October Gifted Gorgeousness

Oh gee, the end of the month really snuck up on me this time! I've been really good making gifts, but not so good posting about it! Does that mean? Yes it does, I finally finished my Spice of Life blanket, and with plenty of time to spare until the baptism too! It's not perfectly rectangular because for some reason those things always get more narrow and more wide as you go, but the border still tied is nicely together, and for pretty much randomly picked colours, I am very pleased with the colours as well! It also used up a bunch of yarn I had been gifted, so it's a doubly whammy for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness. Woo!

And with this big gift project out of the way, I had time to pick up several smaller ones! I made this cute little dwarf (also from a kit I was gifted earlier this year, by the way) for a friend who role plays a dwarf in her D&D campaign:

He is from what I assume must be unlicenced Lord of the Ring patterns. They all have generic names like 'The Dwarf', 'The Elf' and 'The Wizard', but look an awful lot like the characters from the movies!

I also made up this little own from a kit I had been gifted years ago. It's for a friend of mine who's about to hand in her Bachelor thesis! So I guess it has been a successful GG month for me, even if I almost missed the actual post!

October + November WIPGO

I've really dropped the ball with blogging lately, but I am still here! Having some laptop troubles too, but those will be figured out soon, I hope - it's still under warranty. Anyways! I never got around to telling you about my WIPGO plans for October, and I think that's a bit telling about the issues I've been having. I really enjoyed this SAL in the beginning, but lately I seem to have fallen out of love with it. I felt like this before for a short while back in...April it was, I think, but got over it. Maybe this SAL just isn't for me; or rather, I didn't do a good job picking out my goals. But picking up a project for just ten hours, then packing it away again until probably next year, just doesn't bring me a lot of enjoyment right now. I finished The Guardian of Wayfarers, which was my big focus project for the year, and I'm itching to pick a new focus and sink my teeth into it! Plus, I have some (Christmas) presents I need to get a move on with. So I'm going to give you my update, along with the numbers pulled for November, but I'm not sure if I'll be working on them much. We'll see.

First, though, we're going to take a step back - in September, the numbers asked me to work on Peacock Tapestry, and I did - I put 10 hours of work into the border, bringing it down a good section and close to the lower edge of the design:

In October, I got a project I'm not sure I ever showed here before - it's Dimension's Butterfly Forest. I started it back in December of 2022, but never really worked on it much. It only had about 8 hours of work in it when I started working on it, and over the course of ten hours, I finished the first butterfly and made some progress on the background:

Now for November, the numbers called were 14 and 16. 14 is for Cirque des Cercles. I started this last year and left it here:

I think I actually might enjoy working on this a bit more, so we'll see if I can cross off another goal in November! 16 is Bellatrix, which I haven't worked on in a while, but could also see it happening. She's currently here:

So I think all that remains is me showing you the state of my WIPGO board. Will it be the final time? We shall see!

Stitch Basel Start - LDS SAGA

Sorry for being a bit quiet lately - life has been busy, and my crafting plans have become derailed, as usual! One reason for that (the derailment, not the busy-ness) was a new start I had at Stitch Basel Light, sponsored by my friends who got me the pattern and a voucher for floss for my birthday. 

I'm taking about Long Dog Sampler SAGA (Stories amongst graceful arches). Yes, it's a big one, yes, I might be slightly crazy, and no, I regret nothing! I'm stitching this on 40ct Verdal, the colour is called 'Desert Sand' and dyed by xJuDesigns. The floss is from Missus Sedas and called 'Lake'. I'm building my pretty oasis in the desert!

So far, I have stitched up the first arch - one of the smallest ones in the design, and still a bit over 2000 stitches/2% worth (half of that was done while still at the retreat):

The extra fun thing with this is that each arch comes with a little story, and they are all so fun! This first one is called "The Battenburg Cake" - I won't paste it here for copyright reasons, but you can find the pdf on the pattern page linked above.

I'm really enjoying working on this one and I think I want to work on it for a bit longer. My plans for the rest of the year have changed a bit anyways, but that's a topic for another post - one I'll hopefully get around to writing over the weekend!

Guardian of Wayfarers - Finished!

I had originally planned to talk about this with my WIGO report, but decided it deserved its very own post after all. On September 20th, whilte at the Stitch Basel retreat, I finished The Guardian of Wayfarers by Nadezhda Gavrilenkova aka PatternNadGavr after two and a half years and 224 hours of stitching!

It was a fairly big stitch for me, clocking in at almost 40k stitches including back stitch, but I have to say I enjoyed every minute of i. The colours are so nice and almost glowing on the fabric. Finishing this at a retreat, getting to ring the bell and having everyone oh and ah over it just made it more special. 

Now I handed it off to Felix to figure out the framing...but I think I'm going to help him pick out a frame first, or it'll never happen!

The Waterflow Sweater

As a little side note in between more recent updates, I wanted to show you something I finished much earlier this year, in April to be exact. I never managed to get a good picture of it as it was always too warm to wear it, but now it's cooling downit's finally time to shine for my Waterflow Sweater!

I just love asymetrical sweaters, so when I saw this pattern on Hobbii, I knew I wanted to make it. Then the yarn (which is a gorgeously shiny viscose/wool mix) was on a really good sale last winter, so I treated myself and started this around new year. I worked on it ins purts here and there and finally finished it all about four months later. And now I get to wear it and am very happy with it!

September WIPocalypse

Can you believe we're into the last quarter of the year already? Time sure is flying! I had a wonderful stitching September, not least of all thanks to Stitch Basel, which I attended with two of my very good online stitching friends, and had a blast! My stitchy bug had been super charged ever since, and I will have some progress and finishes (and new starts!) to show very soon! For now, though, it's time for WIPocalypse, and I am a little sad to report that over all the other stitchy endeavours, I didn't find time to work on The Loneliness of Autumn in September. I hope to make up for that soon! So today, I will only talk about the question of the month as well as the currently running focus challenge.

For the question of the month - How did you learn to stitch? I must have been about seven or eight years old, and we did at little embroidery at school. I think we embroidered tote bags with perle floss and little stars. I really enjoyed the process and my grandma, ever supportive of my crafty endeavours, got me a printed cross stitch breadcloth and pink perle floss, and after I finished that, for summer vacation, I got a cross stitch book and some aida fabric and Anchor floss and that kept me busy the whole vacation. My grandma didn't stitch, so other than what I did at school, I pretty much taught myself from that book!

For WIPocalypse, October is a focus month challenge, so we pick a project and try and work on it a little each day. Traditionally, I pick my oldest WIP for this, and if you've been reading along for a while, you might recall that I got one more really old table cloth from my very early stitching days. This one had a little more stiching than the last two, so I kept it until now. It looks like this - times four:

Ideally, I'd like to finish this side, so I can try and do one side during each focus month from now on, but I find it hard to estimate the number of stitches and now my progress will be slow on the printed fabric, so I'm not sure yet if it will be feasible. We will see at the October checkin how much I got done!