Progress Update: First Weekend in February

Hello stitching friends! I realized with the January challenge, I'm not posting updates nearly as often as I did.  Of course, there's not really anything new going on, haha.  But here's a look at what I've been working on lately.

First of all, I have a finish!  That's right, Perfume Bottle is finally done, done, done!

Please excuse the wrinkles.  I obviously took this pic right after it came off the Q-snaps.  

Don't get me wrong, I liked working on this one, but I am glad it is finished.  Sometimes stitching on a deadline is no fun.  I'm not completely 100% happy with the way the colors turned out.  I think the petals in the front of the flowers don't go so well, and the purple in the stripes is a little too light.  Oh well.  I modified this one a bit too, making the atomizer part of the bottle smaller and moved some of the flower leaves around a bit to make up for a miscalculation in finished size.  (oops)

This is for a Ladies Accessories quilt being made by World of Charity Stitching.  It's done on 14 count plain white aida with DMC threads.  I started this project on January 9th as part of the Crazy January Challenge and finished it this weekend on February 7th.  Hmmm.  Almost a month down to the day.  It is a free pattern from the French blog Passion Broderie 77 and can be found here if you'd like to stitch it yourself. 

So after finishing that project, I started to work on Rainbow Mandala again, which is actually turning out to go quite quickly when you don't have huge blocks of color to fill in. 

There's something about the methodical way this design is put together that makes it very soothing.  Like coloring a real mandala I suppose.  This will be six rings in different colors when I'm finished.  I chose to do neon colors and do them from light to dark, rather than traditional rainbow order.

I also got a start on my first project for the Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin I'm participating in through a Facebook group.  The first project I get to work on is the Once Upon a Time sampler. 

I chose February to work on because, well, it's February, and it also had the convenience of being one square above the original stitching done by the project's owner.  This will be the Frog Prince when I'm finished with it, although all you can see I have done now is the border and a big "smooch!"

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 28 & 29 of the Crazy January Challenge

I'm back to the two day update post today, since I forgot to take pictures of the Day 28 project, and so I didn't have anything to post yesterday.  So I managed to take some pictures last night, but the lighting turned out kind of funny, so they will look a little wonky. 

Day 28 was Wednesday, which are always my very busy, very long days, so I purposely chose something smaller.  Plus, at this point, I pretty much had the rest of my challenge all planned out.  So Wednesday was a kit by Mill Hill called Lucky Day. 

This one only has 2 colors of stitching, as the gold thread it comes with is purely for attaching beads.  If you couldn't tell, it will be a four leaf clover when I get done.  The dark green thread I started with didn't show up too well on the green paper so far.  This will be a gift for a friend who loves all things Irish. 

Yesterday was Thursday, which mean it wasn't quite as long as Wednesday, but still busy, so I chose another small project to do, a Mill Hill kit called Kitty's Stocking:

Got the top of the stocking finished.  I'm really excited about this one, since I did the Tropical Kitty kit last year and loved it.  I have one other kitty Mill Hill in my stash to do eventually too.  The one thing I'm nervous about is this one has a lot of back stitching details in addition to the beading, so I hope I can get it done in time for my upcoming gift deadline. 

And since I didn't feel like working on Kitty when I got home yesterday, I pulled Perfume Bottle out again and worked on that while we watched the new TNT series The Librarians (which is kind of kooky, but I really liked, by the way). 

The bottle itself is now completely outlined, and you might be able to see the bit of gray at the top where I started on the sprayer.  I just have the metal and ball part of that to finish, the rest of the stripes to fill in, and a couple flowers at the bottom to finish.  Hopefully I'll be able to complete it this weekend and have something new to show you.  

So now we're heading into Saturday and my weekends-without-internet, so I will be back on Monday with the updates on my last two projects for the challenge.  It's kind of bittersweet.  I loved doing all these new starts, but it is a little tiring on some days, and I am itching to go back to some of the things I've started. 

Until Monday stitching friends!

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 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?  

Progress Update: Day 21 of the Crazy January Challenge

Yay, my first solo progress update!  This is how I expected to do these updates when I signed up for the challenge, but as you can see, it didn't necessarily happen that way the past few weeks.  Oh well, life moves on!

Since Wednesdays are always my busy days, I decided to go small again.  Here is my progress on Triple Scoop by Mill Hill. 

This actually wasn't originally on my challenge list, but it is a gift for someone and I just found out our trip to see them got pushed up, so this one (and a few others) bumped a couple of the other Mill Hill kits off my list. 

I also got some more progress done on Perfume Bottle during my lunch hour yesterday. 

Sorry for the shiny reflections on the photos, I forgot to take a progress pic before I shoved it in it's bag and I was in a hurry since I was late getting back to my desk. I was finding this one really tedious, but since this picture was taken I've moved onto the next stripe over and I'm re-excited about it again.  I guess I just get bored with huge blocks of the same color.  Hoo boy, that's going to be difficult when I finish up Horse Yin Yang and get to my planned Silly Ladybug project...

So what's for today?  So far, I've done a little more progress on Perfume Bottle, and I think it will be another Mill Hill start today. 

Progress Update: Day 8-11 of Crazy Challenge (Long and Picture Heavy again, sorry!)

Sorry, this is going to be another picture heavy post for those who are on slow connections.  This whole not having internet at the house thing really puts a cramp in my updating abilities over the weekend, and I wasn't able to post my update from Thursday last Friday before I left the office.

So here's what's been going on in my stitching life lately.  Luckily I'm happy to report that I have still kept up totally with the challenge, even if it hasn't been a lot of stitching.

As I mentioned in my last post, my plan for January 8th, last Thursday, was to work on a WIP project.  I pulled out my Tree Frog Trio kit from Dimensions for this day, since it is also one of my Turtle Trot pieces for this year.  I started it back in July or August last year, and it's kind of fallen into the UFO pile.  So here's where I started on Thursday:

And here's where it ended up:

Not a lot of progress, but I'm starting to see some.  I started with that frog on the left because it is the one that has (gasp!) blended threads, which I've never done before, so I figured out with the difficult thing first.  If I can finish this one by Christmas, it will go to a friend who loves frogs and is back in California for a Christmas present.

January 9th was Friday, so I decided to pull out something a little less complicated since my brain was shot from the work week in general.  I decided to pull out this perfume bottle design that I'm doing for World of Charity Stitching.

I got a good block of color for the first stripe on the bottle done, which is more progress than I've been able to do on anything lately.  This was a freebie pattern I found off a french blog, and it's going to have a very pretty purple/pink old fashioned atomizer bottle with a couple of yellow flowers by it when it's done. 

I spent most of the morning of January 10th on Saturday unpacking boxes.  We've been in the new apartment since Thanksgiving, but I've kind of been putting off really unpacking most of my things other than the basic essentials of what I need all the time, so I figured it was time to work on that.  Then Saturday evening I had a sort-of-date, so I ended up getting back to the house and working on my stitching kind of late. Since it was late, I decided I needed another brain dead project, so I pulled out this Yin Yang Horse pattern.

The nice thing about this is that it's all one color, only black required.  This is another piece for WOCS, and it was charted by me based on an online clip art gallery I saw.  I actually got a good chunk of this done (for me anyway), but had to quit a little earlier than expected because I had a "helper" glue himself to my lap and keep trying to steal the thread as I pulled it through fabric:

 (Brownie you are so not being helpful right there)

Yesterday was the 11th, and due to the fact that I'm running out of Q-snaps to hold my projects, I decided to start a project that already had been put on the frame, although I hadn't started it yet.  This is a Gingerbread House Facebook SAL designed by Shannon Wasilieff that she hosted in her group last year.  My intention was to start it before Christmas last year, but presents pushed it out of the way and I was never able to get a start.  So I pulled on one of my Christmas Q-snap huggies and gave it a go.

I may have gotten a little farther than this, but I was distracted by watching our DVR recordings of Agent Carter and Galavant and I totally messed up the spacing.  I had to frog a bit, and then decided to re-grid my pattern, rather than re-grid the fabric or frog everything I had done to make it match.  The joys of stitching, huh?

And in addition to my new starts, I am also hard at work on trying to finish my Giraffe Print Mitten for WOCS.  I've made some good progress on that, I figure I'm about 1/3 way done by now.  Hopefully it won't take much longer. 

Well, that's how things are right now.  I'm hoping to do more daily updates this week (instead of these huge block of updates), so stay tuned for those!