Progress Update: Day 22 of the Crazy January Challenge

Well, so far I'm keeping up well with the solo day progress reports.  Although I know that since the weekends I don't have internet, I will still have an awfully long update on Monday. 

Yesterday was Day 22, and as expected I did go with a Mill Hill start.  This is Mum Bouquet:

This is another one of the kits I mentioned like yesterday that weren't originally on my Crazy list, but got bumped there when we found out the dates for our trip.  The goal is to finish it in time to give for a present when we go, then I don't have to pay shipping later.  I got most of the stems done yesterday, which is pretty much all that will be there for that dark green color.  There will be a LOT of beading on this one, since most of the petals are made up of bead loops. 

I'm going to try and schedule my progress post for today's project later tonight before I go internet-less for the weekend, so that's one last update I have to lump into Monday's post.  Wish me luck!

Free Pattern Friday: February Violets

Today's free cross stitch pattern is another installment in the Flower of the Month series by EMS that are part of the 2015 SAL I'm hosting.  If you want to come join us, all the signup info can be found here.

With just over a week until January is over (yikes! how time flies...) it's time to post the link to the next flower featured for February in the SAL.  So you can start planning now if you're going to start it next month.  :)  For everyone who is still working on January (like me) don't forget to do your progress posts at the end of the month!

February's flower is violets, so there's lots of pretty purples to go with the green leaves this month.  In addition to being February's birth flower, according to Google violets signify faithfulness and humility, and are also the state flower for Illinois, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.

Head over to the EMS Designs website to download February's free cross stitch pattern, and join our SAL if you're interested.  Look for March's pattern to be posted in a couple weeks.

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.

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: Days 16-20 of the Crazy January Challenge

Hope everyone had a nice weekend.  It was a long holiday weekend for us here in the US, so I'm back today on a Tuesday with my long update from my (internet-less) weekend instead of a Monday.  Once again, this is long and picture heavy, so you've been warned.

Last week was the week of the My Little Pony projects, so Friday had a bit of progress on Apple Jack (again, only a sneak peek right now because it's for a gift):

Saturday I had a busy day of working on unpacking boxes, so I didn't get much stitching done, just about two rows:

The lighting was really wonky when I took this picture, sorry.  The fabric is normal white aida, not blue.  This is called Cat Lady Kit and is a pattern from dailycrossstitch.com.  The two rows I got done are part of the top of a cardboard box flap.  It eventually will be the whole box with three different cats sitting in it.  Nice, easy pattern, just didn't have time to do more yet.

Sunday I knew I would have a little more time, so I got this done while watching rerun of Agent Carter and then Galavant.  Luckily, no frogging this time.

This is an old pattern from a back issue of CrossStitcher magazine.  Unfortunately I don't remember which issue off the top of my head, and I don't have it in front of me to look up.  I don't even know the official name of the pattern, but in my head I'm calling it the Purple Paisley project.  Can you tell the English major likes alliteration?  It is on Lavender aida, and so far, yes, I've only stitched with purple DMC, so the progress is kind of hard to distinguish. 

Monday (yesterday) I had off from work, but the rest of my family did not, so I took the opportunity of an empty house to work on a (maybe) Christmas present for my Mom.  It will be a maybe depending on if I get it done by December this year or not.  This is also from a back issue of CrossStitcher.  I am not posting the official name here, since it will give away what it is for now and I'm not sure if Mom reads the blog or not.  So if you read this Mom, fess up so I know to hide it better in the future.  For myself, I'm calling this one Polka Dot Bouquet.

Got a nice start on a couple of the leaves yesterday before I went back to unpacking boxes and organizing again. This is on light blue aida (yes, actually blue this time).  The pattern calls for it to be on white aida with blue polka dots, but since that is a little hard to source in the US right now, I went for the light blue option instead.  This is my second project on the blue aida, the first being the Gingerbread Houses SAL project from last week.

In other stitching news from this weekend, I have another finish for 2015!  I was finally able to get Giraffe Mitten finished, so it's now on its way to become part of a quilt for World of Charity stitching. 

I was so glad to get this done, because it's actually a bit late, but being sick right after Christmas just threw me for a loop stitching-wise, and I've been behind ever since.

Onto today's progress... So during lunch I went ahead and started up the last of the MLP patterns, the final member of the "mane six" Fluttershy:

For some reason, I decided to start with her mane instead of her tail like the others.  *shrug*  Go figure.  Fluttershy is my favorite of the group, so I will enjoy this one.

So, what will tomorrow's stitching adventure be?  Guess we'll find out what I pull out of the box tomorrow!

Progress Update: Day 14 & 15 of the Crazy January Challenge

Well, I meant to get this post up on Thursday, but sadly I had to stay home from work that day due to a huge migraine I woke up with first thing in the morning.  Ugh.  And still no internet out at the farm, so if I'm stuck at home = no blogging. 

So for Day 14 and Day 15, I have updates on two more of the My Little Pony patterns.  Again, can't show you the whole thing yet, since they are for a gift and I don't want to risk them being seen early, but here's a sneak peek. 

Here's the beginnings of Twilight Sparkle's blue tail:

And the beginnings of Pinky Pie's tail.  Have to say I loved stitching the curls on this one. 

Someone asked what kind of fabric I was using on my last update post.  These are stitched on 14 count white plastic canvas, 3 over 1.  The plan is to turn them into magnets, so I needed something that was sturdy enough to stand on it's own, and believe it or not the plastic was cheaper than the perforated paper. 

Also, you may notice both are mostly half crosses.  I forgot to mention this in another post earlier, but a lot of my progress pictures have shown only half crosses.  That's because I'm a firm cross country stitcher, and I also on top of that have a weird habit of doing outlines/blocks of color all in one direction and then filling them in with the other direction once the whole block/outline has been done.  So these projects aren't all meant to be half crosses, they're just not that far along yet.  :)

The nice thing about staying home with a migraine is that once my excedrin kicks in enough to take the edge of the pain, I can do some limited activities (as long as they don't involve moving much).  Perfect for stitching.  So I did have the chance to work on the Giraffe Mitten piece I'm doing for World of Charity Stitching.  Here's where the progress from the first half of the week had left me:

And then the progress as of last night.  I just have a bit more yellow to finish filling in and then backstitching the border, and then it will be off to its new home to be sewn into a quilt with its brothers and sisters.  I'm hoping I'll get it finished soon, since it is a bit late (oops). 

The other nice thing about staying home with a migraine is that kitties will insist on keeping you company.  As long as you feed them, they'll curl up in a nice quiet ball with you while you're stitching. 

He is fast asleep and snoring in the picture.  Hmm, maybe I'm posting too many cat pictures lately.  Can you tell he's my baby?  :)

I will probably be back with another super long update on Monday with this weekend's progress.  Until then, happy stitching to everyone!

Free Pattern Friday: Happy Winter

Well, we're continuing with the non-English language blog theme for today's free cross stitch pattern.  But it was just too cute to not share. 

Today's pattern comes from a blog called Crocette Stregate, which I think is written in Italian?  If you scroll all the way to the bottom of this post, you'll find this adorable pattern of a cat dressed up in winter woolens, with the words "Happy Winter" at the bottom.  Which although the blog is in another language, the pattern is in English?  *shrug*  Whatever, it's super cute, so it's all worth it.  :)

This pattern is in picture format, and it has both symbols and a color guide contained in the picture itself, but it's a little small.  I found that clicking on the picture to enlarge it and then saving still made it a little small to see the individual symbols and key.  I solved this by doing it this way (in Firefox browser): Right click on the picture and choose "Open link in new tab" from the drop down menu that appears.  In the new tab, click on the picture once when the magnifying glass with the "+" in the middle appears to enlarge the picture.  Then save it to your computer.  That should make it big enough to see all the details of the pattern.

You can find the chart picture for this free cross stitch pattern on the blog, all the way at the bottom of this 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.

Progress Update: Day 12 & 13 of the Crazy Challenge

Yes, you read that right.  I have an update on the 13th day of progress, actually posted on the 13th!  That's because I managed to get today's start done at lunchtime and I know I won't be doing more on it today because I need to get back to Giraffe Mitten. 

Sadly, don't get too excited about the on time update because I can't actually show you much of today's (or yesterday's) progress.  This week I am planning on working on my patterns of the My Little Pony "mane six".  But they are for someone who occasionally reads this blog so I can only offer you a small sneak peek at my progress.

Here is a sample of what Rainbow Dash has so far

And here is a small bit of Rarity so far

Sorry for the kind of weird pictures, for some reason the lighting is a little wonky in these.  

Of course, if any of you are part of the CrossstichCrazy2015 or Debbie's Ultimate Crazy January Challenge 2015 (DUCJC2015) groups on Facebook, I've linked both group names above to my progress post in each group where I show the full pictures of my progress so far.  But you'll have to be members of the group to see them I think. 

Not that I've gotten a huge amount done on each one so far.  Just about 20-30 minutes each during my lunch break for the past two days.  Why do things always come up on the days I want to spend hours stitching?!?!?!?

So the plan for the rest of this week is to stick with the ponies, unless something else comes up in the meantime.