SAGA - 30 Hours

It's been a while since I showed my progress on Long Dog Sampler's SAGA which I started at stitch Basel last September, although for much of last winter, I was pretty obsessed with it. I had that grand plan that I'd only show it here whenever I finished one of the arches, but the one I am currently working on already took me almost 20 hours - and this is the second smallest size! It is almost done now, but if I waited until the next one is done, I probably wouldn't be able to show another updates this year - so switching to ten hours chunks of stitching it is!

The arch itself is only the half-arch with the house, the second arch with the column/tower/?? is part of the 'grid' that is repeating for all the arches in one row. The next arch down the side is one of my favourites, but it's also where the sampler is supposed to be dated - and even though the pattern already reads '2027', I don't dare put that in yet! So I'll have to get creative about leaving it out and remembering to fill it in later.

 This is just 4.64% of the design, but already over 4.8k stitches! 

February Smalls SAL

Linking up with Rachel the Ten Hour Stitcher for the February edition of her Smalls SAL!

I swear I've had my entry for this SAL ready for a week, and yet here I am, posting it way late again...my blogging discipline is starting to slip again, but here we are at last! Someone, I think it was Jo, gave me the idea to pick up some of those small kits that come with cross stitch magazines, as I have several of those in my stash. I had wanted to stitch this one for ages, but as it has two seperate sides to stitch, it was always just a little big too big for when I needed a quick, small finish. Now I'm working on it during my Pen&Paper groups and progressing reasonably quickly.

This is Hetty Hedgehog from Cross Stitcher Issue 291:

As you can see, I finished one side and made a good start on the other. Hopefully, she'll be finished soon! She's very cute but I strongly dislike the floss that came with this kit. The lengths are cut WAY too short for my tastes, and I think it's 100% plastic. But it stitches up nicely enough, so I didn't bother swapping it out for such a small kit.

Possibilities - 50 Hours

This is Possibilities/Eveelutions, my currently one and only WIP by Heaven and Earth Designs. It's massive, almost 400k stitches, and at this point, I have come to terms with the fact that it is unlikely I will ever actually finish it, despute the fact I'm working this in tent stitch. However, I still love the design and enjoy working on it from time to time. It's just so fun to see the design come out of these many, many tiny stitches! So recently, I added another 50 hours, and here we are.

 

I am well into page 2 and after a LOT of confetti in the section where colours changed from green to blue, I'm now firmly into the blues, where I can stitch a good chunk with each colour I pick up, so it feels like decent progress. I can already *almost* make out Glaciana's face, and hope to pick this up one more time this year!

February WIPocalypse & my SALs for 2025

Happy February-almost-March! Time for the monthly WIPocalypse check in, and look at that, I almost made it on time this month. February was again a month that felt very long and very short at the same time, but either way, I got a good chunk of work done, so I won't be complaining! I also managed to publish my thesis so am officially a 'Dr.' now, so that's something worth celebrating (and celebrate I'll did...more to that later).

Anyway, for WIPocalypse, we have three things to talk about today, so let's get into it! First for the question of the month: What stitch-a-longs (SALs) are you participating in this year? Well, I'll assume we are talking about blog SALs, like the WIPocalypse itself. I'm just doing my usual this year, minus the WIPGO that I tried in 2024, but didn't work for me so great. Might give it another chance, but not his year! So for now we got

• Measi's WIPocalypse (duh)
• Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness
• Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery
• Rachel's Smalls SAL 

Now this is the place where I share my monthly progress on The Loneliness of Autumn - originally also a SAL with Rachel, but as we've drifted a bit apart, I'm now just going at my own pace and aiming for a finish this year! In February, I added about 1600 stitches, which was a little over 1% - new totals being 89.35% and 106,145/118,800 stitches done, and close to yet another page finish!

 

And last but not least, we got another WIPocalypse one-a-day challenge coming up in March! This is when we pick a project to put in one stitch every day during the month, and hope the one stitch will lead to more. Traditionally, I nominate my oldest WIP for this, which currently is the last of my printed tablecloth kits:

I'm not super feeling this right now, but will still try to add just a couple stitches every day to get this moving! Getting this side done would be amazing, but every stitch counts.
 

February Gifted Gorgeousness

Welcome back to my February entry to Jo's one way stop for all things gifted or giftee! And look, only one week late this month too! After a short-ish break for Christmas presents, I'm back to making gifts for all the babies in my life. Some of them are getting close to one year old already...good thing I'm making them all cuddly toys and not clothes!

This one I had actually started quite some time ago before getting side tracked, so it didn't take all that long to finish her. It's a mouse doll for one of Felix' music friends, who became a first time dad some time lat fall.

 I think at this point, I got three toys and one blanket in the pipeline, so not running out of stuff to make anytime soon...but it would be nice to be caught up again, so I can't slack off!

Queen of the Pirates - 10 Hours

Lately, I've been in a bit of a mood to just start things I've had for some time instead of saving them forever. Even if that leaves me with a couple more WIPs than I've been known to be comfortable with, what difference does it make whether it's a WIP or just sitting in my stash?

One of those projects was Queen of the Pirates, or Pirate Lady, as I lovingly call her. I've had this pattern custom made from some artwork on deviantArt that was used in one of my favourite songs on Youtube at the time. In case you are wondering, I did ask the artest for permission, which I got, but they have since deactivated their account on devianArt, so I can't link to the original artwork. The pattern was charted by the wonderful Ashley from Make it Pink, I loved it, and...just never got around to it. I even found the perfect fabric and got all the floss! 

Well, in December I finally decided this was going to get started, NOW. I got side tracked a bit with my crazy Christmas present project, but have lately picked her back up and here we are, 10 hours in.

As you can see, I started right with the most important part - her face! And it's stitching up really nicely, I'm always impressed by how smooth Ashley's use of fractional stitches makes her patterns.

So as this is a one of a kind project, here's the pattern mockup to give you an idea of where we are at. I'll try and work my way up next and then I am pretty tempted by that parrot!

I am actually really enjoying working on her, so you might see her again soon-ish...but there might well be a couple more projects coming up in the near future!
 

February Fully Finished Gallery

For February, I stitched and finish-finished two quick smalls - an evening of stitching each, and an afternoon to finish both of them into Valentine's cards!

This is the one I made for Felix - it's a freebie from Cottage Garden Samplings. It's designed in two colours, but I opted to do it all in one overdyed (a gorgeous red from xJu Design) and using gold as an accent just for the little heart.

I then cut red card, made a cut out in the right size and shape, and glued my stitching in by sandwiching it with another piece of card from the back.

 

The second card was for my best friend. It's a tiny freebie from Frosted Pumpkin stitchery (I don't think it's online, though...I picked it up from the freebie table at a retreat, it looks like a post card that comes with a purchase or something). I stitched it on some left over fabric, then just cut it to size and glued it on a card. Added some text and stickers and voilá.

 I was glad to stitch both of these patterns that I've been meaning to get to for a while, and to bring them to good use too!