April Fully Finished Gallery

Hi, it's me! Still behind and still fighting my sewing machine, but slowly getting there. Today I am checking in (once again, very late) with Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery, where we attempt to do something with all these pieces lurking in our treasure chests and boxes of shame.

Last month I shared my struggles with finishing the second one of the Little Sheep Values. They have been continuing, but after some more sewing and unsewing and cutting and measuring I've come to a couple conclusions:

1) It's a bit of a curse that the first one I finished came out so neat and perfect because

2) I probably don't have the sewing skills yet to make 12 identical pillows and finally

3) I'm probably okay with that.

My first concession was to get some different kinds of lace - I didn't have enough of the original one for 12 pillows anyway - so they'd all look a little different because of that alone. Then, after I had sewn, frogged and resewn Courage just to discover it was still a bit wonky and I probably wouldn't be able to fix it cause I had made a mistake with cutting, I had a good long think and realized - it's okay. I finished Hope next, and for that one I had to do the centering of the stitched piece differently anyways because it has a big button right in the corner, and now that there are three (and not just one perfect and one wonky one) I'm feeling more at ease with them. I will continue to practice, but if in the meantime not everything comes out perfect, I will accept it - how else am I going to make progress? So here we have LSV #1, #2 (finished two months ago) and #4. I'll try to re-finish #3 Peace and #5 (which I am currently stitching) for next month.

WIPGO - April

April is halfway gone already (I know we are getting close to 2/3...but until then, we're going with halfway!) and I am still veeeery much behind on stuff around here...but I just came back from a very nice four day vacation and still got a week and a half of work, and I'm very motivate to get stuff done! In fact, most of the reason I am behind on stuff was putting in some extra time at work so I could get everything done in leave for two weeks with a clean concience. So we'll see what I can get done with all this time! (probably I now jinxed it and won't get anything done at all, but one can hope...)

Anyway, while it's a little late, here we go with my April WIPGO post...March was pretty successful, while I had some spil over into April to get all my goals done, it wasn't my WIPGO-goals, so all is well on that front ;) 

For Guardian of Wayfarers, I added 1481 stitches in March. No backstitch this time as I realized I had a LOT more left to do in crosses! But I'm finally starting to see some 0s (colours with no stitches left), so that was pretty exciting. And in April, I might even get to stitch a bit on the actual dragon, so that's another exciting thing to look forward to!

My other project for March was Charming, a Dimensions Gold Petit kit I started some years ago. I put in 1639 stitches and look how close it is to a finish now! I finished the cat himself and made some progress on the cushion (or whatever that is) too. Just 1342 stitches left to go (plus some minimal backstitch that I don't have in Pattern Keeper, but it really isn't all that much!). So depending how the year goes, I might come back to finish it, or definitly do that next year - I'm starting to think 2025 might be a year of finishes again!

Now for April the numbers called were 18 and 21, so that means another rotation of Guardian of Wayfarers (that's working well so far!) and also Jacquie comes out to play:

This is the last panel that needs to be stitched, so half of part 7 and all of part 8. I'd say I *might* get a finish on this, but part 8 has a lot of stump work to do (four more of these wings!) and that takes a lot of time, so I'm not sure. At the very least, I will get close, though!

Here is the board for April - looking good so far!

March Smalls SAL

Still in the process of catching up, both stitching and blog wise - and today I'm linking up the the Smalls SAL, hosted by Rachel this year. I started the 4th of the Little Sheep Values last weekend, and finally finished it yesterday! These stitch up really quickly once you get stuck in, and I really enjoy working on them. 

April was Courage, and it's very pretty with the different greens and the purple. I'm really glad I'm finally stitching these this year - now my finishing just needs to catch up to my stitching!

March WIPocalypse

Once again, I am on a mission to get caught up with...just about everything! I need to stitch things, read things, blog things...you know the drill, but work has been a bit crazy the last two weeks and I just haven't had as much time as I wanted, even with the long Easter weekend (most of which we spend with Felix' family). I'll get there though, you know I always do eventually!

So let's dive right into the question of the month - What colors – and brands – of floss do you love using? Do you have a particular color that you absolutely love? I love pretty much anything that isn' brown, tan or gray - nothing against the neutrals, but we use them a lot in stitching and they can get a bit boring! Bright colours though, or pastels...lovem. Especially the ones which are really soft colours, and really soft floss...you know the ones I'm talking about! Brandwise, I don't really have a favourite. I'm perfectly happy with good old DMC, love a good hand dyed, and silk...oh boy. Yes, I admit, I'm a flossaholic! 

Now for actual stitching, again I made progress on The Lonelines of Autumn, my long time SAL with Rachel, the Ten Hour Stitcher! I didn't quite make my goal of one length a day, but still managed more stitches than in February when I did...it's all about how the colours work out, I guess! 1506 stitches added brought me to 84.29%, and 100,132 stitches finished - I have to say, hitting this 100k milestone felt like a big deal!

I also had another page finish up in the middle there - 8 down, many more to go (honestly, I didn't count)!

For the one a day challenge in March, I worked on Meadow Tablecloth, one of my oldest WIPs, and actually it took me just 11 days to finish it! Full picture coming up once it's had a wash an iron, but here is sneak peak in the mean time.

I decided to take the rest of the month off from the challenge, but had a look at my next oldest WIP, another table cloth, and it's actually less stitching than I remembered...so I might just pull that out for the next challenge month!

Jo's Easter Treasure Hunt Blog Hop 2024

So sorry for the late post! I should have written it right after getting up this morning, because then my day got a bit derailed (nothing bad, don't worry, just not quite as planned) and litereally only remembered when I just went to bed to sleep! So this is going to be a quick one, just in case you'e been waiting for the letter all day.

Hello and welcome to my little entry in Jo's Easter Treasure Hunt Blog Hop for 2024! Please check out her blog for all the details, but assuming you've done that, I know you are here for three things: a picture of something Easter-y I stitched - I already used this for Valentine's, but I really liked it, and it really fits for Easter too, this is Valentine's Hare by Stitcher's Anon:

A letter to collect - which is O - and the next blog to hop to: http://www.marysthread.com/

Again, so sorry to keep you waiting - have a very happy Easter, and see you soon!

March Gifted Gorgeousness

Continuing my theme of late check ins, here we go with the March Gifted Gorgeousness! This long time SAL by Jo continues to be one of my favourites, as I usually have plenty of gift projects on the go.

This year there are a lot of babies to craft for, any my current project is a granny square blanket for one of them. I'm almost done making the squares - just 6 more to go!

Hopefully, by the next GG, I'll have them all done and joined together. I am making this up as I got, so will see how much of a border I'll give it - probably a couple rounds, though. Maybe fringes, too, we will see!

One more gift project was finished this month, for my grandma's birthday - of course she had to have another pair of wrist warmers, and as she really liked the neon yarn from those socks I made, I used that (plus some black since I didn't have a lot left over) to make her some. I was in such a hurry to gift them that I forgot a picture of the full pair, though, so here is the first one and you can use your imagination to picture its twin!

The Sock-Blog

Lately, I've been very into knitting (perhaps helped by the fact that some of my closest friends have also been doing a lot of knitting lately), and I don't always know how to incorporate that into my blog here. I know many of you don't knit and have no idea what I'm talking about when I'm going into specifics, and sometimes the WIP pictures don't give you a great idea of the progress I'm making if you're not a knitter myself! I do try, however, to at least update you on any finishes I have, but it seems I have been amiss doing even that. So today I wanted to remedy that fact, and show you two pairs of socks I have recently finished. I even treated mself to some wooden sock blockers off Etsy - these 2D feet shapes that you can put your socks on so they stay in shape, as sometiems socks can look quite weird without a foot inside!

First, we got the 'Little Hocus Pocus' socks by This Handmade Life. For this, I used some really nice, super soft hand dyed merino sock yarn that I bought at the yarn fair last November. I actually started these socks right after I got home, but then got distracted by other stuff over Christmas and only finished them in early February.

I just love patterns with cables, so these were very fun to make - they are symmetrical, by the way, so the right sock has the same cable, just on the other side! 

These were made for myself (a rare thing for me, I know, but I'm getting better at it) and took me just over 21 hours to make, which seems a ridiculously time for a pair of socks...I'm not a very fast knitter, but again, getting better now that I'm getting more practice!

Then we got these - the pattern is called Mokamami and it's been designed by Birgit Ka. My friend Sam made a pair in a violent neon green and it turns out this pattern is just amazing for crazy yarn, so I dug out this Regia Neon that I got years ago and made a pair of my own.

I really like how these turned out - maybe not a look for every day, but they were so fun to make and I think would make great house socks or something. Again, took me 22 hours to make, but they are a little bigger as they are not for my own tiny feet, but for a friend of mine.

These took me just over a month, from early February to early March, and before you ask, I did start a new pair since then, but it is not much to show yet, so will get to it at some point later.