A New Year with New Sals and Challenges!!!

I hope everyone had a fun and safe entrance into the New Year!! We are home-bodies so we all stayed home, watched a couple movies and ate snack foods to ring in the New Year. Then we promptly went to bed!!

I had meant to get a blog post out last week of the Sals (stitch-a-longs), Qals (quilt-a-longs) and challenges that I plan to participate in this year, but I was too 'busy' resting and relaxing to get it done:) So here it is now....

Like I said in a post last week, I've been looking around for sewing/crafting/stitching/quilting/crocheting etc, challenges and Sals to participate in this year. This is my favorite part of the year, going through my stash of patterns and fabric, yarn and material. Seeing what I have and what I still really want to work on. I LOVE planning, I'm not so good at following though on my plans, but it is fun to plan anyhow:)

So far, here are the events I'm going to try and keep up with this year...

 

1. 2014 NewFO Challenge - hosted by Barbara of Cat Patches. This is a new one for me, as well as a new-ish medium. The challenge is to start a new quilted project each month and post about it the last day of the month.

2. WIPocalypse - Measi over at Measi's Musings is once again hosting WIPocalypse. This challenge started out as a tounge-in-cheek way to help us get all our stitching done before the Apocalyse happens!!! Well, of course we have all survived, but we still have stitching to do:) So this challenge continues to help us along towards more stitchy finishes!! On the full moon we are to blog our progress on whatever we happen to be stitching and link back to Measi's blog:)

  3. IHSW (International Hermit and Stitch Weekend) - This is hosted by Joysze at Random Ramblings. This challenge is a wonderful excuse to skip the housework and busy running around for one weekend a month and just sit on your duff and stitch:) Okay, in the real world, that doesn't really happen - and my hubby isn't quite sold on the skipping housework:), so for most of us it is just a way to show off whatever work we may have gotten done over the 3rd weekend of the month.

  4. Whoop Whoop Fridays hosted by Sarah Craig over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. Sarah has a link up every Friday so you can show off what you've been working on for the week. She is mostly into quilting, but says that any kind of crafting can be shown off!!

5. YOTA - hosted by Pull the Other Thread, is another tongue-in-cheek way to make fun of all the acronyms floating about cyberspace:) It stands for 'Year-of-the-Acronym. Her stitch-a-long is geared for those 'UFOs' (officially stands for 'unfinished project', but usually refers to your oldest projects that have never been finished). On the first Saturday of the month you are to pull out an old project that you still want to get done at some point, and just work on it. Then post about and link up!! I did this one last year and while I still didn't get very far on my project, it was a whole lot more than what I would have gotten done on it!!

6. Smalls Sal can be found at Stitching Lotus. This sal is about working on smaller projects, biscornus, ornaments, bookmarks, etc. Last year this sal was all about ornaments, and I'll probably stick with that this year too as I will need to get some done for Christmas (ACK!! Thinking about Christmas already!!!).

7. Christmas Through the Year hosted by Anthea at Hibiscus Stitches. This year I had to make do at Christmas by homemaking almost all the gifts that we gave. While this was a bit stressful - it wasn't until the last min that I realized that this would be necessary this year - it did take me back a bit to my childhood Christmases. You see, my dad worked construction and winter was never good for business, so while we always had amazing Christmases, our main gifts were usually hand made. My dad was good at coming up with woodworking projects for us:) After this year I would like to continue to give handmade gifts, I just wish I hadn't been so rushed this year and could have put some real thought and time into the gifts I made. And that is what I plan to do for the coming year. Take some time out each month to work on Christmas gifts so that I am not so rushed by Dec!!! And that is what this Sal is all about, work on an item for Christmas, it can be a gift or decoration, for someone else or for yourself, and post/link up on the 25th of each month.

AND - just one more I promise!!!

8. Something Old, Something New - hosted by me!!! For a few years I participated in the January Crazy Challenge. The goal of this challenge was to start a new cross stitch project everyday for the first 15 days of January and blog about them. Then you were suppose to work on the projects all year long to see how many you could get done. I did that for 2 years and I still have around 20 of those projects unfinished - and I didn't do it last year, so you can see that I didn't do very well with it!! :) It was a lot of fun to have 15 new starts, but by day 10 or so I would start to feel overwhelmed (also the cost of getting materials for all 15 projects was a little much). I do LOVE starting new projects though, so not to feel left out I've decided to make up a challenge that is a bit more do-able for me, maybe it is for you too? My challenge is to post on the first of every month an OLD project that you want to work on - maybe one you started during a previous January Crazy Challenge?!?!?, and post a NEW project you want to work on. This way you still get to start lots of projects through out the year, but they will be more spread out AND you are working on some older projects that you have lying around (here and there and everywhere!!). I will get a button and link up posted along with my OLD/NEW projects later today. Join along if you are able and we'll have lots of fun cheering each other along!!!

Okay, that was a LONG list, and I'm sure I won't be able to keep up with all of them every month, but like I said.. I LOVE TO PLAN!! :) Oh, and if anyone knows of a crochet challenge or CAL (crochet-a-long?) that is going on, please let me know about it!!!

Hope you have some fun sals and challenges planned for your year too!!!