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!