August Smalls SAL

Remember the little blotch of blue I showed for my failed July checkin to the Smalls SAL as hosted by our dear Rachel? Well, is is a blotch no more, and instead has been finishe into this lovely flower - it's July's Larkspur from a Flower of the Month sampler by Kooler Design Studios:

This is going to be a mini birth sampler for my little niece who was born this July, so I still need to chart and stitch her name and birthdate, but I'm going to blur those out when showing it online anyways, so might as well share it now! 

August WIPocalypse

Welcome to August WIPocalpyse, were we stitch as if it's the end of the world! I'm checking in with Measi the Geeky Witch, our host for this SAL for...basically ever (at least longer than I have my blog). The question of the month is Do you belong to any stitching groups or guilds (either in person or virtual)? If so, tell us about them. I don't belong to any organized groups or guilds, but have several seperate groups of stitching friends that have formed over the years. There is my original group from back when I started blogging and discovered the wonderful world of online stitching communities on deviantArt, but most of them are not all that active anymore online. katjykay still checks in with WIPocalypse semi-regularly though, and of course many of you know Ashley aka PinkyThePink!
I also consider our little bloggoverse here a group of stitching friends, namely the regulars who check in with Jo's SALs and bloghops throughout the year.
And lastely, my newest stitchy home is a group of stitchers from the 'Stitchy Quest to Destroy the one ring' facebook group that came together on Discord during the pandemic, when many of us felt lonely and isolated. It's not quite the same constallation as back then - some have left, some have joint in the years since - but we've become quite the tight knit group, and two of them will join me in real life for Stitch Basel this month!

As we are moving closer to autumn, naturally I start thinking about my stitching goals for the year, and what still seems reasonable to reach at this point. One of my big (hopeful, but not actuall important) goals for the year was to finish The Loneliness of Autumn, my regular WIPocalypse project. At this point I can say with confidence that is not going to happen; as I neglected it way too much throughout the year in favour of different goals - I still hope to make a little progress, but won't burn myself out trying to push for anything. In August, I managed another page finish (or actually two, but one was a partial page and barely ten stitches wide), and thus finished the second row of pages on this design. I was only missing some very scattered about stitches for this, so actually only did a little over a hundred stitches this month. Hopefully, the next row should bring some actual progress in stitch numbers, as there are a couple larger areas left to in, and not just confetti stitches!

 

My new total is 101,356/118,800 stitches, or 85.32%. Not much of a progress, but every stitch counts!

Measi has also reminded us that October will be a new One-Stitch-a-Day challenge, so I want to finalize my plans for that. As usual, I am torn between using the opportunity to really press for a finish (or progress) on a focus piece, or revive an old project that has been neglected for far too long. Currently, I am leaning towards focusing on Guardian of Wayfarers, which is getting awfully close to a finish - depending on my progress in September, focusing on this in October might mean a finish, and leave me free for other projects the last two months of the year...still pondering, though!

August Gifted Gorgeousness

Welcome to my monthly hey-I-am-late-again checkin for Jo's wonderful SAL for all things gifts and giftee! I am still hard at work making baby gifts, and this month I almost finished another ragdoll, allas, I first ran out of yarn and, once that was remedied, out of time! So all I got to show this month is a frog puzzle:

Hopefully, he will be assembled soon, so he and the monkey from last month can go to their new friends!

I'm also still working on the Spice of Life blanket, which now has a deadline to be done be October 19th...doable, but I need to hurry up a bit!

August Fully Finished Gallery

Due to an abundance of social obligations this month, I am way late for the check in on Rachel's blog, but still wanted to share my finish-finish with you this month. So to keep this short, without further ado:

I bought a frame for the little squirrel angel, washed and ironed it (there was a weird hoop stain on this one), and had Felix frame it, ready to go to its recipients this upcoming weekend! Smudged out for privacy are name and birthdate of the baby this is for.

August WIPGO

Time for my August WIPGO update, and this time I got real progress to report!

While I did not work on Dark Forces (called in July), I finished my 10 hours on Red Velvet Cake (called in June). I finished the 'spikes' around the central circle, then started on the red frame around this whole motif. This one is pretty large, and despite adding a total of 1278 stitches, I only managed a quarter of the way around!

I also did another 10 hours on Guardian of Wayfarers, bringing my total up to 79.2% and finishing a couple more shades of blue (and one green).

Now for August, the numbers called where another round of GoW, and also Things Unseen, a Lizzie*Kate mystery sampler I last touched two years ago:

Last time I worked on this I finished the text over part 1 and 2, now I want to work on finishing part 1 by adding some of the bigger motifs on the left side. This is fun to work on and travels well as it's only a couple colours, so perfect for another busy month!

So with the additions for July and August, my board looks like this now - still a bit behind, but at least I haven't fallen further back:

July Smalls Failure

While I did get a good amount of stitching done in July, I have to admit defeat for the smalls SAL! I made a small start, but am just not feeling it right now, so it will have to wait a bit and hopefully get finished in August.

This is another mini birth sampler for Felix' grandma - I'm doing 'flowers of the month' for all her great-grandkids, and she's had two more this year so I better get stitching!

July WIPocalypse

It's time for July WIPocalypse, and the question of the month is: Which of your current WIPs do you consider your most difficult piece to stitch? I don't really consider any of my WIPs as difficult, but probably the biggest challenge right now is my Jacquie SAL! It has several new techniques like stumpwork that I have already done once for the third pannel, but need to do more of for the fourth!

July is the Olympic stitchign focus month for WIPocalypse, but as I once again neglected to do any planning, I will not be participating and instead try to make some progress on my regular stitching.

Part of that is making some progress on The Loneliness of Autumn! In July, I added another 519 stitches and finished page 10.

One more (and a tiny partial) page in this row! My new total is 85.20% or 101,217/118,800 stitches done. Hopefully, I'll have some more progress to show in the next WIPocalypse!