Progress Update: Day 27 of the Crazy Challenge

Only a few more days to go of the January Crazy Challenge.  Wah.  It's kind of bittersweet.  While in some ways, a new project every day has been rather chaotic, I do like the excitement that comes with constantly starting something new. 

Yesterday's start was the companion piece to the Day 26.  I looked up the patterns and found out they are a series of 6 blocks called Christmas Cuties by Maria Diaz, although each pattern individually is not named.  Here's my start on the reindeer, which is the only one other than the polar bear I will be stitching. 

Got a good start on his head, and the little bell around his neck.  And although the polar bear I started the day before is also super cute, I'm rather partial to this reindeer of the two designs.  Looking forward to finishing him, as he is one of the pieces I've chosen for Turtle Trot this year. 

And of course because I have an impending deadline, I also made some headway on Perfume Bottle.  Are you getting sick of progress updates on this yet?  :)

Today's planned start is another Mill Hill kit, the first of the last two I have to start and finish before March. 

Progress Update: Day 26 of the Crazy January Challenge

So, moving right along with the Crazy January Challenge, here's what I was able to get done yesterday.  This is a project I am calling Polar Bear Square, since I don't really know the original name of it.  It's a pattern from an old Christmas issue Enjoy Cross Stitch magazine, which I believe means it was originally published in either Cross Stitch Crazy or World of Cross Stitching, probably also several years ago. 

I do remember that the designer is Maria Diaz, and this is part of a set of 6 matching designs (polar bear, reindeer, snowman, angel, penguin and Santa I believe).  It will be fairly small, about 4 x 4 I think when finished, and 100% coverage with no fractionals or backstitch. 

Since there is no backstitching in this whole project, the outline of the characters is done entirely in black stitches.  So I decided to start with the black outlines first, and then fill in as I go.  So yesterday had the beginning's of the polar bear's head.  This is one of my Turtle Trot pieces, but it will probably go to the back of the rotation for now, since I have several projects with screaming deadlines approaching.

I didn't get much more done, mostly because at the moment I am trying to finish up two squares for World of Charity Stitching, the Perfume Bottle and Rainbow Mandala squares.  Here's the stitching I did on the mandala over the weekend:

Last night luckily was a nice relaxing night, so I was able to get quite a chunk of Perfume Bottle done while I was watching some of our DVRed programs. 

It's finally actually starting to look like something.  Now I just have 3 purple stripes to finish (one big and two small) and to fill in some of the shading, then do the sprayer and the two yellow flowers at the bottom of the bottle.  I can handle that, right?  Unfortunately, tonight through Thursday are going to be CRAZY so I don't know how much more progress I will be making with this one until Friday.  *sigh*

Well, at least I already know what today's new start will be.  It's going to be Reindeer Square, one of the companions to this piece.  Out of the six, the polar bear and reindeer were the two I really liked, so I will only be stitching those for now. 

Until tomorrow!