The Delicate Cardigan

I feel like I'm always telling you guys how much knitting and crochet I am doing, but don't always update you on what I actually knit and crochet - sorry about that! A big part of the reason is issues with taking pictures - with knit garments, there often isn't a ton of progress visible until it's done, and then you need to wear it and get good lighting to get decent pictures - definitely a two person job! I'll try to get better at updating you though, and maybe find out a good way to take progress pictures too.

For now, I have a finish to report - you might remember the cardigan I started last summer? It's been finished, and finish-finished, and blocked and washed and today I finally got around to taking pictures!

I'm really happy with how this turned out, it's comfy and warm, fits well and I love the colour. It was quite a big project because it was a pretty thin yarn, so it took some time, and I was happy to finally finish it - in time for when the air conditioning goes on in my office, I'll need something warm then!

So that has kept me busy for some time...I got another finish to share, and then a couple WIPs I'll try to get pictures of eventually. But don't worry, a stitching update is coming up as well!

May Fully Finished Gallery

Linking up with Rachel for this monthly SAL of 'doing something with your stitched pieces except for putting them in a folder'...

Another month has passed that I barely touched my sewing machine...it's alright though, because I got an other finish-finish that I am very proud of, it just didn't require any sewing! It did, however, involve one of the oldest pieces in my folder of shame.

Last Christmas, I got a gift set from Rituals (shower gel, body loion and such) that came in a very nice box. I knew I wanted to use the box for something, but it took a while until inspiration struck. Here it is, before I started:

Eventually, I figured out what I was going to do, because the lid had just the right size for this Christmas tree I stitched many many years ago!

Can you tell already? I ended up covering the whole box in Christmas fabrics (using a ton of double sided tape and even some spray on glue) and put my stitching on the lid!

I'm very happy with how it turned out. This will hold my stitched Christmas ornaments and some other decorations that life in an old shoe box for now. Much more in style, isn't it? The stitching itself isn't perfect and there is bit of a permanent crease that, after almost 20 years, I couldn't quite get out, but this way it is still useful and I don't have to be too crazy about keeping it absolutely prestine at all times. I'm pretty happy with my finish and plan to make another one - I got one more sturdy box and a piece to go on the lid, but I haven't found the right fabric yet so it will have to wait a while longer. Still, one down in my folder of finishes!

May WIPGO

Well, I know May is halfway gone already, but I was thinking about what to do about my WIPGO. In my last post I wrote about how my stitching bug had been a bit absent in April, replaced by lots of knitting and crochet, but I think part of it was that both in February and March, I had a WIPGO project I brought close to a finish, then had to put away again just when I was getting into the groove. And Jacquie, which came up in April, was shaping up to be another one on that list, so I was reluctant to pick it up. To be honest, I am still not too sure what to do about it, but the May picks were a bit different, so that gives me another month to figure things out, I guess! I have since started two SALs (one was the Book of Fungi, the other one is a Faby Reilly I'll show you soon) and that has revived my urge to stitch, so what does that say about me? I think I might just not be cut out to adhere to a stitching schedule very closely, I need the flexibility to change my plans throughout the year...

Anyways, the one WIPGO goal I did meet in April was 10 hours on Guardian of Wayfarers, which brought me here (and several new 'zeros' on Cross Stitch Saga as I finished up colours)! I added 1496 stitches for a new total of 66.6%.

 

For May, the numbers called were 5, 19 and 13. 13 is the 'free spot' in the middle of the board, so there was an extra number called. I had put 'new start' for this and while I was planning to start Greenhouse of Oddities when the number came up, I substituted for the Book of Fungi SAL since the first part was released last week and I really, really wanted to start it right away! The other numbers equals two appearances of Guardian of Wayfarers, so I'll try and make some decent headway on him. 

Other than that we'll see if I get back to Jackquie, and I should also work on my small and TLoA but...SALs! Sigh. Days are just too short...

April WIPocalypse

Another month down, another WIPocalypse...this one is going to be a short one, though. Why? Well, to be honest...I haven't been stitching a whole lot in April, and haven't touched The Loneliness of Autumn, my main WIPocalypse piece, even once since the last checkin! One reason for that being that I am firmly stuck in my yarncrafts at the moment, doing a log of knitting and crochet (I just never seem to remember to show those until they are done!), and the other having to do with a bit of personal frustration...I'm still working out what exactly has been putting me off, but will probably talk about it more in my upcoming WIPGO post. Anyways! That's a whole lot of words just to say I am alive and well, just not stitching a whole lot at the moment.

So for this post, I'll only be talking about the question of the month, and keep it short. The question for April was Which designers have you discovered lately? While I haven't actually stitched any new designers lately, I did sign up for a SAL that starts soon and that I am very excited about, and by a new-to-me designer - Living on the Rainbow. Their Ets-shop has a ton of cute designs, but their specialty are 3D cross stitch designs that are finished in really fun ways, including the Witches library, a series of little stitched books. I will be stitching the newest edition in this series, the Book of Fungi, when it starts releasing later this week:

Maybe this will help me get out of my stitching slump! I ordered the kit (everything you need to stitch and finish, minus the threads itself) from Lady Ravenga because it came with these cute metal book corners and an adorable mushroom charm as well as some fabrics for finishing, and was reasonably priced. If it's as much fun as it looks, I might get the other books at a later date, but for now, fungi it is!

April Smalls SAL

Last Friday was the check in for the Aprils Smalls SAL as hosted by the wonderful Rachel this year - and I am definitely getting closer! For this SAL, I am stitching the Little Sheep Virtues series by LittleHouseNeedlewords this year, and in April I finished #5, Faith.

Now I am not quite sure why there is a giant carrot growing out of the roof of that house, but the little black sheep is very cute, don't you think?

April Gifted Gorgeousness

Here we go for the April installment of Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness - as you might be able to tell, I'm getting caught up, with the distance between link up dates and my actual posting getting slightly shorter, haha.

I'm still working on my granny square baby blanket - getting a little antsy to get this one done as I have so many other babies I should start crafting for, but most of the things I'm planning to make should still be welcome once the litle ones are a couple months old, so as long as I can finish everything this year I should be fine.

For this month, I finished the last of the squares, wove in all the ends, and started joining them. I spent some time finding a pleasing layout, trying to create a bit of a colour gradient. I've now assembled the squares into three long stripes, so I can move them without using the layout, but they still need a ton more joins to make an actual blanket!

I've also had a new vacation start - I project I've been meaning to start for a while, as the yarn was a Christmas gift from my husband. But actually starting required casting on 509 stitches and that just seemed too daunting a task! Perfect to tackle when I had some more time, though, so I did and got the first 10 rows or so in. It's going to be a massive shawl, called Blanket to Go because that's basically what it is, but right now it looks like some green worm of sorts:

It's not all green, though - I did a little colour swatch before I started, to demonstrate the gradient I'm planning:

Probably going to take me a while for sheer size, but I'm looking forward to getting all the colours in there!

April Fully Finished Gallery

Hi, it's me! Still behind and still fighting my sewing machine, but slowly getting there. Today I am checking in (once again, very late) with Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery, where we attempt to do something with all these pieces lurking in our treasure chests and boxes of shame.

Last month I shared my struggles with finishing the second one of the Little Sheep Values. They have been continuing, but after some more sewing and unsewing and cutting and measuring I've come to a couple conclusions:

1) It's a bit of a curse that the first one I finished came out so neat and perfect because

2) I probably don't have the sewing skills yet to make 12 identical pillows and finally

3) I'm probably okay with that.

My first concession was to get some different kinds of lace - I didn't have enough of the original one for 12 pillows anyway - so they'd all look a little different because of that alone. Then, after I had sewn, frogged and resewn Courage just to discover it was still a bit wonky and I probably wouldn't be able to fix it cause I had made a mistake with cutting, I had a good long think and realized - it's okay. I finished Hope next, and for that one I had to do the centering of the stitched piece differently anyways because it has a big button right in the corner, and now that there are three (and not just one perfect and one wonky one) I'm feeling more at ease with them. I will continue to practice, but if in the meantime not everything comes out perfect, I will accept it - how else am I going to make progress? So here we have LSV #1, #2 (finished two months ago) and #4. I'll try to re-finish #3 Peace and #5 (which I am currently stitching) for next month.