's Designs...I have a Halloween WIP that's not too far off a finish...mayyyybe? We'll see!

July Gifted Gorgeousness

Welcome to my July installment of Jo's long running Gifted Gorgeousness SAL, THE place to talk about all things gifted and to be gifted. I'm a little late to check in this month, and that's all thanks to one project - the Snuggle Up blanket which was my big birthday gift in 2022 (the yarn, that is, the crochet is my own work!) and after almost exactly 16 months, I have finished! I was aiming to finish one part (it was released as a 12 part CAL) per month, but the latter parts just took a lot longer, so I slowed down. But now it's finally done, and I present to you in all it's glory:

Snuggle Up - by Morben Design
Used: 5328m of Hobbi Twister 05 + matching solids
Time: 173:40h over 16 months

I turned out pretty big, but also really warm and cuddly! Here's a picture of my wrapped up in it for scale:

It was a massive undertaking, but I did enjoy every minute of it (maybe with the exception of that row of popcorn stitches...those were a little annoying, but also turned out really pretty!). Now hopefully, I can finish up a couple of smaller WIPs before starting my next big project...which I am already excited about so it probably won't be long!

Q1/Q2 Stitching stats

Some of you might already have wondered where this feature went - me collecting and geeking out over some statistics! The sad truth it, I kept pushing it of after the first quarter, and then it was already June and felt weird to get back to it, so I decided to do Q1 and Q2 together in July, and here we are!

Q1 saw a lot of knitting and crochet, so crossstitch was pushed back to just about 50% of my time. I feel like that might be a bit of a trend for the year, as I have really been enjoying my other crafts lately! 

I have to say, I was extremely proud of my project list. For one, the whole list fit onto one screen (and when I was doing this monthly, there were months when that didn't happen!). What's more, 11 of those 19 projects have been finished (not necessarily in Q1, but they are finished now, so it counts). Not a bad start to the year at all!

Q2 had a little more stitching again, but still quite a bit of crochet, and even a return of beading and diamond painting (the latter will be ready to post about shortly, I believe!). Still, my WIPs fit onto one screen yet again:

Just 8 finishes this time, but also some fair progress on bigger projects, and I think a couple of these will be finished soon. Now for stitches...

You can see that time in February and March when I really wasn't feeling 'it', I think I did a fair share of knitting during that time, just not a lot of stitching. Otherwise, I've been pretty consistent, and hope to keep it this way throughout Q3 and Q4...which I hope will get separate posts at an appropriate time. We'll see!

July Fully Finished Gallery

Welcome to Rachels wonderful Finish-all-the-things Fully Finished Gallery! Every month we try fully finish at least one object, but sometimes we got to get creative...some might even call it cheating!

Turns out July is just as crazy a month as May and June were...I've been really good working on some projects, but nothing that lend itself to FFG....and Felix hurt his hand, so I can't make him frame anything either! So tonight after work, I dove into my treasure trove of small kits (so many things I should stitch sometime! Why do I keep saving these?!) and picked out one I bought in Japan in 2019. It contains two cute kogin stitch buttons, and it took me just over an hours to stitch and finish the first one (I'm obviously saving the other one for the next time I'm running late for thus SAL! ;) ). Here is the stitching:

The kit came with two plastic templates for the buttons, so I just cut the fabric down to size, put it on the template, sewed a line around the back and pulled tight. I also glued some felt to the back (that also came with the kit) and glued it one to cover the gap, but I cut it a little too small so it doesn't cover everything. Still, I think this came out pretty cute, and I think I have an idea for how to use this and its brother, once it's done!

Daisy - 20 Hours

Even though I had to put her away a couple of times to work on other things, I am still very much in love with Miss Daisy, and I don't want to jinx it, but after 20 hours I am prrrretty sure I can stick with her until she's done! I did most of her hair, all her skin and made a start on her dress. That leaves me with some more dress and a lot of roses!

In fact, I think another ten hours should finish most, if not all, of the cross stitch, and then I just need to backstitch the whole thing which shouldn't be too bad...fingers crossed!

The People Chose: Abstract

This month for Jo's wonderfully versatile all-purpose SAL, the subject is 'abstract', and I think I found a good mix of projects for that! My temperature stitches come to mind, but also some bookmarks, blackwork, and my pretty metallic geostar. 

June WIPocalypse

Can you believe half the year is already over? I sure can't, and yet the calendar says it is so! It's time to look at our goals for the year, reevaluate and possibly readjust. We'll see. Officially, the question of the month is Half-year recap:  How are you doing with your goals so far this year?

Honestly, I have to say I am pretty content. I haven't been sticking strictly to plan, but did manage to get my number of WIPs down a bit - I'm currently down to 44, which is the lowest I've seen in a while, with a couple more on track to be done soon and no big urges to start stuff, so that's great! I also set myself a goal to work on my BAPs more this year, and that is kind of working - I've had page finishes on Sacrifice, Possibilities and The Puppeteer, so the only ones who have not seen light of day yet are Kitsune and Dark Forces. I'm sure I can fit them in somewhere in the second half. Of course, Puppeteer still needs some more love to hit the actual goal, that is a page finish, but I'm getting there.

My other BAP, that I'm posting progress on each month, is The Loneliness of Autumn, a perpetual SAL with Rachel the Ten Hour Stitcher. This month I added two colours to it - 921 and 730. Both of them were spread all over, so I didn't get quite was many stitches done, despite catching up a bit from where I fell behind in March - I added a total of 1,769 stitches and made it to a total progress of 74.16% or 88,103 stitches done. 

By the looks of it, the next couple colours - while not very exciting, shadewise - won't be quite as spread out, so I'm looking forward to stitching more than one length without moving the hoop again!

For the one-a-day focus challenge of WIPocalypse, I've been working on my Meadow Tablecloth in June, and will continue to do so in July. My goal was to finish one side of the square, and I feel short a little, still having to do the corner. But I'm getting so close (two of the corner pieces and just one of all the other motifs left to go now!) that I don't care much, as I know I WILL get this one done soon.

Sacrifice - Page 1

Remember earlier this year, when I made the goal to add a page finish on each of my big full coverage WIPs? We have not seen a lot of progress towards this goal yet, but over the last weeks, I have been working on Sacrifice on and off, adding a couple hundred stitches here and there, and I have finally succeeded in filling in all of the first page!

In case you forgot (I haven't talked about this project a lot, after all), this is how Sacrifice is going to look, eventually:

So you can see what a teeny tiny bit of the upper left corner I got done so far! The issue with this one is really finding a good rhythm. It's so pretty, I adore the colours, but the confetti is real! It took me 27 hours to get this far, and this is only 2.8%, or 3,294/117,600 stitches. Still, I love working on her, so I'll continue making progress, if slowly.