March Gifted Gorgeousness

It's time for one of my favourite SALs again, hosted by the wonderful Jo and focused on all things gifted and giftee! 

I am, once again, busy making gifts for all the babies in my life. I haven't managed to finish any recently, but two new starts to report progress on!

One is a blanket I started for my new niece, born to Felix' brother and his wife, just over a week ago. It's a simple reversible knitting pattern (so it looks good from both sides) in 'sage green' - the yarn looks very gray most of the time but in this picture I was, apparently, able to capture it in the perfect light to show it's actually green-ish. This is just 1 1/2 of a total of 8 1/2 repeats of the pattern, so plenty left to go!

 

The other one is Lupo the Lamb from lalylala for the newest of Felix' cousins babies (who turns one in May - I better hurry up!). I did Fibi Fox by the same designer for her sister a couple of years ago.

I only finished the main part - that is legs, body and head - so far, so he's still missing his arms and the hood with the ears. I'm trying to get him done by Easter, so plenty of time!

 

Red Riding Hood - 10 Hours

I know it looks like I'm having a lot of new starts lately, but this one was actually started last September, I just didn't work on it a lot back then! I was meeting up with my friends Sam and Giselle for the Stitch Basel retreat, and we were talking about having a new start together, but we couldn't settle on a pattern - until The Witchy Stitcher came out with the Red Riding Hood pattern and we all fell in love with her! I bought a new piece of fabric from xJu Design, a gorgeous 40ct Evenleave. I think the colour is called 'Old Linen'. It's a big piece, so when there are any more releases in the Grim Fairytales series that I like, I'll be ready!

So my first ten hours of stitching were mostly focused on the big bad wolf, so LOTS of black! But it stitches up quickly and I'm already more than 23% done.

 As it's a 40ct, I'm stitching with one thread of DMC, and the coverage on the black isn't perfect, but it actually looks better in person than in pictures, and I'm happy with it. I think next time I pick it up, I'm going to work a bit on Red herself!

March Fully Finished Gallery

This month for Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery, I finished stitching, then finish-finished Hetty the Hedgehog that I introduced in my last smalls post.

After finishing stitching the second side, I deviated a little from the finishing instructions in the magazine. I didn't want to draw on the fabric, so I freehanded her face, which worked...let's say half decent. Her nose/snout turned out a little more pointy than intended, but then I also didn't have quite as much fabric to work with as I wanted (the instructions said to leave 1cm of a seam edge all around her...well...even though I almost perfectly centered my stitching on the fabric, there wasn't even quite 1cm of empty fabric arond her nose and backside!).

Either way, I ended up redoing her face a couple times until I was content, then I stuffed her and sewed the green felt to the bottom - that part, although free handed as well, turned out really nicely! The little beady nose and those darling leaf pins were a great detail to add, and overall, for a free kit that came with a magazone, I can't complain about this one!

 

SAGA - 30 Hours

It's been a while since I showed my progress on Long Dog Sampler's SAGA which I started at stitch Basel last September, although for much of last winter, I was pretty obsessed with it. I had that grand plan that I'd only show it here whenever I finished one of the arches, but the one I am currently working on already took me almost 20 hours - and this is the second smallest size! It is almost done now, but if I waited until the next one is done, I probably wouldn't be able to show another updates this year - so switching to ten hours chunks of stitching it is!

The arch itself is only the half-arch with the house, the second arch with the column/tower/?? is part of the 'grid' that is repeating for all the arches in one row. The next arch down the side is one of my favourites, but it's also where the sampler is supposed to be dated - and even though the pattern already reads '2027', I don't dare put that in yet! So I'll have to get creative about leaving it out and remembering to fill it in later.

 This is just 4.64% of the design, but already over 4.8k stitches! 

February Smalls SAL

Linking up with Rachel the Ten Hour Stitcher for the February edition of her Smalls SAL!

I swear I've had my entry for this SAL ready for a week, and yet here I am, posting it way late again...my blogging discipline is starting to slip again, but here we are at last! Someone, I think it was Jo, gave me the idea to pick up some of those small kits that come with cross stitch magazines, as I have several of those in my stash. I had wanted to stitch this one for ages, but as it has two seperate sides to stitch, it was always just a little big too big for when I needed a quick, small finish. Now I'm working on it during my Pen&Paper groups and progressing reasonably quickly.

This is Hetty Hedgehog from Cross Stitcher Issue 291:

As you can see, I finished one side and made a good start on the other. Hopefully, she'll be finished soon! She's very cute but I strongly dislike the floss that came with this kit. The lengths are cut WAY too short for my tastes, and I think it's 100% plastic. But it stitches up nicely enough, so I didn't bother swapping it out for such a small kit.

Possibilities - 50 Hours

This is Possibilities/Eveelutions, my currently one and only WIP by Heaven and Earth Designs. It's massive, almost 400k stitches, and at this point, I have come to terms with the fact that it is unlikely I will ever actually finish it, despute the fact I'm working this in tent stitch. However, I still love the design and enjoy working on it from time to time. It's just so fun to see the design come out of these many, many tiny stitches! So recently, I added another 50 hours, and here we are.

 

I am well into page 2 and after a LOT of confetti in the section where colours changed from green to blue, I'm now firmly into the blues, where I can stitch a good chunk with each colour I pick up, so it feels like decent progress. I can already *almost* make out Glaciana's face, and hope to pick this up one more time this year!

February WIPocalypse & my SALs for 2025

Happy February-almost-March! Time for the monthly WIPocalypse check in, and look at that, I almost made it on time this month. February was again a month that felt very long and very short at the same time, but either way, I got a good chunk of work done, so I won't be complaining! I also managed to publish my thesis so am officially a 'Dr.' now, so that's something worth celebrating (and celebrate I'll did...more to that later).

Anyway, for WIPocalypse, we have three things to talk about today, so let's get into it! First for the question of the month: What stitch-a-longs (SALs) are you participating in this year? Well, I'll assume we are talking about blog SALs, like the WIPocalypse itself. I'm just doing my usual this year, minus the WIPGO that I tried in 2024, but didn't work for me so great. Might give it another chance, but not his year! So for now we got

• Measi's WIPocalypse (duh)
• Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness
• Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery
• Rachel's Smalls SAL 

Now this is the place where I share my monthly progress on The Loneliness of Autumn - originally also a SAL with Rachel, but as we've drifted a bit apart, I'm now just going at my own pace and aiming for a finish this year! In February, I added about 1600 stitches, which was a little over 1% - new totals being 89.35% and 106,145/118,800 stitches done, and close to yet another page finish!

 

And last but not least, we got another WIPocalypse one-a-day challenge coming up in March! This is when we pick a project to put in one stitch every day during the month, and hope the one stitch will lead to more. Traditionally, I nominate my oldest WIP for this, which currently is the last of my printed tablecloth kits:

I'm not super feeling this right now, but will still try to add just a couple stitches every day to get this moving! Getting this side done would be amazing, but every stitch counts.
 

February Gifted Gorgeousness

Welcome back to my February entry to Jo's one way stop for all things gifted or giftee! And look, only one week late this month too! After a short-ish break for Christmas presents, I'm back to making gifts for all the babies in my life. Some of them are getting close to one year old already...good thing I'm making them all cuddly toys and not clothes!

This one I had actually started quite some time ago before getting side tracked, so it didn't take all that long to finish her. It's a mouse doll for one of Felix' music friends, who became a first time dad some time lat fall.

 I think at this point, I got three toys and one blanket in the pipeline, so not running out of stuff to make anytime soon...but it would be nice to be caught up again, so I can't slack off!

Queen of the Pirates - 10 Hours

Lately, I've been in a bit of a mood to just start things I've had for some time instead of saving them forever. Even if that leaves me with a couple more WIPs than I've been known to be comfortable with, what difference does it make whether it's a WIP or just sitting in my stash?

One of those projects was Queen of the Pirates, or Pirate Lady, as I lovingly call her. I've had this pattern custom made from some artwork on deviantArt that was used in one of my favourite songs on Youtube at the time. In case you are wondering, I did ask the artest for permission, which I got, but they have since deactivated their account on devianArt, so I can't link to the original artwork. The pattern was charted by the wonderful Ashley from Make it Pink, I loved it, and...just never got around to it. I even found the perfect fabric and got all the floss! 

Well, in December I finally decided this was going to get started, NOW. I got side tracked a bit with my crazy Christmas present project, but have lately picked her back up and here we are, 10 hours in.

As you can see, I started right with the most important part - her face! And it's stitching up really nicely, I'm always impressed by how smooth Ashley's use of fractional stitches makes her patterns.

So as this is a one of a kind project, here's the pattern mockup to give you an idea of where we are at. I'll try and work my way up next and then I am pretty tempted by that parrot!

I am actually really enjoying working on her, so you might see her again soon-ish...but there might well be a couple more projects coming up in the near future!
 

February Fully Finished Gallery

For February, I stitched and finish-finished two quick smalls - an evening of stitching each, and an afternoon to finish both of them into Valentine's cards!

This is the one I made for Felix - it's a freebie from Cottage Garden Samplings. It's designed in two colours, but I opted to do it all in one overdyed (a gorgeous red from xJu Design) and using gold as an accent just for the little heart.

I then cut red card, made a cut out in the right size and shape, and glued my stitching in by sandwiching it with another piece of card from the back.

 

The second card was for my best friend. It's a tiny freebie from Frosted Pumpkin stitchery (I don't think it's online, though...I picked it up from the freebie table at a retreat, it looks like a post card that comes with a purchase or something). I stitched it on some left over fabric, then just cut it to size and glued it on a card. Added some text and stickers and voilá.

 I was glad to stitch both of these patterns that I've been meaning to get to for a while, and to bring them to good use too!

January Smalls SAL

Welcome to the January entry for the Smalls SAL, hosted over at Rachel's this year. I don't have any plany to stitch something especially for this every month, because that didn't quite work out last year, but if I got something that fits, I'll happily post it!

In January I had a start that is pushing the envelope a bit for 'small' - it's 73x120 stitches and as I'm stitching it on 28ct over 2, it feels huge! But I'm still going to count it.

This is the January installment of the Year of the Hare SAL that was published by Stitchers Anon some years ago, when she was still around. I didn't have any plans of starting this SAL this year suddenly found it calling my name, so who am I to deny it!

I'm going to stitch this as four seperate panels of three patterns each, which is the way it was originally designed. I don't have any illusions of stitching a part of this every month, but I'd like to finish the first panel this year, if possible! So you might be seeing sweet Holmsey Hare again in the coming months.

January WIPocalypse & my oldest WIP

January is almost over (when did THAT happen?!), and so far, 2025 has...been a bit of a challenge. My grandma spent a week in the hospital (she's back home and fine, thank heavens), which in turn messed up my work schedule a lot and I'm still catching up on stuff. My husband went to a concert last week and came back with a bit of a respitory bug so now we are just hoping me and grandma won't catch it. Otherwise, things have been great! I got a bit of decent crafting in, had a couple great gaming nights with friends, and got some stuff crossed off my todo list! I've also done a lot better keeping up with my blogging, as I hope you noticed. So, very mixed bag so far, and that is without counting everything else going on in the world!

So, despite my brain telling me the year only just started, it's already time for January WIPocalypse! The question Measi poses this month is Tell us about the oldest WIP you have in your stash. That would be the last of my printed table cloth kits. I don't know if it has an official name, I'm just calling it the Blue Tablecloth. Coincidentally, Measi has also be talking about the One-stitch-a-day challenge that she'll be holding in March, and traditionally I bring out my oldest WIPs for that, so you might see this again very soon!

Now I promised you this would be the place where I talk about The Loneliness of Autumn every month, and the progress I'm making towards a big finish this year! I actually picked it up again in January and added another ~1200 stitches, so we are up to 87.9% now. I even managed to get a page finish - that is page 13, if we're counting!

The next page also still has a lot of work to do, so I'm not sure I'll get it all filled in in February, but it's (almost) the last page that still has this much white space - after this, should be moving a lot quicker! Fingers crossed that's not just the optimism talking.

January Gifted Gorgeousness

It's still January, and here I go again, dragging out my posts just to finish 'one more thing'! I'll never learn, but at least I can sit down and finish the thing, which is what I did today. So hey, it's time for my checkin to one of my favourite SALs, Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness, the one stop SAL for all things gift and giftee! 

This month, I have a very interesting entry, as this is a gift, but not technically a gift from me - a friend of mine comissioned this to gift to another friend of hers, and I found the idea so cute I'm making it for free (so I guess it is a gift after all). So it's a gift to be gifted! 

It's a little highland cow - isn't he adorable? I offered to give him a bit of a trim, but my friend said she prefers the slightly shaggy look, so that how he'll stay. I think he turned out pretty nicely and hope her friend will like him as well once he gets delivered.

Two Sweaters in Progress

My grandma gave me some yarn for Christmas to knit myself a sweater. I cast this on on New Year's Day and have been working on it a little bit almost every day since, so it's steadily growing.

The pattern is by Portoguese knitware designer Maria Gomes and the yarn is Hobbii's Garland, a mix of cotton and alpaca - very light, very soft. This is knit in one piece from the neck down and after 12 hours of progress, I made it about 2/3rd between the neck and the point where the sleeves split from the body.

I thought this would be a fun way to also introduce you to another sweater I started a couple months ago (then abandoned in favour of Christmas knitting). That one I've had the yarn for for ages, but was to chicken to actually cast it on. I've done a lot of knitting the last two or three years, so I'm finally feeling ready for this kind of project! 

This one is knit in a very different yarn so it's going a LOT quicker. It's also worked from the bottom up, and after ten hours I made it to the point where the sleeves join the body, and halfway through the first sleeve.

It would be awesome to finish both of these this year, but I also got some more summery knitting and crochet plans, so will probably pack them away before it gets too warm out. Which is probably still at least two months off at this point!

Cirque des Cercles - 20 Hours

After doing some fulling in on TLoA earlier this month, I wanted some easy, confetti-less stitching for a change, so I picked up Cirque des Cercles by Inc Circles. This is one of those projects I have been terribly neglecting, I started it in late 2023 and LOVED it - yet I hadn't touched it since! I'm glad that changed now and I was able to put in a decent amount of stitches:

This is about 3500 stitches ot 17.66% done total, so it's actually moving along rather quickly! Next time I'll pick it up, I'll work to the lower border, so I can actually cut my fabric to size (it's almost twice as big as I'll need, currently).

January Fully Finished Gallery

As promised, I saved some of my stitchy Christmas present so I'd have something to show for Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery SAL this month and have at least one successful checkin this year! One I'm still waiting on a picture on (I stupidly gifted it away before taking a good picture, but the recipient promised to take one for me), but for today I got four stitched ornaments to share with you.

The first one is Toys and Tots, it's a Joan Elliott design I got via some charity group on facebook years ago and intended to stitch since then. As it turns out the charted colours were very different from the preview, so I basically changed out all of them, and really liked the result!  I did a simple finish using some cardboard and putting fabric on the back, then glueing some pretty ribbon along the edges:

Second was Golden Star, a freebie design by my friend Magical525, that I stitched up using my sparkliest metallic, and mounted to the top of a small jewelry box I kept for just a purpose as this:

I also stitched up too very small freebies by Sharon Christie, the Gingerbread Girl (which has a little message on the back for my niece's first Christmas) and Polar Bear Wreath. Both have been finished on cardboard with coloured cardboard in the back:

2025 WIPocalypse kick-off!

Hello everyone! This is - crazy as it sounds - my 12th year participating in Measi's low key all purpose SAL, they (in)famous WIPocalypse! Where we all stitch like it's the end of the world and have a ton of fun doing so.

Now I am known to love making big plans...not so much known for sticking to them (that would be Jo!). As I just talked about in my recent post on the end of 2024 WIPocalpyse, last year I made a lot of very specific plans, and while I enjoyed just working on those in the beginning, soon enough I became rather frustrated with them. So this year, I am doing things differently to not repeat this mistake (I'll probably do that in 2026, I tend to alternate between years of very heavy and very little planning!). 

There will only be one specific goal (getting to that in a moment) and otherwise I aim for a general...giving some love to WIPs, getting a couple finishes, and also starting and finishing some smaller or mid-sized projects. And posting a bit more regular instead of always holding up for that magical point when I have all the things done and dusted to show off!

Now for that one specific goal, some of you might already have guessed, it is, once again, The Loneliness of Autumn! Rachel and I started a SAL on this back in 2020, and both fell a little of the wagon (or we'd have already finished these, I think), but I'm getting close, oh so close! In fact, towards the end of December I picked this one up and thought I could get 'another quick page finish' in before the year was over. Well, about a week and almost two thousand stitches later, I had to admit to myself there wasn't going to be anything quick about this page finish, but after taking a little break, I'll be back for it!

As of today, this is 86.9% finished and needs another ~15k stitches to be done. I absolutely think that is possible to do this year, and I'll try to make it happen! To keep things a little more exciting, I will not be showing full pictures of the design now but only the area I'm working on at any given time. We'll just have to work and wait for that big reveal!

So that's the plan for the year. I'll also link up with Gifted Gorgeousness, Fully Finished Gallery and the Smalls SAL, where appropriate, but I might not have something relevant to show each and every month, and I'll be okay with that. At least I'll try to be!

Circle & Square

Before we properly start into 2025, I want to share with you one last finish from 2024. A good friend gave me a Schoppel Zauberball Crazy for Christmas, which is a very pretty, very colourful sock yarn, and I was looking for a good pattern for it. The colours were too pretty to just make socks from them, so I looked at beanies that would look good in crazy colours, and I came across the Circle & Square by Martina Behm/Strickmich. I mostly knit on this while we were visiting Felix' family and friends over the holiday, and actually had a finish by the time we got home on the 29th!

This has since become my new favourite hat. the colours are so nice and bright and perfect for the current sad gray outside, and the clever construction makes this not only pretty but also extremly comfy to wear (the fabric is laid double over the forhead and ears, and single layer in the back for that perfect slouch). I already have at least two more to make for Felix and his best friend who also loved the fit of this, and I think I want another one for myself as well, maybe somethign less crazy coloured. But it's a quick knit and a great use for some especially pretty sock yarn, so I don't mind making more of these!

December WIPocalypse - The end of 2024

Hi everyone, it's me! I debated for a while if I even wanted to post a 2024 recap after it felt like I failed misserably at all my goals starting in about October, but ultimatively I decided to do so before (hopefully) starting afresh for 2025. So let's do a little crafty soul searching about what went wrong and what went right in 2024 :)

I started the year with such grande plans - I had my WIPGO board and was very excited about participating for the first time, I was going to catch up on (and finish) The Loneliness of Autumn, and I was also going to stitch a small every month! Besides that, I had a lot of gift making to do, so my crafting time was basically all planned out.

Things started out relatively well and I was on track for the first couple of months, although I was starting to feel first signs of frustration as I had a series of projects picked for WIPGO that I either really loved or that were pretty close to a finish. WIPGO was supposed to let me pick up some of my neglected projects and see if I still love them, but most of them I just loved *too much* and was sad to have to put them away again so quickly! 

Then came May and brought the 'New Start' square on the board, and I started the Book of Funghi SAL. I really loved and enjoyed that one and for the first couple weeks even managed to stay caught up (in fact I stayed caught up until one part required a decision, which I stalled on). This caused me to miss a couple of my goals, and from this point on I felt permanently behind on everything, which added to the frustration.

I continued picking up (and putting away) projects I really wanted to stick with month after month - I had long given up on TLoA and the smalls in favour of just trying to get caught up with WIPGO) and then in September, StitchBasel happened. That brought to big changes - I finished Guardian of Wayfarers, which was the focus project on my WIPGO board, and a huge finish for me, and I started SAGA, which I instantly fell in love with. I think that was the point when I decided to give up on the SALs, focus on just stitching what I loved, and also getting a couple more of those gifts done!

And that's pretty much what I did for the rest of the year. I made some decent progress on SAGA, which I still need to show you, finished a ton of Christmas gifts, which I already have shown you, and dropped off the face on the blogging world. So in summary, what happened to my different 2024 goals?

1) Continue on TLoA with a slight possibility of a finish this year: I worked on this some, filled in a couple pages and added a grand total of ~5% to the project. Which is not nothing, but not even close to what I was hoping, either!

2) Joining the Smalls SAL - I was planning to stitch Little House Needleworks Sheep Virtues and only kept up until May. After that I still joined the SAL occasionally, but with different projects, mostly gifts I was working on. 

3) WIPGO - This one I wanted to complete the most, and also actually did the best on. I think I had only 3 or 4 unfinished squares at the end. But while not unsuccessful, as outlined above, this was also the source of a lot of stitching frustration this year!

For WIPocalypse, I had three projects picked out to work on - I finished the Meadow tablecloth (my oldest WIP) and The Guardian of Wayfarer and made some progress on  TLoA, which was the third. So I think except for a missed check in or two, I didn't totally fail this one!

On the whole, I am satisfied with the progress I made in 2024, but not totally happy with what I got there. So my plans for 2025 are a little different, and I will let you know about them soon-ish :)