Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 11-14

Despite my best intentions, this is the first opportunity I've had to come on and do a Crazy January Challenge update since Monday.  Somehow I find myself getting sick (again!) and combined with a very busy week at work again, it's really slowed me down.  Bleh. 

But enough complaining.  Let's talk about funner things.  Here's a recap of what my challenge progress is.

January 11th, Monday, I did decide to pull out another WIP project rather than start something new.  I decided it was time to work a little bit of Sunshine by Satsuma Street, since it hadn't seen any love for awhile and is actually pretty close to being finished.  So I pulled it out and took it from here:

To here:

Not too much left to go on this one, so I should be able to wrap this one up pretty quickly soon, although maybe after January and the challenge is over. 

Tuesday night I started a new project.  This is Lizzie Kate's Autumn Alphabet, which I sent out this week as the start of a new Lizzie Kate round robin that my Facebook group is doing.  That's right, I'm pretty much crazy because I signed up for another round robin at the same time.   This one was hard for me to miss though, because I absolutely love Lizzie Kate designs. 

I stitched the middle "M" block on my project so my fellow stitchers have a base point to start their stitching from.  Here's what it looked like when I sent it off:

I'm super excited about this project because it's the first Lizzie Kate chart that I've splurged for the charted Weeks Dye Works and Crescent Colors overdyed threads.  Although you can't really tell with this block because the orange is the one color of DMC in the pattern and the very slight variation in the dark brown hasn't shown up in the small amount of stitching for this letter.  I can't wait to see how it turns out as a whole though.  I plan on doing all 4 in this alphabet series eventually. 

Wednesday I decided that after all the Mill Hill kits I did in December, I was really kind of missing doing the little Mill Hill kits.  So I pulled out Kitty's Stocking and managed to put in one more stripe of color, taking it from this progress last year:

To this:

Not much progress, but hey, progress is progress, right?  I was still in a Mill Hill mood the next night, so Triple Scoop got a little love to take it from where I left it last year:

To this:

Again, not much progress, and in posting this now I see a mistake I need to go back and fix.  But most of my challenge stitching this week was done on lunch breaks, since I've been working on other things during the evening.  Swirly Lollipop has got almost all of its stripes now:

Just the green stripes, white, and the stick to fill in.  I also made a dent in my chosen mandala motif of the Ink Circles piece I'm doing for the sampler round robin for January. 

So that's coming along too.  So what's my plans for the weekend?  Well, I haven't picked my project for today yet, so we'll see what calls to me tonight when I settle in for my nightly stitching session.  Other than that, I want to organize the rest of my potential crazy project pieces and choose which ones I will most likely stitch on during the rest of the month.  Oh, and rest.  Lots of resting.  This getting sick thing is no fun, I tell ya.  : (   Good thing we have a 3 day weekend which gives me more time to recuperate. 

Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 9-10

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  Mine was actually pretty busy since we spent most of it trying to my brother up and ready for his move to Orlando for his "summer" break for the next three-ish months.   But I still kept up with at least a little stitching for my January challenge, so here's what I worked on. 

Friday night I was feeling pretty dead because we'd had a pretty rough week at work, so I decided rather than go allllllll the way across the room to my work bag and pull out Fa La La, I would just pick up Swirly Lollipop and do a few stitches.  Managed to put a stripe and a half in so now it looks like this:

I had a bit of a mini heart attack moment where I thought I had centered it wrong on the fabric, but after 30 minutes of counting and measuring and recounting I think it's actually okay.  I'm liking the way it's turning out so far. 

Saturday night I decided to pull open the latest sampler round project I had just gotten in the mail.  It's Garden Stars by Ink Circles which if you haven't seen it before, is an absolute HUGE project featuring all sorts of mandala type motifs.  I don't think I correctly internalized just how big this project was when I looked at pictures of it online at the beginning of the of round robin.  I got a nice chunk of the mandala motif I'll be finishing for this round one, I think maybe about 1/6 of the way done?

The colors got bleached out a bit in the picture, but there's all sorts of green used.  The motif I'm working on isn't my favorite green color, but it's interesting to see how it fits in with those around it. 

Sunday (yesterday) I figured perhaps it was time to mix it up a bit since so far I've worked almost exclusively on new starts.  I decided to pull out a WIP project instead, and pulled out one of my oldest, Silent Night by Mill Hill.  This is going to be a gift for a family friend who collects nativities, and originally it was supposed to be given as a Christmas present two years ago, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to work on it lately.  Not sure why since I really enjoyed it through the first 1/2 or so, but I've been bogged down on the top and haven't gotten much progress on it in almost 2 years. 

So I pulled out Silent Night while catching up on Downton Abbey last night and went from this:

To this:

Not much progress, but at least the top is starting to look like something a little more now.  The light bleached out the colors a bit on this picture, they're closer to life in the top picture.  I did get to stitch with my Christmas Ott light, so that was exciting!

Tonight will probably be another WIP project, since I just am not sure I'm in the mood for something new again.  Guess we'll see what tonight brings after work. 

Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 6-8

Time to share another update of my projects from the Crazy January Challenge.  You know how I said I was on a snowman pattern kick earlier?  Well, here's why...

After the 5th, I moved on from the "sweetie squares" to the "snowmen squares".  The first is Frosty Snowflake, a Needle Bling Designs pattern from the 2013 Just Cross Stitch ornaments special. 

I managed to get a bit of the brim on the snowman's top hat done.  He's not much to look at right now, that's for sure.  This is another WOCS piece, and they specifically asked for designs that were done on other colors of aida to offset the white of the snowman patterns.  I ended up sourcing two pieces of moss green aida, so that's what I'm stitching this and my other snowman square on.  The color really kind of bled out in this picture, but this next photo shows it more at it's actual color. 

Day 6 is also done on green aida and is a pattern from the (now gone) US magazine The Cross Stitcher (not to be confused with the UK publication CrossStitcher magazine which is still in print as of this post).  Anyway, my working copy unfortunately doesn't list the designer or the title of the pattern and since I don't know exactly where in the black hole that is my stitching magazine stash right now the original magazine is, I'm calling it Let it Snowman. 

Doesn't look like much yet either.  Just mostly a white blob. 

Which brings me to the last project start before my internet-less (and thus update-less weekend). Today's start was also a snowman.  This is a freebie chart from Plum Pudding Needleworks called Fa La La:

Although I got a decent start on his head at lunch today, without some of the facial details you can't see it much against the natural aida yet.  I'm hoping he will stand out better as his face and hat are added.  This is my selection for the 2016 Christmas Ornie SAL, since January's theme is music. 

In other stitching news, I finished up my part of the latest sampler round robin project:

So that's off in the mail.  I got the next round yesterday but I haven't had a chance to open it yet so I don't know what it is yet.  But I expect that will show up in my crazy challenge later on in the month (maybe even this weekend). 

Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 1-5

Now that I've finished up wrapping up 2015, it's time to look forward to 2016.  Looking back through my blog archives, apparently my first Crazy January Challenge post last year was also Days 1-5, so I suppose that's appropriate!

For any of you who haven't heard of the Crazy January Challenge before, the idea is to start 15 new projects in the first 15 days of January.  Over the years it has evolved to different iterations, one of which is to start a new project for each day of January (so 31 projects).  Now, I have way to many WIPs to do 31 new projects (okay, I could do it if I really wanted to) so I do a combination of new starts and new projects throughout January instead.

And with that explanation over, here's a peek at what I've been working on.  My projects haven't gotten a huge amount of progress, mostly because I think I may have overdone things a little over the Christmas holiday, and I'm feeling a little flareup in my carpal tunnel and what might be tendinitis/tennis elbow.  So I'm trying to take things easy on the stitching front in general.

For New Years Day (Jan 1) I got started on the latest round of the Sampler Round Robin project I'm doing with my Facebook group.  This is the start of my part of Blue Ribbon Designs Little Quakeresque:

It is 1 over 2 threads done in an overdyed 3 color thread.  I like how it's turning out so far, but the project owner requested we not work in rows so the motifs ended up "striped" so it takes a bit more concentration.

January 2nd I decided it was time for something more "new years"-y so I started New Years Magic.  It's a freebie pattern by Brooke's Books.  I got one of the fairy's arms done and the start of the highlights on her face and neck.

I've never done a New Year's design before, mostly because I don't really decorate for that holiday, but Brooke's designs really appeal to me lately and the pink and purple of this really called to me for some reason.  I think I will leave off the year as it is in the original design and just leave it generic to take out for every year. 

January 3rd was a Sunday, which tend to be either really good or really slow stitching days for me.  My brother ended up being sick so I didn't get much done on this start either.  This is the start of Swirly Lollipop, a design from Daily Cross Stitch.com.  This will be going to World of Charity Stitching for a "sweet" themed quilt they are putting together.

I got two of the bottom stripes done, so hopefully this will work up pretty quickly.  It's going to be very colorful when it's done, that's for sure!

January 4th was Monday and so that meant back to work, which meant a lot of my stitching was confined to my lunch break at work.  This start is another WOCS project for the sweet quilt (as long as I get it down in time).  This is Chocolate Box by Little House Needleworks.  I thought for sure I could at least get one of the 9 chocolates completely done, but as you can see, that didn't quite happen.

With a name like Chocolate Box, you KNOW there's going to be a ton of brown in this.  So it was nice to start with one of the more decorated chocolates in the pattern as the center block.
 
Day 5 was the last of what I'm calling the "sweetie square" starts.  This is Sweets for the Sweet by Sue Hillis.  Kind of weird for me to start with "backstitch" first, but since that was the center of this pattern and I'm not doing any sort of gridding for this one, starting with words it is.  Anyone know what the pattern name refers to?  The English major in me is pretty tickled by it. 

 This is going to be pretty monochromatic until I reach the chocolate box on the lower right corner.  Which probably a good thing since I'm actually out of a few of the colors I need for that part.  Speaking of which, do you ever feel like you must have the entire DMC library by now but when you go to pull colors for a design there's always at least 1 you're out of?  Or is that just me? 

So that catches me up to today.  Guess we'll have to wait and see what the future holds when I get home and see what speaks to me for Day 6. 

In addition to the new starts, I've also been making slow progress on the sampler round robin project from Day 1, since that needs to be mailed soon.  Here's how it looks now:

Back with more updates soon!

February 2015 WIPocalypse (and Crazy January wrap up)

We've reached another full moon, so it's time for a WIPocalypse check-in, as hosted by Measi.

This months topic is: How do you overcome that feeling that you’re in a rut with a particular project?

I  have to say, I'm not sure how to answer this one just yet.  Since getting back into cross stitch last year, I really haven't worked on any big projects, and usually if a project gets abandoned it's because there's something else that I need to work on for a deadline.  And a deadline is a pretty good way to force yourself to wade through a project that's got you down at the moment I guess.

So after that lame answer, it's time to show off my progress for the month.  One of my main original WIPocalypse goals was to keep up with the Crazy January Challenge.  With the wrap up of the challenge last Saturday, I'm actually happy to say that I kept up with it, and started a new project or worked on a WIP for every day in January.  So I thought I'd take this WIPocalypse post to do a quick recap of the project.

Someone in our challenge group on Facebook showed me how to use an online editor to create collage graphics, so I couldn't resist.  I took new pictures of almost everything last night to make these with, since I realized I didn't have "finish" photos to go with my projects throughout the month, and I thought it would be fun to share what some of these will look like when I get to finishing them.  So for anyone who missed it, here's a breakdown of everything completed for January. 

Week 1: January 1st - January 3rd (from top to bottom, left to right)
 January Carnations, Giraffe Print Mitten, Leopard Print Mitten

Week 2: January 4th - January 10th (from top to bottom, left to right)
 Stars and Stripes, Love Potion No. 9, Frosted Pumpkin 12 Days of Christmas, Perfume Bottle, Yin Yang Horse, Tree Frog Trio , Rainbow Mandala

Week 3: January 11th - January 17th (from top to bottom, left to right)
Pinky Pie magnet,  Cat Lady Kit, Rainbow Dash magnet, Twilight Sparkle magnet, Gingerbread Houses SAL, Rarity magnet, Apple Jack magnet

Week 4: January 18th -  January 24th (from top to bottom, left to right)
Mum Bouquet, Autumn Circle, Purple Paisley, Fluttershy magnet, Polka Dot Bouquet, Silly Ladybug, Triple Scoop 

Week 5: January 25th - January 31st (from top to bottom, left to right)
 Sparrow on Vine, Lucky Day, Polar Bear Square, Kitty's Stocking, I Heart Britannia Pillow, Reindeer Square, Singing Owl

Well, I guess that's enough for this update.  Until next month WIPocalypsers!

Final Progress Update on Crazy January Challenge: Day 30 & 31

Hello stitching friends, how was your weekend? 

Mine was pretty good until the "almost mini tornado" hit late Sunday night.  That was interesting.  Some days I'm a little freaked out by the new weather patterns I'm getting used to since moving to the South. 

The other reason my weekend could have been better was this:

I had planned to have it completely done by Sunday night.  Yeah, as you can see that didn't happen.  I mean, if you look at just the missing stripes on the bottle it seems like I could almost be done.  But then there's that weird blob missing from the bottom; those are the flowers I still have to fill in.  *sigh*

Actually, this one gave me a bit of bother on Saturday night.  I was all prepared to start filling in the spray ball thing (don't know what it's called at the moment) on the right side of the bottle when I realized that somehow I miscalculated/measured my fabric wrong and the design was going to be a little too big.  So I had to re-chart it so it was not nearly as tall, which made it more oval instead of round.  I thought it was terrible at first, but I think it turned out okay in the end.  Sadly I ran out of thread 2 rows before I finished it.  Grrrrrrr!  I hate when that happens.  So I had to dig into my stash and cut some more, which wasn't really a big deal, but on top of everything else... but at least the frog didn't show up, so that's something to be thankful for. 

So anyway, with that rant over, it's time to show my last two projects for the Crazy January Challenge. 

January 30th was Friday, and although I had the whole weekend ahead of me, I didn't make much progress.  This is going to be another square for Love Quilts when it is finished.  I call it Sparrow on Vine. 

I got the top of the bird's head done.  I kind of like the two tone effect, but that's just because I haven't done the other half of part of the stitches in that section yet. 

January 31st was Saturday and as it was the last day, I saved the big project for last.  And this one qualifies as big in several ways.  It's an I Love Britannia design by Jan Constantine that appeared in an old issue of CrossStitcher magazine.  I'm stitching it up for my aunt, who loves all things British because of the 18 months she lived there while serving a mission for our church.  So I pulled it out and here's my progress so far. 

What?  That many stitches took an hour?

So here's the reason I refer to this project as "the big one".  In addition to being large in size (finished size of the cushion will be 18 x 18 inches I think), this is my very first time stitching on evenweave fabric other than aida.  Ahhhhh!  So it's my first time stitching over 2.  This is 20 count, so the weave is quite large, which means I'm stitching 4 over 2, so I'm a little weirded out not only by trying to get used to counting by two threads at a time, but also because the stitches seem so big and chunky to me so far.  I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually...

I'm kind of feeling bittersweet now the the challenge is over.  On the one hand, it will be nice not to have pressures to start something every single day, but on the other hand, it was kind of fun.  But my WIP list is outrageously long now, so I'm going to try and limit the new starts in the next few weeks. 

So what's on the list next?  Well, I do need to finish that silly bottle, and then it's time to finish Rainbow Mandala and Horse Yin Yang, as those are all squares due for World of Charity stitching.  Then it's off to try and finish those six Mill Hill kits before those are due as gifts in mid-March.  Then I need to finish the My Little Pony magnets by early April for a birthday gift.  And then on top of that, I have two Love Quilts squares that are due March 1st that I need to start working harder on too.  And I will of course be stitching my rounds for the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin I'm participating in, in between all those other projects too. 

Phew!  No rest for the weary stitcher.  :)

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!

Progress Update: Day 24 & 25 of the Crazy January Challenge

First of all, to all the new readers who have joined me over the past weekend, welcome!

It's back to work on Monday, which means in my break times I now have internet access once again, so it's time for my January Challenge updates from this weekend.  So here's my two starts for the past couple days. 

First of all, I went through my stash of projects I had sat aside for this challenge and had a organizing moment (or two).  Because of some things that have come up over the course of the month, although I am keeping up with the challenge of working on something different every day I am not fully sticking to my original list.  So knowing there were only 8 days left in January at that point, I had to pick/choose what projects were the most important for me.  So I now have the rest of the month planned out.  My WIP projects have been put aside in favor for projects with closer deadlines, and I'm hoping I do get to pick them up again sometime in Februrary.  This is not to say I won't have new starts any longer in February, but I'm going to try and focus on finishing some of these things that have looming deadlines.  Best laid stitching plans and all that...

Anyway, Saturday I started a square I'm doing for Love Quilts.  It's called Silly Ladybug, and will be a (very) big ladybug with heart shaped spots.  I got half of one heart done.  Hoo boy, this is the one I'm worried about getting bored with because it has very large blocks of the same color.

My second piece for the weekend was also a Love Quilts project.  I call this one Singing Owl.  I just got a bit of purple between her eyes done, since I was focusing on the A-Team Mythbusters special we had DVRed from Saturday night.

We had company over both Saturday and Sunday night, so needless to say, the amount of stitching I got done either day wasn't very spectacular.  

I also made a bit of progress on Perfume Bottle and Rainbow Mandala, but sadly forgot to take pictures, so those will have to wait until tomorrow to post.  I really need to knuckle down and finish those, because they are due very soon.

Until tomorrow!

Progress Update: Day 23 of the Crazy January Challenge

Moving right along with the updates today, here's the progress I made yesterday on Friday.  It was another Mill Hill day, this time with Autumn Circle:

Got the veins of one of the leaves done (I think there's 4 main leaves in the circle).  I've been doing these Mill Hill kits a lot during the week, because they are easy to grab and take to work with me, which some days is the only stitching time I have (on my lunch break).  But I only have 1 left in my "have to stitch soon" pile now, so I need to figure out some other quick projects to take with me for the rest of the week. 

I also made quite a bit of progress on Perfume Bottle.  It's actually starting to look a little like a bottle now.  You can start to see a bit of the stripes forming. 

I always work with projects with large blocks of color like this that they won't look "blended" enough in the finished project, but I think this one might turn out okay.  Sorry for the not-so-great pictures on both of these, it was storming when I took them and the lighting was less than stellar. 

I'm going to have to sit down this weekend and go through the remaining projects I have kitted up and ready to go.  Because of a few projects that have interjected themselves into my original list, I have more projects in my "to start" box than I have days left in January.  But I can't really spill into February starting things every day too much because I have several things due in March that I will need to use February to work on.  Is it silly to just do like an extra week of starts into February?