February WIPocalypse

Once again, the end of the month hits me completely unprepared...and that with the month being a day longer and all! But that shall not keep me from jumping right into the February WIPocalypse post, and making the rest up as I go.

First, the question of the month - What stitch-a-longs (SALs) are you participating in this year? Most of them are monthly blogging things - I do Rachels Fully Finished Gallery on the 10th of the month, and the Smalls SAL on the last Friday, as well as Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness and, of course WIPocalypse! I also joined a 'Year of the Dragon' SAL on Facebook and WIPGO, which fits nicely as they both focus on my Guardian of Wayfarers.

Now for my stitching this month, it was not as successful as it was in January, but I still met my goal of one length a day and filled in some of the empty space around the middle of row two:

I added just 1379 stitches this month and didn't quite make another page finish - not enough to finish the whole piece at this rate, but I'm not giving up just yet! I did reach one mile stone, and that was 600 hours stitched on this design. At just over 83%, I have a feeling I might hit 700 before it is done...

Now for the making-it-up-as-I-go part: It's the one stitch a day challenge again in March, and since I still haven't made it any further, I am once again participating with my Meadow tablecloth. I think for once I will actually ry to make it every day and not just hit the total number of stitches...I finally want this finished!

February Smalls SAL

And here we go for the February installment of the Smalls SAL, hosted by the wonderful Rachel this year :) I am stitching Little House Needleworks' Little Sheep Virtues this year, and so far I am nicely on track, having just finished the third installment - peace:

Spring has sprung for out little sheep, and there are lots of leaves, flowers, and even some little fish in this design. I love how it's all come together and will try to finish-finish this one soon!

February Gifted Gorgeousness

Welcome to the February installment to Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness, one of my all time favourite SALs! As I said last time, for the forseeable future, I will be very busy making gifts for various babies in my life, and I started with one I had planned for a long time: A scrap blanket. When I finished the Little River Blanket years ago (the yarn for which was a gift, by the way!) I ended up with little leftovers of all different colours. Since then I had made plans to turn them into granny squares, adding some white to bind everything together and make the squares the right size. And now, after some experimenting, I figured out what size square to make, and here we go!

I'm currently working on this a little every day and might be able to finish all ~50 of the squares by late March, at which point I will attach them and add a border. Not sure about the exact layout yet, I'm making this up as I go!

Oh and by the way, that little basket I put everything into? Made from some yarn a friend gave me years ago, cause I got annoyed with all the little yarn balls and finished squares cluttering up my space. Bam, triple entry! (Blanket is a gift, colourful yarn was originally a gift, plus the yarn for the basket...)

February Fully Finished Gallery

Welcome to the February edition of FFG - or maybe FFFG? No? Okay! I'm pretty late this month, but I also got a lot of pictures to share, so let's get onto it!

My first finish-finish for the month was actually done well in advance, at the beginning of the month - it was my little Valentine's Hare, which was both a gift for my husband, and my entry for Jo' Valentine's SAL this year. I made it into a little pillow using fabric that Felix had brought my from a business trip once, and I didn't hand sew, I used my sewing machine! Yes, I am determined to make friends with her this year.

As this was a bit of a double dip, I really wanted to get something else finished, but of course didn't get around to it until way late...but since Rachel herself was late this month putting up the sign up page, I took that as an excuse to procrastinate a bit more, and just this afternoon I finally returned to my sewing machine, and finished the first of my Little Sheep Values - Love, or the February one, was stitched years ago, but as I returned to the series this year, I also need to finish January and February, and wanted to get this one done in the right month.

I recently bought some Gingham fabric in four different colours that I plan to use for all twelve designs, and made a little pillow using some lace too. It's far from perfect, but I like how it turned out and it feels good to actually be sewing!

So much for finished objects this month, now let's talk about some unfinished ones. As it is the 5ths anniversary of this SAL (I can hardly believe it's so long!) Rachel had the idea that we should all show some of the stuff lurking in our boxes of shame. Mine has a lot of projects that have plans that will take some more work, or pieces that are waiting for Felix to frame them, but also a couple that I don't have any idea what to do with yet - most of them are older stitches, from my pre blogging days. These are all stitched on aida, and some are not as cleanly stitched as I would have liked them today, so I think I want to turn them into something useful, where I won't be depressed if they maybe get a little dirty eventually. Maybe some kinds of bags? We got three designs of Popcorn the Bear, a pair of horses, a Christmas Tree and Mouse and Elephant from a popular German children's show:

Let me know if you got any ideas! I'm thinking maybe drawstring toy bags for the Popcorn ones, but I'm open to any and all suggestions!

Secret Stitching Sweetheart 2024

Hello and Welcome to the 2024 Edition of Jo's Secret Stitching Sweetheart Blog Hop! I'm doing a very sneaky post at work, and as it's a busy day I don't have much time, so I kindly refer you to Jo's Post on the matter for the details on the hop :)

So now that you know what this is all about, let's dive right into it! The picture I was sent by my secret sweetheart was this:

It's very pretty, but I am not entirely sure *what* it is, to be honest - is it an elephant? Flowers? Japanese or Chinese letters? I want to know, so I hope that who ever stitched this will come forward and tell me soon! 

Going back into work busy-busy mode now, I'll do my own hopping around over the next couple days, probably :) 

WIPGO - February

My first month of WIPGO is officially over and I am happy to report I hit all my goals (actually, I hit all my crafting goals in January - go, me!) Just eleven months left to go!

First I put in ten hours on The Guardian of Wayfarers, which came up to 1811 stitches. I finished the upper half of the circle and started adding some backstitch. Doesn't it just pop on the deep blues?

New total is 53.63%! I think next time this comes up, I'll try doing 1k cross stitch, then focus on  back stitch for the remainder of the time, just to spice things up a bit.

I also put ten hours into Angel of Cross Stitch, and I learned a couple things: For one, I still enjoy working on it, but I'm still not totally in love with the end product. Which is okay, I'm very much a progress stitcher. The fabric is nice and soft, but not completely even - not enough to mess with the design, I think it's about 1mm off on 5cms or so. The colours and threads are gorgeous. I've also made a mistake, but fixing it would have required unpicking a couple hours of work. Can you spot it?

It seems obvious to me now, that there is a one stitch too much soace between the B and C - but the more I think about it, the more I like the message of it. This whole part of the design is a sampler hanging in the background, o having a mistake in there means even the Angel of Cross Stitch makes mistakes in her stitching...does that make any sense? I guess the point of it all is: not scrapping this one just yet, but also not making it a focus any time soon. I'll just pull it out every now and then for a couple stitches.

So, now what about February? Let's have a look at the board:

So as you can see, we will see GoW again (yay) and the other project for the month will be the Lizzie Stitching Wallet. This was a Mystery SAL from Faby Reilley a couple years ago, I started it when it came out and stitched along until halfway through section 5:

In ten hours I should be able to finish sections 5 and 6 (finish the cross stitch and do backstitch/knots/beads on the right panel). Then I need to put in the outlines for the inside of the wallet, and hope to make a start on section 7 too! The most densly stitched parts are done, so hopefully will get some real progress on this one.