Olympic Stitching Part 2

Part 2 of my Olympic Stitching hasn't gone quite as well as part 1, but here is what I managed to do.  You can see my progress of Part 1 here.

Day Six
Stitchlympics: New Start Marathon
Summer Olympic Challenge: A piece with specialty stitches

I had planned and planned and planned for the new start marathon event of Stitchlympics, but I didn't realize that it was on a weekday instead of a weekend.  Shucks.  Going to work really puts a dent in my stitching time, LOL.  In order to count as a new start, you had to put in at least 50 stitches.  I only managed two projects in the time I had after work.  The start of a Margaret Sherry Christmas card:

And the beginning of my next Lizzie Kate Round Robin piece (Believe from Living with Charm series):

I also put a few stitches into a 3rd project, but didn't quite manage 50 stitches before I crashed and had to go to bed.  This was also what I was going to count as my specialty stitches (the piece had Smyrna crosses), but since I didn't get that far, I got a nil on the Maynia challenge.  Forgot to take a picture of what I did manage to do, so I'll have to share that one later.


Day Seven
Stitchlympics: Specialty stitches
Summer Olympic Challenge: A piece with green in it

Didn't do any stitching this day.  :(


Day Eight
Stitchlympics: Wind bobbins for 10 minutes
Summer Olympic Challenge: Triathlon, stitch on 3 pieces

I don't usually use bobbins to store my floss at the moment, so I was out for this challenge.  And this day was also a non-stitching day (had a date instead).


Day Nine
Stitchlympics: Go For Gold: Stitch with something sparkly
Summer Olympic Challenge: A piece with red in it

This was Saturday, so I finally got some progress to report!  For the sparkle challenge, I pulled out the materials to start Brooke's Books Annie the Autumn Witch, and started on her hat brim because it's all Kreinik #8 braid.  It was my first time working with a Kreinik braid and it went much easier than I thought it would!  I managed to get the whole hat brim done:

I wish you could see it in person, the color is actually a combo of orange, purple, and black that's so nice and Halloween-y and it doesn't come out in the picture at all.

I also started a ladybug design that is a Durene Jones freebie called Love Bug for my red piece.  Don't know what I'll do with this when it's finished yet.

The red was the only color I could find in my stash on short notice (the rest are likely all kitted up with something else, so I just did a good chunk of the red outline around the ladybug's spots).


Day Ten
Stitchlympics: Stitch with beads
Summer Olympic Challenge: A piece with animals in it (especially horses if possible)

I had planned on pulling out a Mill Hill project for beading day, but by the time it actually rolled around I didn't have any that were ready for beads yet.  So I decided to focus on my Lizzie Kate project instead while watching a movie:

After the movie was over, I didn't really feel like switching projects, so I compromised on the animal piece by stitching while watching The Incredible Dr. Pol, which at least is a show full of animals.  Got almost done with the word "believe" before I stopped for the night.

So that brings me up to tonight.  We have company coming off so I'm fairly certain I won't be meeting tonight's challenges.  But we'll have to see.

How is everyone else's stitching go?

Olympic Stitching Part 1

Hello readers!

We're several days into the Olympics, so I've been working hard on my Stitchlympics and  Summer Olympic Challenge pieces.

Apologies in advance for some of the photos.  For some reason my phone has been taking really bad pictures lately.

Day 1 was the Opening Ceremonies.  The Stitchlympics challenge was to count your stitches while watching the opening ceremonies (or equivalent time).  I happened to DVR the ceremonies (yay for fast forwarding through commercials and the Parade of Nations!) so we actually watched a couple finals from American Ninja Warrior while I stitched on my Disney piece for the Round Robin (BTW, Linda I know you asked for the name of the pattern/designer, I'm trying to find out for you!).  I was able to stitch 213 stitches and finish off Aladdin's hair:

The Stitch Maynia Summer Olympic Challenge was to stitch on something blue (for the blue in the Olympic Rings).  Not a lot of blue available in my Disney project, so after finishing Aladdin's hair I also started a new project I'm calling Welcome Home.  That's where the rest of my 200+stitches came from. This will be a square for World of Charity Stitching:

Not much to look at yet, just some blue highlights.  With only two colors and very minimal backstitch, it should stitch up pretty quick though.

Day 2 of Stitchlympics was a 15 minute stitching "sprint" to see how much you could stitch in 15 minutes.  To maximize my chances I decided I should stitch on a single color block, so I chose to start the orange of Lady's face from the Disney project:

51 stitches after 15 minutes.  Not bad.  :)  The Stitch Maynia challenge for Day 2 was to stitch on something with an international theme.  I only had about 15 minutes to stitch on Saturday because we had company over so I decided to fudge and also count the Disney project for that one as well.  Hey, the characters are from international locations, right?

Day 3 of Stitchlympics was a 3 hour stitching marathon.  I pulled out the Disney project again and finished up Lady and started on Ariel's hair:

There's a lot of hair!  The other challenge for this day was to stitch on something with yellow (again for olympic rings).  Sadly I failed at this one.  I just didn't feel like pulling out any other projects because I wanted to focus on the Disney piece.  Oh well, I did stitch orange on Lady; that's in the yellow family, right?

Day 4 of Stitchlympics was another "sprint" stitch, this time a 30 minute sprint "relay".  I managed 101 stitches on Ariel and almost finished her in my 30 minutes:

The Maynia challenge for Day 4 was to stitch something with water in it, so I stretched a bit again and figured my Ariel mermaid counted for a water challenge.  So after the 30 minutes was up for Stitchlympics I finished up the last little bits of Ariel and completed her:

Since I was so close to finishing my part of this piece completely, I decided to spend a few extra minutes for the single stitches I'd been kind of leaving until the last minute (eyebrows, cheeks, etc).  Would you believe it took about 30 minutes to put in about 20 stitches?  Gah, I hate changing colors.  But it made a difference.  Here's what my part looked like when all finished:

Day 5 was yesterday which was left handed stitching for Stitchlympics and a piece with black in it for Stitch Maynia.  Sadly I had a flare up of pain in my left elbow which made stitching difficult, so I don't have any progress to report for that.  So my brother and I and a friend went to see Suicide Squad instead.  :)  But it's feeling a bit better today, so I'm hopefully I'll have something to share for Day 6.

Here's wishing you all lots of stitchy progress!  I plan on making much more as I keep watching over the next couple weeks.

Stitchy Progress and New Stitching Challenge

Well, we made it through Mom's knee surgery and she came through okay, so hopefully things will be settling down soon.  In the meantime, I made progress on the next Lizzie Kate Round Robin piece.  This was the letters S and T from the ABCs of Aging Artfully:

I had to break it up into two pictures since the S was at the end of one line and the T on the beginning of another.  Actually, I was scheduled to stitch a little more than just these two letters, but since last month's Etsy RR piece (the sugar skull) took so much time, I ran out of time to finish my section of these completely.  Oh well!

My next up piece was the second round of the Etsy rotation, and I have to say this is a project I love.  It's Disney, so what can I say?  I've done Chicken Little, most of Aladdin (he's missing his hair), and started on Lady from Lady and the Tramp so far:

This is the piece that kept me from going crazy while waiting out the surgery in the hospital.  Just need to finish up those three then stitch Ariel and it will be onto a new home.  I'm not sure I like the red color of Lady's ears.  I always thought of them as more of a reddish brown, but in real life they really are like a dark red.  Other than that, this has been super fun to work on.  Funny story, I almost picked this same pattern as my Etsy piece for this round robin, so there's a good chance I will cave and purchase it later and you will see it again sometime.

So as you can see, most of my stitching so far this year has been round robin stuff.  I haven't really done much personal stitching since January.  Frankly, I've lost my stitchy bug a bit, and the only thing that's keeping me going some months is that the RR pieces are mandatory stitching (for lack of a better word).  Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy doing (most of) them, but the motivation comes more from a sense of obligation than anything else.  I find I love planning and picking projects, but I don't have a lot of finishes lately.  I have a bad case of start-itis for sure.

So I decided a stitching challenge might be what I need to get me out of the slump.  And being the crazy person that I am, I found two.  As you probably know, tomorrow is the start of the Summer 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.  The Olympics are one of the few sports I actually enjoy watching, so I look forward to them every couple years.  So when I found two Olympic challenges on Facebook, I knew it would be perfect.

The first is Stitchlympics hosted by the Cross Stitch It's Fun! Facebook group, and the second is the Summer Olympic Challenge hosted by the Stitch Maynia Facebook group.  Both groups have an individual stitching challenge for each day of the competition.  I'm going to try and combine daily challenges wherever possible.  Stitchlympics is a team competition, so hopefully I will do well and help bring my team to victory!

So along with wanting to stitch along with the challenges I'm going to try and keep up my blogging progress every few days as this goes along.  Wish me luck!  Tomorrow (the opening ceremonies) the challenge is to stitch for at least two hours, and for Stitch Maynia, to stitch on something blue.  I think I can come up with something that meets both of those.