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!

Free Pattern Friday: Cup of January

We are now full and well into January, so I found a fun January themed free cross stitch pattern to show you today.

Continuing with the snowman theme and the "I love monthly patterns" themes from last week, and well, did I mention I also love teacup designs?  This is a freebie is called A Cup of January and was designed by Gloria, who posted it on her blog back in 2012.  I'm not an expert on language, but it appears she writes her posts in German Italian?, English, and French.  But don't quote me on that.

Head over to her blog to download the PDF pattern for this super cute and simple free cross stitch pattern.  The link to the PDF is at the very bottom of the post. 

Happy stitching!


If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts.

The Brownie of Brownie's Chair

I should be posting a progress update for Day 8 of the crazy challenge, but I forgot to take a picture of the progress I made, so it will have to wait until Monday (still no internet at the farm, so I will have to do a group update once again). 

In the meantime, I thought I would so you a picture of my blog's namesake.  Brownie's Chair is named after my cat Brownie, who would always sit on my lap when I sat in a particular chair.  Here's a pic of him being silly with a laundry basket:

Just showing off my baby.  :)  It's not the best picture, but the silly cat never wants to sit still when I get the camera out (how does he know?) and so most of my pictures of him are blurry action shots. 

Have a good weekend everyone, and I'll be back with more crazy challenge updates on (hopefully) Monday!

Progress Update: Crazy January Challenge Days 6-7

So after my last big long post for the beginning of the crazy challenge, I'm going to try and break things up a bit more.  Sadly, my week has been turning out to be just as crazy as last week, so there continues to be not much time for stitching.  Oh well, I'm making the best of it. 

The majority of stitching time for both Day 6 and Day 7 were spent finishing the frame of my Frosted Pumpkin 12 Days of Christmas that I mentioned in my last post.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture before I sent it off.  So my project is  now making its way to Texas to be worked on by its first guest stitcher.  And hopefully I will get mine from England soon. 

So onto my latest two updates.  Sorry for the not-so-great pictures, I took these pictures at work and the fluorescent lighting looks wonky.  

January 6th was Tuesday, so I had to finish Frosted Pumpkin, plus it was the premiere of Agent Carter on ABC, which cut into stitching time a bit.  So I decided to go small and put a few stitches in one of my Mill Hill ornament kits for this next Christmas. 

This is called Love Potion Number 9.  I will be editing it a bit to better fit the person I am giving it to.  The ornaments went over so well with my aunt's family that now other family members are asking for them, so this is one of 6 I for sure plan on doing this year. 

January 7th, yesterday, was hard because Wednesdays are always my long day of the week since I have my young single adult scripture study group after work, and we hang out and have food afterwards (plus then an hour drive back home).  So I opted to start a bit of another Mill Hill kit in the spare time I did have for stitching.  This one is called Stars and Stripes.

As you can see, neither has a lot of progress (only about 15 minutes worth of stitching) but something is better than nothing!  Not sure what tonight will bring, but today's stitching is a WIP (finally), so I can actually feel more productive!  Then it's back to Giraffe Print Mitten which I still need to finish ASAP...

Progress Update: Christmas Gifts and Crazy January Challenge Days 1-5 (Long and Picture Heavy)

I was finally able to remember to take pictures last night of what I've been doing, so it's time to post a few updates, mostly for the Crazy January challenge.

First off were the Mill Hill kits I was finishing up for Christmas presents for my aunt and her family.  I did manage to finish them a few days before Christmas, so that was good.  So Tropical Kitty, Provence Rooster, Hot Stuff, Be Merry, and Teton Santa have been moved to my 2014 finishes page. 

The bad news about that is that I completely forgot to take pictures of them before I gave them for Christmas.  Oops!  Luckily 3 of them were still on the tree when I went over to my aunt's for New Year's Eve, so I managed to grab a picture of those ones.

I already posted a finish picture for Tropical Kitty, but here it is hanging among the branches and lights:

And Teton Santa (so much beading, but turned out pretty good):

And Hot Stuff, pretty much the easiest project of the 5:

I am still trying to get pics for Be Merry and Provence Rooster, but for now you'll just have to use your imagination. 

So that updates me up until the end of the year.  Well, then starting January 1st, I started on my Crazy January Challenge, which is to start/work on 31 different projects, one for each day in January.  Unfortunately, my plans I originally posted about have already changed, since I've had a couple projects I thought I would get done after above ornaments and before the end of the year.  Needless to say they didn't get done as planned, so now I'm shuffling my Crazy projects a bit.  But that's okay, I'm just going to spill over into February a bit (haha).

So onto my daily updates, since the lack of internet access has put me behind on reporting a bit.

For January 1st, I spent the morning making a big breakfast for my cousin and my brother, and then we went to go see Into the Woods in theaters (which I highly recommend, by the way).  Then the afternoon was spent preparing for a date (yay!) so needless to say, I didn't get home until 10:00 and I didn't get much stitching done.  Since it was the start of the year, I decided to pull out my January start for the 2015 Flower of the Month SAL I'm hosting this year.  Since it was so late, I only got a bit done:

And by a bit I mean like 7 stitches.  But hey, I finished one color block, so there you go.  I plan on picking this one up again before the month is over.  

January 2nd was the first of the imposing projects I mentioned. I needed to finish my mitten squares I am stitching for World of Charity Stitching.  I started with Leopard Print Mitten, since that's the one I had started already.  This one was a WIP, so this is where I started:

And after several good hours of stitching, I was able to scrape out a finish:

My first finish of 2015!  It is VERY unusual for me to have something done so early, even if it's something small.  But oh well, it's a finish.  So happy dance anyway.  So Leopard Print Mitten has been moved to my brand new 2015 finishes page. 

January 3rd I spent most of the day trying to unpack boxes, and we also had a massive rainstorm/tornado watch that meant we spent several hours sheltering/trying to entertain our sister missionaries.  So my stitching plans kind of went out the window.  But I did manage to start Giraffe Print Mitten, which is the second of my mitten squares for World of Charity Stitching:

Doesn't look like much so far, but hopefully I'll get a good chance to work on it this week and finish it off. 

January 4th was Sunday, and my brother's family birthday party, so again a short stitching day.  Also, it was the season premiere of Galavant, which I enjoyed immensely, but didn't get much stitching on during it.  But I did get one ring done in my Rainbow Mandala square.  This is a freebie pattern that I'm changing the colors on, also a project for World of Charity Stitching (notice a theme going on)?

January 5th, yesterday, was a start on Frosted Pumpkin's 12 Days of Christmas pattern.  I'm doing a Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin through a group on Facebook, and this is my pattern I'm sending out.  I'm doing the border of the piece before it leaves, and each member of the group will complete a different square from the pattern until it eventually makes it way back to me.  So I got a good start on the border, which hopefully I can finish tonight really quick. 

Don't know what will be for tonight's stitch, other than there probably won't be a ton of progress made on it.  Mostly because I need to finish the above border and mitten (not to mention the Rainbow Mandala) soonish, so those will take precedence over anything new.  So my new start may look like the January Carnations one up there.  Only like 7 stitches.  But I am determined to start something at least!

January 2015 WIPocalypse

Well, happy 2015 everyone.  I'm back at work, which means that I have internet access once again.  Welcome to my new followers too, it's always good to see new faces.  :)

I need to update you all on my progress for the Crazy January Challenge... unfortunately I was a dork and forgot to take pictures before coming to work, so I don't have anything to show to you today.  Oh well.  I guess I will have to do a Day 1 - Day 5 update tomorrow instead.

But onto the reason for today's post.  It's the first full moon of January, so it's time for the first check in for WIPocalypse 2015.  

This month's topic is: Introduce yourself, your projects, and any goals you have for the year!

So my name is Alyssa (for those of you who didn't know already), I am a California girl who has recently moved to Mississippi to start a new chapter in my life.  I'm in my 20s, never married, no kids, unless you count my furbaby Brownie, who this blog is named after.  Hmmm, I guess I need to post pictures of him sometime.

Okay, so stitching goals of 2015.  I've already posted a little bit about this, so I'm just going to summarize here.

1.  Keep up (at least starting-wise) with the 2015 Flower of the Month SAL I'm hosting. 

2.  Keep up with the Crazy January Challenge.  Doing okay on that one so far.  Not getting a lot of progress done, but keeping up so far. 

3.  Keep up with my other SALs I've signed up for this year.

4.  Work on all 10 Turtle Trot 2015 pieces. 
 
5.  Finish my Frosted Pumpkin Round Robin piece when it comes back to me later this year.  I am doing the 12 Days of Christmas pattern, and there will be 2 or 3 blocks plus the border left to finish when it comes back to me.  I'd like to get finish my part of it before the end of the year once I get it back. 

6.  In addition to finishing/working on the 31 pieces from my Crazy Challenge, I would also like to start my Thanksgiving Table Runner, Oh Holy Night ABC sampler, Antique Shoe Collection, and if I can afford it later on in the year, Frosted Pumpkins' Storytime Sampler. 

Free Pattern Friday: Happy Everything

Well, happy first Friday in 2015 everybody.  Today's free cross stitch pattern feature is a big one, so this is a perfect project to take on for the new year.

Even though most people think of snowmen as a Christmas thing, when I was going to school in Idaho it was actually much colder in January, so I think of snowmen more as a January thing.  And if you haven't noticed already, I love holiday/monthly patterns.  So when I found this one called Happy Everything that combines the two, I thought it would make a perfect new year project. Designed by by Lois Winston, it's a whopping 20" x 5" when stitched on 14-count fabric.

You can find this on FreePatterns.com (you'll have to create a free account in order to download the pattern).   Once registered and logged in, you can download the PDF of this free cross stitch pattern.

Happy stitching in the new year everyone!


If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts.