July Gifted Gorgeousness

This is my post to link up with Jo's wonderful SAL for anything gifted or giftee, and my place to show you all the yarn gifts I've been making!

My gift making situation has become more dire this month, as all the babies I was making stuff for have been born and I have finished none of the gifts! Yes, that includes Felix' niece, who was born three weeks early, but is otherwise happy and healthy. Time to turn on turbo crochet mode...or die trying!

For now, I made some progress on her blanket, but amnot quite halfway done with it yet. I hope to get this done for her baptism in October, which seems somewhat realistic if I can just stick to it a bit more regularly!

I'm also making some more ragdolls this year (still plenty of cute animals left that I haven't made yet) and finished the first one today. Actually I finished the crochet two weeks ago but sewing them together is much less fun, so takes a while. But now the little monkey is done!

I'm working on a companion to this one (a little frog) that is almost done. These two are for a some-degree-cousin of Felix, who had her second child a couple weeks ago, so I wanted to make ragdolls both for him and his big sister. The frog is almost done, and if I can also add the name and birthday to the little squirrel I posted for the June Smalls SAL; I can cross two gifting obligations off the list soon!

July Fully Finished Gallery

I had all but given up on posting a fully finished object this month, but somehow I didn't feel quite ready to give up yet, so...watch me try and pull a massive shoehorn on this!

I was tyding up my crafting corner the other day (I needed to pack Guardian of Wayfarers away for a bit as the friend I'm making it for is coming over this weekend, and not supposed to see him), I cam across this pair of Felix' pants that I started mending about a year ago. He tore off one off the back pockets in a way that wasn't salvagable, and after I removed the pocket, some small holes and a very visible seam line remained. So I decided to try my hands at visible mending - basically adding some surface embroidery to cover and close and holes in the process. I got about halfway done and then just put it aside for some reason, and picked it up again yesterday for a pretty quick finish.

It was an experiment for sure...so what do you think? Can one get away with wearing these pants again? Can I get away with shoehorning them into the FFO SAL?

July WIPGO

Another month, another WIPGO update. In June, the numbers called corresponded to Guardian of Wayfarers and Red Velvet Cake. I did actually pull out RVC for a couple hours (and it's so lovely to work on with the silks!) but haven't hit my 10 hour goal yet, so won't show you an update yet.

I did, however, put ten hours into Guardian of Wayfarers. It's at 75.07% now, so I'm basically working on the last quarter of the circle (still have quite a bit of backstitch to add as well), and still have hopes of finishing this as a Christmas present...

Last month, I added mostly blues, and I'm actually startign to finish a couple of the shades, which adds an extra layer of motivation for me!

For July, the numbers called were 6 and 25. That's another round of GoW, and also Dark Forces, my first big ful coverage WIP (I think I started it in 2015). It's been a bit neglected lately, so only 23.85% done. You can see what it is supposed to look like when done on my side bar, and I pulled my current progress from PK do give you and idea:

From previous rotations I know I still enjoy working on this, so it would be nice to give it another 10 hours, and it might even be enough to finish the current page. Hope I can get around to it!

So the current state of my WIPGO is as follows - I realize the goal is to fill in the whole board, but technically I'll get a 'Bingo!' just for stitching the 25, no? ;)  

June WIPocalypse

Well hello there! June WIPocalypse has come around and totally steamrolled me be asking for a Half-year recap:  How are you doing with your goals so far this year?

And I can't believe half the year is over already, but I checked my calender and it sure is! As for my goals, well, you've had front row seats to see how they've been derailed - maybe I'm just not cut out for following a strict rotation of any sorts? However, I am not too mad either, having made good progress on some projects, and snuck a couple new ones in there. And I might still make it for one big finish this year, Guardian of Wayfarers just needs a little over 9k stitches now! 

The Loneliness of Autumn, though, has been terribly neglected for almost 3 months now! But, imagine that, I do have a little progress to report and added 566 stitches in June. That does not sound like a lot, but I am still in a very confetti-y area (maybe that's why I stopped working on it?) and it was actually enough to fill in another page!

I'm now at 84.76% and while I have pretty much given up on finishing the project this year, I still hope I can get a couple more pages filled in. The next two (or three, there is a tiny partial page on the right) should go pretty quickly now, and then I'll hit a lot more white space in the next row, but hopefully that also means more stitches in one colour? We'll see about that!

June Smalls SAL

I have decided to no longer start these posts with excuses about how much behind I am, etc etc, because that must be really boring for you. I think I've decided this before and fell back into old habits, we'll see how it goes this time!

Anyways, the Small SAL is a monthly stitch along to show our smalls stitching ('small' being a very wide term) hosted this year by the lovely Rachel. No link up post this month, I hope she's alright.

This year I had plans to stitch the LHN Little Sheep Virtues for this SAL, but have been busy with something else in June (and probably will again in July) - a mini birth annoucement for two very close friends who had their baby girl early this month.

I haven't added the birth info yet, but won't share it online anyways (or blur it out if I do), so for the purpose of this SAL, this is a finish:

 

This is Squirrel Angel by new-to-me designer MiKaStitchDesign on Etsy. This was very nice to stitch and didn't take too long either!