Japanese Moss Garden - 20 Hours

Currently I am in a mood to stitch and work on everything at once, so progress is very spread out - which, in this case, leads to two updates on one day!

Remember my big bucket list Chatelaine that I started in February? It was going really slowly, since I hadn't worked out a good system yet to mark of what I had done, and I was scared to misscount so everything was double and triple checked. Then, a couple weeks ago, I decided I needed to work out a way to do this, or with a project this size I'd never get anywhere! 

After some tinkering, I actually managed to get the first part into pattern keeper. I can't search for symbols and it's pretty pixalated, but I can see where I am and mark off what I've done, and that's the important bit! Ever since then, it's going much easier and quicker and I'm back to wok on this almost every weekend.

In the last ten hours, I only managed to nish one and a half colours of cross stitch in this 'layer' of the mandala, but now that I got this foundation in I think I can fill it in a lot more quickly.

And with all the silks and hand dyeds, every new colour feels like a new adventure. It's a lot of fun now I got the chart under control!
 

Red Riding Hood - 20 Hours

It's been a while since I worked on Red, but her one year anniversary is coming up and I thought it was a shame there still was no actual red in there, so I went ahead and added the moon, stars, and started on the girl herself. I also did a fair amount more on the big bad wolf and I'm almost done with the upper part of him (there's a tail further down, but it's not quite as chunky as his head).

This is a lot more fun now that there is more to see and do than just blobs of black, so I might get back to her sooner! I ordered the grays I need to finish her face (some of the 'newer' DMC colours) and might do that once they arrive.

July WIPocalypse

So just before July is up, I'm actually dropping in with my WIPocalypse post. I mean, *before* the month is over. Just wanted to draw a little attention to that. Almost like I'm organized or something!

The question of the month is What are the fully finished pieces (framed or other finish style) that you are most satisfied that you have done? Great question! And I know just the pieces to answer with. That would be the Guardian of Wayfarers I finished last year and that we framed with a gorgeous round mat, Theresa Wentzler's The Mermaid, which we framed for my dad's 60th birthday a couple years ago, and Fire and Ember, my first real full coverage finish from...ten-ish years ago. All three of these I am still really proud of, both the stitching, the frames we picked, and Felix for framing them!

 

But now for some newer stitching! July was the second month of the two month 'One a day' challenge this summer, and I've been really good working on my oldest WIP, the blue tablecloth. I managed to finish the second side and make a start on the third. There will be one last challenge month in October, so I will be nicely set up for a finish next year! 

 To be honest, it was fun to work on this for a bit, but I'm still not a fan of printed cross stitch and will happily put it away for the next two months!

 This will give me a little more time to focus on The Loneliness of Autumn. This month I put in another ~1k stitches and got up to 94.02%. Close to a new page finish too, but didn't quite make it. Next month, though!

 

Poison Garden Part 6-8 (& cheating at July Smalls SAL)

Despite having actual plans to do some Christmas in July ornament stitching this month, I got too caught up in other projects and haven't stitched anything particularly small yet...so I thought, instead of doing a mad dash to start and finish something extra quick and small now, I'm going to do a little shoe horning! Because I have been working on my Poison Garden stitching book, and each of these pages is pretty small...you see where I am going with this? 

Since the last time I posted an update on this project, I finished three more pages. One is the legend to the plant anatomy sketch I showed in my last post, but the other two are actual plant pages and, if I may say so, very pretty, especially the vibrant bleeding heart!

 There's one more page released so far, and an other one coming out on Thursday, so I am still a little bit behind actually, but I am not very worried as these are pretty quick stitches. I won't finish quite in time with the releases, but I will get there, and now that I know I can actually handle finishing these books, I am extra-motivated to work on this one as well!

 

Introducing the Cup-ybara

We had a week off work today, and as we were traveling for a couple day (visiting a bunch of different friends and family members - busy, busy!) I wanted a new, travel friendly project. And there actually was a project that I had been eyeing for a while, so I went to play with some of my fabrics, found a perfect one, pulled the threads and away we went! Both in the stitching and in the actually going away sense. 

The pattern is is Capybara Tea Time by the wonderful NeedleLotDesign (seriously, I am slightly obsessed with her pattern style...her animals are GORGEOUS and I want to stitch them all!) or, as I like to call it, the Cupybara. Because it's a capybara in a cup!

I'm stitching this on 32ct Fireside Embers by Jodry Designs (which was a limited edition Christmas fabric some years ago but is an almost perfect match to the model and a really nice colour for this I think). And here is ten hours worth of stitching which is more than 30% of the pattern already, these are not very big! 

 

Very fun to stitch and I love how the shading is turning out with just a hand full of different shades of brown. I'm sure I'll get back to this one soon, I was enjoying stitching this so much!

July Gifted Gorgeousness

It's a two-for-one day as I am trying to get caught up on some blogging (and other stuff) before going back to work on Monday. I know, it's an endless circle! But here's my July entry for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness, one of my favourite SALs out there!

Last time I was almost done with the blanket for my new little niece, and now I managed to finish it, well in time before we went to visit her and her parents last week. Although it came back home with me, as they are currently dealing with a bit of a bug infestation and not sure how much of their stuff they can salvage, so the blanket will go back to them once that's cleared out.

 Now after finishing this I actually wanted to start on one of two smaller gift projects...but I just couldn't bring up the mental energy so sort out the pattern and yarn, so instead I dove right into my next blanket because I had decided on a pattern and ordered pretty yarn, so everything was set. Yes that's right, my sister in law is pregnant again, so I'm aking another blanket!

 This is "A Spicier Life", the companion design for the "Spice of Life" blanket I made for her firstborn. I'm loosely following the pattern, using my own colours (this neutral brown and a bright rainbow of colours) and sometimes adjusting the repeats of each section to keep it nice and balanced. So far so good - this is part 1 (of 6, but I think some will be repeated to get the required length). It will take a while to finish but is lots of fun to work on, and just the variation I need after the pretty but repetetive knit blanket!

 

July Fully Finished Gallery - The Book of Fungi

I haven't seen a link up post for the July Fully Finished Gorgeousness yet, but my inner blogging rhythm tells me to get this post up before the 20th, so that's what I'll do! Besides, I had a big finish-finish today, and want to brag a little.

Over the last couple months, I've been steadily working on the (quite involved) finishing instructions for the Book of Fungi by LivingOnTheRainbow, and I did it! It's not perfect, but I won't even go around pointing out all of the flaws, because I am overall very happy with the result. I got a couple pointers and lessons learned for the next one I make, but for now, here it is in all it's glory:

 

Isn't it cute? I love the little mushroom charim that came with the finishing kit, and these little metal book corners just round it up so well. 

The book contains 8 (or 4, depending on how you want to look at it) pages of mushrooms. It was a joy to stitch and a fun challenge to assemble.

 

I'm currently working on the next book, Poison Garden, and hope to finish that one more quickly, so maybe we'll see another one this year!

June WIPocalypse - Half-year recap

We are officially past the half-year mark now, and very fittingly, the topic for Measi's WIPocalypse this month is Half-year recap:  How are you doing with your goals so far this year? Well, I think I'm doing well, but not necessarily on my goals for the year! Although my one big goal was to finish The Lonliness of Autumn, and I'm doing okay on this one. I did over 7k stitches of the 15k still remaining when I started the year, so despite being distracted by other things, I'm pretty much on track to getting this done. Other than that my goals mostly were to have fun and stitch, and that's working out great! 

So here is the candidate, got another 1k stitches and a new page finish in in June:

 

That brings me to 93.18% done now in total, and, as I said, just about 8k stitches left to go! Let's do this!

The other things was the one-a-day challenge that is going on through June and July. I've been working on my oldest WIP, the blue but otherwise nameless tablecloth.

I've been averaging a length a day on this one and I think during this second half of the challenge in July I should be able to finish the second side, which would bring me over half way done and nicely on track to finish this next year. One stitch at a time!

June Smalls SAL

As I was very caught up in some bigger projects throughout June, the Smalls SAL snuck up on me a bit, and suddenly I had to figure out what to stitch for this! So I went digging in my stash and pulled out this littly kit I purchased in Japan a couple years ago. It's a cover for a small pack of tissues and came pre-finished, I just had to add on the ambroidery, which is mostly backstitch and lazy daisies. 

 

It stitched up super quickly and I like how it turned out. That I don't have to worry about finish-finishing this is a big plus!

Poison Garden, Part 2-5

Wow, I've been busy stitchng, but totally forgot to post any updates on this! I managed to mostly stay caught up with the Poison Garden SAL, which means I finished the front- and back cover in two weeks each:

 

This is the most stitch-heavy part of the design by far, from now, it's just a couple hundred stitches per page, with one page releasing every week. So far, three pages have been released, and I stitched two of them - a personalized title page with the cutest little froggy:

 And this diagram of the anatomy of plants:

 

Things have been busy around here, so I am not getting a lot more stitching done than this, but I'm doing my best to not fall behind!

June Gifted Gorgeousness

Hello friends! I am pretty late to the party this month...I overconfidentally thought I would be able to finish my blanket this month. But it's way too hot to be sitting untder a 500g+ woolen blanket while working on it! So I'm only really knitting on this during my lunch breaks at work (were we got temperature control) and I had to run errands during my break most of the last week, so while I am really close, I'm not quite done yet.

Just 10 rows of pattern left to go, then 12 rows of border and the bind off. To put that into context, I am currently 297 rows in!

 

So the plan now is to finish this, then work on two smaller gifts, but also probably start the next blanket, because did I mention my sister in law is pregnant again? No rest for the crafters!

June Fully Finished Gallery

Well hello again! It's been a while...June has been terribly busy so far, and even though most of the things are good (except for work...which is not bad per se, there is just a lot of it!), they all eat time and energy and everything seems to take me forever! We finally had a day off today, and among other things (like catching up on sleep and just relaxing) I used it to finish-finish my Edelweis Forever biscornu! Just a simple whip stitch, but it turned out really pretty, and it gives me something to link up with Rachel for her Fully Finished Gallery.

 

It looks like weird lighting in this picture, but there actually is a weird pale spot on that back right corner. I gave my stitching a little wash before finishing it - which I often do - and the fabric just bled out in a couple small spots. It's weird because I know about hand dyed fabric bleeding (and potentially staining the floss and other things in the water), but I hadn't seen it actually lose its own colour like this! It's not very noticable finished like this, and won't be visible when I put it in the decorative bowl with my other biscornu, but it still surprised me.

May Smalls SAL

I am still pretty hooked on the Poison Garden SAL, but I made some time to stitch up a Small in May to link up with Rachel's Smalls SAL. 

 

This is the back of the Edelweiss Forever Biscornu that was a retreat pattern at Stitch Basel 2023. I stitched up the front back in March, now I just need to do the biscornu construction - can you guess when I'm going to show that? ;) 

May WIPocalypse

Another month has gone by and wow, the year is really gaining momentum now! I really have to carefully look back to see where the weeks and months went. But so far, I had a good month, lots of fun with family and friends and a chill long weekend in progress - what could be better?

For Measi's WIPocalypse SAL, the question his month is How do you personally distinguish between a Work in Progress (WIP) and an Unfinished Object (UFO)?Personally, I really don't. Everything I started is a WIP, until I finish. I don't deal well with unfinished business so if I really want to abandon a project, I need to frog it/throw it away to really be done-done with it.

For stitching progress, this month was about the opposite of last month - I didn't get a page finish, but added a decent amount of stitches, from 91.13% to 92.39%, so about 1500 stitches. Most colours had a decent amount of stitches so progress was reasonably fast, and look at how pretty these blues are!

Hopefully, next month I will get another page, there's not that much to go on this one now.

June and July will also be the next 'one a day' challenge of WIPocalypse, when we are challenged to pick a WIP and add at least one stitch every day. I think I'll be good and pick up my blue tablecloth again. This is how it looked after the last event in March:

I hope that by working on this throughout June and July, I should be able to finish one more side and make a dent into a third one, so push this comfortably past the halfway mark. We'll see, though!

May Gifted Gorgeousness

Usually I have plenty of gift projects on the go fir Jo's Gifted Gorgeouness, the one stop SAL for all things gifted and giftee, but currently, I am focusing on only one - the blanket I am knitting for my second niece. We'll be visiting them most likely in July, and to finish the blanket by then I need to knit 3.5 rows every day, and by doing so, I am seeing steady progress!

 

I know it's not very exciting, but it's very satisfying to see the blanket grow a little every week, and I am almost halfway done now.

May Fully Finished Gallery

In terms of finish-finishes this month, I got one that's a couple months old, and one that isn't quite there...which kind of averages out to one new finish-finish, no?

So, here are my entries for Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery SAL this month: 

Back in December, we framed Guardian of Wayfarers to give to a friend. I forgot to get a proper picture before giving it to him, but he's now put it on his wall and send me this picture:

 

We special ordered the round mat and interestingly found out the stitching wasn't exactly round - either this evenweave isn't perfectly even, or it's been pulled out of shape while stitching. The difference was pretty minimal so and I think it still turned out great!

The 'not quite done' one is the Book of Fungi SAL. There are lots of instructions to turn the stitching into a really little book, and I am almost done with the cover now:

 It's a lot of work but I love how it's turning out! Hopefully, this time next month, it'll be all done.

Poison Garden, Part 1

So...do you remember last year, when I got totally obesses with the Book of Fungi SAL, to the point where I put all my other stitching obligations aside and worked on nothing else for a couple weeks? Well...it's happened again! Only this time I was kind of prepared and didn't have a to of other obligations to begin with. The new book SAL by LivingOnTheRainbow, the Poison Garden, started three weeks ago, I signed up, and stitched the first part of the cover as soon as it came out. Took me about two weeks, so I even had a little free time before the second part dropped today! Let's see if I can keep up.

 

In case you are wondering wha happened to the Book of Fungi...well, it's all stitched up, finished shortly before the new SAL started. But the process of finish-finishing it is somewhat involved, so it might take a little longer. I know I dropped to ball blogging about that one, so I'm trying to do better with the new SAL!

April WIPocalypse

 As I started out May with a well deserved (I hope) mini vacation to Berlin, I am once again woefully behind on my blog, but as you know, I am trying to no longer apologize for that, and just take things as they come...so here you go, this is not an apology, just an explanation! We had a wonderful time, visiting my best friend, going to a concert (any Miracle of Sound fans around?), seeing the panda twins at the zoo, eating some good food and having tons of fun in general.

Now I'm back and ready to post my check in for the April WIPocalypse! The question of the month being Let’s talk fabric – what is your go-to fabric dyer, your preferred type, count, color, etc? 

My favourite dyer currently is Jucus from xJuDesign in Hungary. She dyes wonderfully vibrant colour in a wide variety of fabrics and counts, and she's super nice and easy going to work with if you got any custom orders.
In terms of fabric types, I don't mind any type really, but my favourite is even weave. I used to be very firm in that 32ct is my go to, but I lately started some pieces on 40ct Verdal and that is so much fun to stitch on as well, so I guess it's a tie between these too! Colourwise, I use a wide variety of fabrics. There's something about just a simple, crips, white evenweave, but I also love really strong, vibrant colours, or a pretty neutral - it all depends on the project!

Now stitching wise, this is where every month I show my progress on The Loneliness of Autumn. I still think I can finish it this year, although April has been a slow month. I did finish three pages (two full pages and a tiny slice of a partial page), but they were very confetti heavy so I only went from 90.55% to 91.13%, so I added only about 700 stitches. The next page has some nice bigger chunks of colour though...now if only I would stop getting distracted by other projects, I could make some real progress here!

This is not the page I am currently working on, but the ones I finished because I want to show them off before working on:

 

April Smalls SAL

For the April edition of the Smalls SAL, hosted by the wonderful Rachel, I bring you something really fun. There's this person (I think it's a lady, but you know what they say about assuming!) called poignetamour who makes really elaborate cross stitch animations. They design a little animation in 100+ frame ands and then everyone who participates gets to stitch up one frame and send in a photo. Check them out, it's really cool! I signed up for the current project with is called planstar, and last weekend finally stitched up my entry. Now I got until June to take a proper (maybe a little fancy) picture of it.

 I think I got very lucky with this frame as it also looks cute on it's own, some people got the star all from the side and that looks a bit weird out of context! Anyways, I am excited to be a part of this, and will try and remember to link you the result when it's out.

Things Unseen - Part 1

After a bunch of SAL checkins, here we got a regular progress post for once - hooray! This is a piece that last came out for for WIPGO last year and I realized I really enjoy working on it. It also makes a decent travel project, as it's fairly easy and all kitted up with a limited number of hand dyed threads, so it's easy to carry around.

Things Unseen was originally released as a 3 part SAL. I started stitching late so worked across parts 1 and 2 simulatnously, because I didn't want the lines of text to be split, but now I'm working on the middle section with all the different motifs, I focused on finishing the first part, including working the border down far enough.

The four flowers besides 'touched' and the bird already belong to part 2, and then part 3 will be across the bottom, full width. I plan to bring this on a couple more trips this year and hopefully finish part 2 as well. It's stitching up fairly quickly so I don't see why not!

April Gifted Gorgeousness

So, you know how Gifted Gorgeousness is one of my favourite SALs, because I'm always off making gifts of some kind? Well, sometimes I over do it, but sometimes, it's worth it!

April was a perfect storm for gift making. We made more or less spontanous plans to meet an old friend we hadn't seen in years and his wife and kid we'd never met before (we originally planned to meet them in June, but plans changed, as they do). The little one is just about six months old, so of course I had to making him a little ragdoll, and due to some running gags we got it had to be a little piggie - and isn't she a cutie?

 

Then we went to spend Easter weekend in Felix' old homevillage, and Saturday evening were invited for game night with some friends who had a child last November that I also hadn't made a gift for yet. The little guys sister got a dog ragdoll when she was born, so he got one too - a little pug for a baby boy!

 Finally, we spent Easter Sunday with Felix' extended family at his grandma's place. I already showed you the mini-birthdampler I made for her, but there was also his youngest grandcousin - she's almost a year old now, and I had planned to give her this gift when we last met her on Christmas, but I got too busy with Christmas gifts so it kind of fell of the table. So Easter it was, and here is Lupo the lamb!

 He got stolen by the little girl's sister for a while (who apparently is a big fan of me now) but when they got home she remembered she already got the matching fox, so now each animal is with the right little girl, and I'm one step closer to being caught up with baby gifts! Not quite there yet...but closer! For now, I think I'll spend the next month focusing on the blanket for my second niece, as we want to visit her in July.

April Fully Finished Gallery

This month for Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery, I have one object, and that feels like a bit of a cheat - I stitched up another one of my mini flower birth samplers, and then had Felix frame it!

At least it was a new flowers this time, that is, one I hadn't stitched before - as my second niece was born this March, here we have a daffodil!

Sorry for the short post - it's been a busy month so far. Will be back with more craftng and longer writing soon!

March WIPocalypse

Here we go for the March installment of Measi's long running WIPocalypse SAL. I'm a little late this month but we are going to ignore that and jump right in! 

The question if the month is Which are your favorite three designers? It's so hard to pick just three! There are so many great designers out there. Some everyone knows, and I do have a fondness for the 'big ones', like Teresa Wentzler, Joan Eliott, Mirabilia or Durene Jones. I constantly discover new ones too. But I think this time for my favourite, I will pick designers that not only do gorgeous design work, but I've also had great personal interactions with!

In third place, there is Jody Ellis from UnconventionalXStitch. She dropped to third place only because I pretty much reached saturation on how many full coverage patterns I own, but she is by far still the best designer I know for these, and a lovely person too! She's still rebuilding her physical inventory after a fire last year, so if you are in the market for some great full coverage patterns, go check her out.

In second place, a newer addition to the list, is Olena from LivingOnTheRainbow. She does very fun and cute patterns, often with interesting 3D finishing constructions - probably best known are her little books of stuff, but she also does mittens, little caravans, houses, potion bottles...really fun! I don't know her as well as the others either, but I've had some interactions with her on Instagram and she seems like a lovely person.

Top of my list, for various reasons, has to by my good friend Ashley from Make It Pink! We've been friends for years, she does such amazingly detailed patterns. Best known for her Hannah Alexander Much-Style princesses, she's recently gained some traction and signed up a couple more artists, newest and most exciting being Karen Hallion. She also just started a Flosstube if anyone is interested in checking that out!

Now to my own stitching, coincidentally, not by any of those designers, haha! Every month I share my progress on The Loneliness of Autumn by Love Thy Thread. It felt like I didn't make a lot of progress in March, but I did go from 89.35% to 90.55%, which means I must have added about 1400 stitches! I also had another page finish, and while this one is being confetti-y, I'm getting close!

 

March was also the first one-a-day challenge of the year, and I picked my blue tablecloth, currently my oldest WIP. After not really feeling it in the beginning of the month, it went really well after a while, adding a full length or more most days. I managed to finish one of the four sides, and made a little start on the next one. This might not be finished this year, but if I can pick it up for the other four challenges this year, I should at least to the halfway point! It will be good to get this one out of the stash eventually.

 

March Smalls SAL

This month, I am linking up to the Smalls SAL, hosted by Rachel, with a piece that was driving me crazy for months, before I even started it! So story time first.

Edelweiss Forever was one of the kits we received as part of our goodie bags for Stitch Basel 2023. This and another kit share the same special dyed silk floss from xJu Design. I didn't start them right away, but some people did, and I started hearing from people who ran out of the special colour way. So I messaged Jucus (the dyer) and she was amazing to offer to send me another floss set for free! Problem solved! Except the whole process of messaging her and her mailing the floss fom Hungary took a while, and when I went to put the extra floss with the original kit...I couldn't find it. It wasn't with my other Stitch Basel stuff, or in my box of kits, or with the patterns. I reorganized half my stash looking for it, but nothing! It was driving me crazy. Until, just over a week ago, inspiration struck and I checked my back travel backback I hadn't used in some time, and there it was. Apparently I had packed this as an 'emergency start' for some trip or other, but just never unpacked it! The pattern got a little wrinkly in the process, but I don't care. I had to start this right away (it was my birthday start, in fact) and have since finished the front of this biscornu pattern:

 This is 'Edelweiss Forever' by Vintage Tulip designs, stitched on the kitted floss (the special Stitch Basel Color and Blanc silk) and fabric (Rustic Driftwood) by xJu Design. This is the front, the back will have similar motifs, but is a lot simpler, so I hope I can get this fully stitched and finished soon. It's super pretty and very fun to stitch, and I think it was worth all the hassle of looking for it. Freshly sorted stash is a bonus, too!

Japanese Moss Garden - 10 Hours

To celebrate successfully defending my thesis last November, I treated myself (well, and my grandma sponsored me) by kitting up my first Chatelaine, something I've wanted to do for years! I had decided on a pattern a long time ago - Japanese Moss Garden. So I bought the pattern, I made good use of a Black Friday sale at Casa Cenia to order most of the specialty floss at 25% off, and I commissioned a a big enough piece of hand dyed fabric from xJu Design. It took a while for everything to get here, and then I was intimidated for a bit, but in mid February I finally bit the bullet and started stitching! 

I'm working on this very slowly, but really enjoying it - trying to get in a couple stitches every weekend. Ten hours in, I finished the inner-most medaillon (except for beads, which will cover all the blank spaces) and outlined the next layer. I hope to finish part 1 this year, but if I don't, I don't - no set schedule on this one! 

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.