May TUSAL and a Little Progress

Well, as usual I'm a few days late for Daffycat's Totally Useless SAL since the official check in day was Monday.  But at least I'm only a little late this month, instead of forgetting it together. 

Of course, I forgot Monday, so I had to snap a hurried pic that night, so it is kind of blurry, sorry:

I finally got a new ort jar, and I also found my "traveling" ort bag, so I was finally able to add all those bits and pieces I lost back in February to my jar.  Sad that that kind of makes me really happy.  Anyway, that's why my current green is more towards the middle, and a bunch of purple is on top.  That green is from my actual recent stitching, mostly from Baby Tinkerbell. 

And speaking of Tinkerbell, here's how she's looking today. 

Not much progress since this weekend.  Just finished up her bloomers and have started on her wings.  It's discouraging how much my progress slows during the work week.  I keep listing in my head all the things I have left to do (2 wings, 2 legs, 2 slippers, face, hair, ladybug...) and keep thinking that's not that much, right?  Then when I actually stitch it, it takes forever. 

I would so love to just stay at home and get paid for stitching.  Guess that's what retirement is for.  Of course, by then I probably will be half blind and arthritic and be unable to stitch!  Oh, and it's like 40 years away for me.  There's that too. 

Anyway, hope everyone is having great stitching progress!

February 2015 TUSAL Update

I'm actually a few days late for the check in on Daffycat's Totally Useless SAL, since the new moon was actually Wednesday I think, but I kept forgetting to take a picture of my ort jar when I was home at night.  I finally remember last night, and managed to snap this (sorta blurry) one in the meantime:

That's my orts for both February and January, since I missed the check in last month.  Sadly, I was keeping my "travelling" ort in a small ziploc bag in my work purse and I have misplaced it completely, so I'm really bummed about that.  Funny when you miss a funny thing like thread scraps, huh?

Hoping to get lots of stitching done this weekend.  I'm going to have to plant myself in front of the TV and get through as many episodes of The Muppet Show as I can.  It's "research" for a talent show I'm in charge of for church on Friday.  For research, it's not all together bad though.  :)

Have a great weekend!

2015 Stitching Goals: More and More SALs

Well, I had the epiphany today that it's actually getting pretty close to 2015 now, so I better finish up my 2015 goals series of posts.  So rather than do an introduction post for all of these, I'm going to put them all in one post (so I can actually focus on stitching things for them, haha).

So in addition to the 2015 Flower of the Month SAL I'm hosting, the Crazy January Challenge, and BAP Attack's Turtle Trot, here's what I have planned for the new year.

Daffycat has plans to continue her Totally Useless SAL (TUSAL) into the new year.  I've already emptied my ort jar in anticipation of starting that one.   She hasn't posted (as of this writing) the new info for 2015 yet, but this is the link to her 2014 post explaining this SAL. 

Heather from Stitching Lotus is doing her Smalls SAL again this year.  I think this will be kind of like the MMMM I did in October and November, so I'm excited for this one.  I know I will be able to work on smalls for every month of this year, it will just be a question of finishing them or not...

Measi is hosting WIPocalypse again this year.  This is a very low key SAL that is essentially all about sharing your stitching goals and progress for the year.  It will go along very nicely with Turtle Trot this year I expect.

Mel from Epic Stitching is hosting her Stitch from Stash challenge again.  This year, it will be divided into two parts.  The idea is to spend $25 (or your equivalent currency) or less on stitching stash supplies per month.   When I first heard about this back in May, I was kind of like "who is crazy enough to sign up for something like that?".  And then I spent all summer stashing wayyyyy too much, so I signed up so that I could try to keep control of it next year.  With the cut in pay that came from moving out here to Mississippi, my budget is much, much tighter than it used to be, so I will have to think careful about each and every stitchy purchase I make from now on. 

And last but not least is the D.E.S.I.G.N. of the Month, which stands for Designer Everybody Should Instantly Get to Notice. This is a series of posts that will be done by participants throughout the year showing off a current WIP from a different designer each month, with a series of reoccurring questions answered about said design/designer each month.  The idea is to introduce everyone to new designers we may not have run into/tried on our own that we think others should try (or stay away from I suppose).  I'm super excited about this one; I'm already brainstorm ideas on what to feature. 

Phew!  That's a lot.  Think I bit off more than I can chew?  Maybe so, guess we'll just have to see.

December 2014 TUSAL

I'm a little behind (well, closer to a week actually) in posting a picture of my orts for Daffycat's Totally Useless SAL this month.  I managed to get a cold on Christmas Eve, so needless to say, I haven't been doing much the past few days.  Bleh...

Anyway, here is my last picture of the ort jar for the year.  I've emptied it out and have started collecting for the new year.  Still mostly Christmas colors, as you can see by the over abundance of red everywhere still.  But hey, there's some purple peeking out there too.  Actually, the colors in this photo turned out a little wonky anyway, since there wasn't really any good lighting to be had last night.  Oh well. 

I haven't been stitching much lately either, between being sick and getting ready for the Crazy 2015 challenge next month.  But come January 1st, hopefully there will be much stitchy goodness to be done!

November 2014 TUSAL

So, I'm a couple days late with this, but it's time for the TUSAL (that's Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long) November Update.  This SAL is hosted by Daffycat, and involves us posting pictures of our stitching ort jars once a month.

So here's my jar for November:

As you can see, not much increase from October.  I've decided I must be more thrifty with my thread, or do less stitching, or a combination of both from my fellow SALers, since my jar still looks pretty sad with 2 months of threads in there now.  Still full of Christmas colors too.

Well, here's onto another month of ort collecting!  Someone suggested putting them out in spring for birds to make colorful nests with.  Have any of you tried this before?

October TUSAL Update

So, Daffycat has this SAL over at her blog that she calls the Totally Useless SAL.  The idea is to collect your orts (those pieces of thread you gather while stitching) in a jar and post a picture at the new moon every month.  This has been going on for a couple years or so, but since I just found out about it, well, better late than never, right? 

I just started collecting my orts this month, so my jar is pretty sad.  But I'll add onto it each month and see where it ends up.  These are all leftovers from my MMMM stitching this month, so pretty much all Christmas colors.