WIPocalypse September Check-In

I think, thanks to randomly adding a day here and a day there in Arbitrary August, I wound up with a bunch of finishes for September.

October Word Play by Brenda Gervais (which isn't really a WIPocalypse project since I started it in September 2018 as a new start):

Mill Hill's Best Friend Santa (also not really a WIPocalypse project since it was started this year too).

Welcome Autumn by The Drawn Thread - which was a WIPocalypse project, albeit a small one. 

I also spent a few days working diligently on my Witch Way from Heaven and Earth Designs with artwork by Molly Harrison.  I do love these color so!  I moved on to page 2 of... I think... 12?  This is the mini version, but I don't think the detail is suffering a bit from being a "mini" on this one.  Absolutely LOVE working on it!

Stitching Progress

I used late June to do a bit of a check-in on my stitching projects to see where I was with regards to my goals for my yearly stitching resolutions:

I am trying to get my active WIPs down to 12 by 2019.  Good progress on that front, as I am down to 13 as of this week. I finished the stitching for the Mill Hill Buttons and Beads "Believe" Santa. It needs a press and to be fully finished, but I'm counting it as done.  Super fun to stitch, but whew - a lot of work as it has tons of beads and is basically full coverage.  I did switch out the perforated paper that came with the kit to put this on a 14-count hand-dyed Aida.  I've got some blueish-green batik fabric to back this with.  Undecided on a flat fold or a little pillow, but since I'm waiting on the fabric, I've got time to decide.

Also got my The Winter Garden back from the framer and they did an amazing job - I absolutely LOVE how this one came out.  The combo of that antique barn red mat with the slightly distressed, whitewash-looking frame absolutely delights me!  I couldn't wait until the cold weather to display this, so it's out on my sideboard already. 

My other goal was to get a page finish on all of my full coverage pieces this year too.  I've currently got 4 in progress: Winter's Encounter, Six of Swords, A Stitching Shelf, and Witch Way.  All but Witch Way have had a page finish, so I'm tackling that one next.  Here's the current progress:

I'm going to work on this for the remainder of July or until I get this page done, whichever comes first. 

I'm looking forward to taking a bit of a break from monogamous stitching to participate in Arbitrary August.  That'll be a randomly-generated WIP to work on each day in the month (minus a few days I'm on travel), so I'll be able to at least put a few stitches in multiple different pieces and should be a nice way to work towards my final goal of the year which is to touch all of my pieces at least once. 

Still on the fence about a new start for my birthday this month.  I'm so close to reaching my magic number of 12 active WIPs, I sort of hate to bump that number up again - and since I've got a couple of weeks until my birthday, I 'm going to mull it over a while longer. 

WIPocalypse June Check-In

I've worked on 3 projects since my last update.  First up, Six of Swords with artwork by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.  I'm happy to report I finished up page 1!

This is a (relatively) smaller full-sized piece.  I think it has a total of 36 pages (as opposed to 94 or some insane number in A Stitching Shelf), so 1 of 36 done!  I'm stitching this 1 over 1, full crosses on 25-guide Magic Guide with DMC.

I then decided to tackle one of my older WIPs, The Winter Garden, with pattern by the Drawn Thread. The original supply list called for NPI and Dinky Dyes silks, but I opted for Gentle Arts and Colour and Cotton hand-dyed cotton threads and I think it turned out really beautifully.  This is stitched 1 over 2 on 32-count Belfast from Wichelt in the Smokey Pearl colorway (which is the called-for fabric).   It's DONE!  So happy with how this turned out!

Right now, to finish out this last week in June, I'm working on my Desert Mandala from Chatelaine.  This shows the finished upper center landscape vignette.  I'm currently working on the upper border and the bear totem section.  I want to get the bear done before put this away for the month.  I've got backstitching in his body left to do and the backstitching that outlines the cacti and adds in the thorns on those.  Then whatever time I have left, I'll keep working on the upper right-hand border(s).  It's nice to have gotten to the upper edge of the piece so I can sort of feel like I'm now just working to complete things rather than continuing to make the piece bigger!

Weekending

We had a lovely, quiet weekend here - with actual RAIN!  We definitely could use a ton more, but every drop helps at this point and hopefully kept the fire up in the Caldara quieter than it would have been with higher temps and lower humidity.

Lizzie and I took several long, 4-5 mile walks this weekend and it was lovely to be up early and enjoying the cooler temperatures and cloudy skies.  We mostly puttered around the house, although I did meet a friend for coffee Sunday morning to celebrate her birthday, which was really nice.

This weekend I put in a fair amount of time working on a WIP that's one of my older cross-stitch works in progress: The Winter Garden.

Here's a photo of what it'll look like when it's finished (not my image - from Stitching Bits and Bobs):

On Saturday, I finished up the central house and most of the cedar tree to the right of it:

Sunday, I powered through the snowflakes in the cedar tree (which I think are getting washed out, but they are there), and then finished the two hellebore plants.

That'll leave me with the pine tree and the holly plant, and the speciality-stitch snowflakes up at the top border on this right-hand side, so I'm in the home stretch!  Still planning to try to get this finished before the end of the month! 

Weekending - Mid-June 2018

I puttered around the house this weekend, finally getting some yard things taken care of I had been wanting to get done.  I watered our big trees in the front yard (although I've been keeping up with that each weekend during our current drought, as I really do not want to lose our two big ponderosas), put mulch down around the stairs to the back deck, replaced a few numbers on our mailbox post that had fallen off and did a bit of weeding.  I think the plan for the terraced section by the back deck stairs will be to put in a large raised bed with some perennials (herbs maybe?), and then plant daylilies around the base of that to have a 2-height feature back there.  I'd love to have a little fountain as well but I suspect we'd have the mule deer standing on the back deck trying to drink out of it if we did.

Otherwise, I hung out with this pretty girl - went for a couple of runs together, and then holed up in the nice cool downstairs of the house.

I did a bunch of knitting, none of which I can show you since it's all deadline/design knitting, but I did put a WIP stitching project back onto the frame to work on.  This is one of my older WIPs - The Winter Garden, design by The Drawn Thread.  I was just shy of the halfway mark when I quit working on it - and I don't think I've put any stitches into it in about a year.  Here's my starting point on Friday night. (Please ignore the wrinkles.  I had it just loosely put on the scroll rods at this point.)

And my progress on the house at the end of the weekend.

I finished up the front door, added some more windows and the ivy, started the roofline with snow and the smoke from the chimney, as well as the topiaries flanking the front door and the cardinal on the roof.  I'm out of both the Chalk (the white) and Blue Spruce (dark green for the roof and windows), so I ordered another skein of each of those yesterday, but I'll move on to finishing up the Heath plants under the empty windows and keep moving to the right while I wait for those to arrive.  I have 4 plant/trees to complete on the right to finish this one up: Heath, Cedar, Pine and Holly, and my plan is to just keep working on this one until it's done!

Stitching Thursday: January 26, 2017

Here's my progress on various and sundry things this past week:

I put about 900+ stitches into my Decorating the Wreath by Heaven and Earth Designs.  It now looks like this:

I watched a really helpful tutorial on YouTube by Pam of Pam's Crafty Corner about working a single color of thread cross-country per page, and the lightbulb went off for me, so I'm going to try working the remainder of the page in this fashion.  It seems to speed up the stitching (or at least it appears that way), since you aren't changing out colors and starting/stopping threads as much this way.  I figure it's worth a try to see if I can make some more focused progress on this piece.

I'm also thinking of switching up my rotation going forward in February, and making this my focus for a finish piece by working on it during Fri/Sat/Sun of every week, and then keeping the other 3 projects I've got going on a weekly rotation for the other 4 days.  It will mean those other projects won't potentially get finished as quickly, but it will mean I will finish this one up faster (that's my hope anyway!).  I'm going to give it a bit more thought, but I'm leaning towards that.

This week in my current rotation was time to work on The Drawn Thread's Winter Garden.  When I last worked on it, I had finished page 1 of 3 (with a bit more on page 4, but not a full page), and here's where I am on it currently (about halfway through page 2).  The center of the design is the middle of the red door (located over the word "winter" pictured below).

I'd thought I'd get through most of page 2 while it was out for rotation this week, but the house is taking a lot longer to complete than I thought it would, so likely that won't happen.  I'll have another day or two to work on it, but then it'll go away for another couple of weeks until I rotate back to it in February.

Next week part #2 of the Under the Sea SAL comes out on February 2nd, and this Friday the next clue in the Welcome mystery SAL will be released as well, so I'll have those to work on here in the short term.