WIPocalypse - November 2014

 

WIPocalyspe is a monthly challenge to get work (any amount!!) done on our stitching:) It is hosted by Measi over at Measi's Musings. You are welcome to jump in and join along at any time.

A little late on this posting. I've been busy, busy stitching and knitting away. And that really is the best kind of 'busy'!! I've been in an Autumn/Holidays mode this past couple of weeks between working on a scarf to keep myself warm and working on ornaments for myself and as gifts. So I decided to switch gears for a bigger project(s) as well and I pulled out some older charts to work on.

 

These are both from Prairie Schooler and I think I started both of them back in 2011!! Yikes,  I guess it's time to work on them again:) 

Hoping to make some good progress on both of these this month as well as get a couple gifts worked on. It's that time of year for frantic stitching!! I enjoy it though, so I guess it's not too much of an inconvenience. :0)

WIPocalypse - October 2014

Hosted by Measi at Measi's Musings

Just a quick update on what I'm spending most of my free time on right now (of course I have lots of little things I'm doing too:).

I'm working away at my LOVEQUILTS project. Remember this is what it will be...

 

I only show this to you because it looks nothing like this right now:)

 

And this is where I was before...

 

 And where I am now...

 

Yeah, it's going to take a while!! It's coming along, but super slow and there are SO MANY color changes!! Thankfully there is very little in the way of half stitches or back stitching so that will help quite a bit:)

WIPocalypse for Sept 2014

Don't know what WIPocalypse is? Just click this button!!

I not only got some stitching done to show off for this month's WIPocalypse, but I have a FINISH!!! Okay, so I only had just a little stitching left to do on it, and it's been in my WIP pile for several years now, but a finish it is!!!

'America' from Little House Needleworks

I can finally check this one off my list!! That feels so good, but also kinda feels like I need to start a new one!! :) Hope to get this one framed rather quickly. I have just the place for it in my kitchen.

Off to check what others have gotten done:)

WIPocalypse Aug 2014

It's been ages since I've participated in this, but I think it's about time I got involved with some challenges again!! The coming of Autumn always puts me in the creative mood, even if we haven't seen the temps drop down yet:)

If you don't know what WIPocalypse is, then head over to Measi's Musings and read about it, then join in if you'd like!!! It really is just motivation for finishing some of our oldest or biggest projects.

And this time I have one of my oldest (at least the oldest that I'm still interested in getting finished). This one is 'America' from LHN and I think I started on this one about 4 years ago. I'll put a few stitches in it every couple of months, but I would really like to get this one finished and framed.

January 2014 WIPocalypse

Whew!!! Just getting this posted on time!!! This is the first WIPocalypse post of the year and I didn't want to miss it. If you want to learn more about it or want to join in, visit Measi at Measi's Musings and get in on the fun!!

I've been working on my hubby's friend's baby blanket and then I started feeling a bit under the weather this week, so my stitching time has been little-to-none lately. I wanted to have a bit more done on this from last month's posting!! So between doing school with dd, taking a nap and trying to catch up on the dishes (I failed that one!!), I stitched and stitched today. It was nice to get back to it after a little over a month of working on Christmas gifts and crocheting the baby blanket.

This is my current progress on Candamar Designs 'Police Officer.' This is a block for LoveQuilts and will go to a young man who's father is a police officer, and had been in the military before. The young man requested anything military or having to do with police officers:)

 

I really need to stitch quick on this one and the next as well. They are both due in on Feb 1st!!! ACK!!! But I'm almost done with the motorcycle which is the hardest part and the next one I'm doing only has words, no pictures so it should be real quick. So I guess you know what I'll be stitching on for the next couple of weeks:) 

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!!!

 

December WIPocalypse

A day to two late:) Not much to show off this month, and that's really sad since it's been a couple months since I've blogged a WIPocalypse post!! Right now I am working on the first of what will be two blocks made from the same pattern. This is for LoveQuilts and is for a young man who's father is a police officer, of course this means the young man is very interested in the police theme too:)

I rearranged the moffits for this block because another stitcher also signed up for this pattern too, but it wasn't noticed until after we both had the pattern in hand. So I said I could play with it and make it look a bit different. The second block I am going to make with this pattern will have just the words placed randomly. Sometimes we have a hard time finding suitable patterns for the kids and need to make some changes so we can make sure to have enough blocks for each child's quilt.

I have been busy here lately with other things too, but most of it is Christmas gifts, and since I have a pesky SIL (Marianne) who sometimes checks on my blog, I can't show off what I am making yet:)  As soon as I get the Christmas things all done and gifted to their rightful owners, I'll show off what I've been up to.

Late June WIPocalypse

WIPocalypse is hosted by Measi over at Measi's Musings.

 

A rather dark photo of what I've been stitching on lately. Ever since I put curtains up a few weeks ago, I can't get enough light in the living room to get a good pic. If it weren't so windy outside I would have taken the picture out there, cats and all. But it is super windy today and I didn't want to have to chase after my stitching projects, though I'm sure the cats would have helped me out!!! :)

 

From the top left hand corner, clock wise:

1. A little more progress on my bird embroidery.
2. Prairie Schooler's Spring Ornie (the 2nd time around)
3. A bit of a Christmas project I started this week. (From Glory Bee found in the 2010 Ornament issue of Just Cross Stitch mag)
4. A bit of the 2nd girl in a blue dress that will become a needle book.

It seems like I've been stitching lots and lots, but it doesn't look like I have, does it? Hmm, will have to get busy on these today!! :)

March WIPocalypse update

It's that time of the month again. No, not THAT time of the month, but rather time for a WIPocalypse update:) Since I had so many starts earlier this month and I've been working on them a bit here and there, it didn't seem as if I had much to show off. However I did just finish (as of this morning:), this block entitled 'Lovebirds' from Midsummer's Night Designs. This is a freebie and will be used for a bird themed block exchange. I have actually stitched this up before, I think this is the third time I've stitched this one, and so far I haven't kept even one of them. Maybe I'll need to stitch it up one more time, but for myself this time!!

 

 

This one is La D Da's 'Live, Laugh, Love' and a group of ladies and I, 5 of us in all, are doing this one as a round robin project. We each chose our own thread colors we wanted to use and stitched a section of our choice on our own project and then switched them out and stitched a section on the next persons' project. So this one belongs to my SIL, Marianne Meyer of Midnight Stitching, and the top section is what I stitched for her. It is now ready to be mail out to the next person. This is my first round robin to participate in and it has really been fun. I am hoping not to see a pic of my project until I get it in the mail and it is all finished. I want to be surprised!! 

 

 

 

 

And tomorrow is my 'Finish It Friday' Challenge. I've been looking through my stitching cabinet to find what I plan get get finished off so I can post on it tomorrow. I am hoping to get my March ornie done and if I can I think that the P.S. winter and spring ornies will be what gets finished off. Then the whole set will be completely finished!!! :) If you want information on what 'Finish It Friday' is and how to join in, click on the button above and it *should* take you to my page that give all the details:)

 

 

February's WIPocalypse Progress

Finally showing off my WIPocalypse progress for the month. I really had hoped to be able to show off a finish tonight, but alas, this is the project without end!! :) I even had all kinds of time on my hands with the 2nd snowstorm to blow through in the last 2 weeks. I always find it hard to get into my routine when my hubby is home though, so instead of stitching away, hubby and I watched movies and talked and I even got a nap in today.

 

The picture above is from the last time I posted it, about a week ago during the IHSW.

 

 

And this is my progress as of this afternoon. All the stitching is done now and some of the outlining. Just a bit more outlining and I'll be finished with this one. I really like how it has turned out and I think the little 5 year old boy whom this will go to - via LoveQuilts - will like it too. 

1st WIPocalypse of 2013

For the past month I've had all sorts of time for stitching. As expected though, as soon as I got the go ahead to drive, I've had much less time at home for myself. I was really hoping not to resume the running quite as bad as before, but so many things got neglected during my recovery that I've had lots to catch up with. I think I'm about done with the majority of it now and so I'm really going to make an effort not to leave the house unless I really have to:)

I do have some stitching to show off...

 

You've seen this one several times, but it's just almost done. This is 'Fishing' by Bobbie G Designs. I just have a bit of the decking, railing and water to do and a bunch of outlining. Hoping to get this one done and mailed out by next week.

 

 

This is Live Laugh Love by La D Da. I'm doing this with 4 other stitching ladies as a round robin. This is my part of my project, ready to send it off to the next stitcher!!!

 

 

And since I put stitching Christmas Ornies as part of my 52 in 52 goals, I decided to join another group!! Stitching Lotus is running an Ornament SAL this year, so I'm going to try and keep up with that. This will be my first ornie of the year - Joy of the Snowflake by Little by Little Design Co. It can be found in the 2011 ornie issue of Just Cross Stitch. 

 

 



A New Year with new goals

Really, time must be going by faster as I get older. Even my 13 year old daughter said it feels the same to her. She says she wants to grow up, but she doesn't want her childhood to go away so fast. Smart girl!!

It sure feels weird to not be participating in the Crazy January 15 project challenge. I've done that for the past 2 years and it is a lot of fun, but I have so many projects left over from the past couple years, that I felt that I really had no business doing it again. At least not until I found some order with the WIPs and UFOs that I currently have to work on.

But I did manage to find several different challenges and SALs to keep me busy this year and to give me plenty to blog about.

This year I will participate in...

TUSAL - I'm doing this again since it really did turn out to be fun:) Lots of pretty colors all collected in a jar just makes me happy.

WIPocalypse - Well, we survived through the Mayan prediction (really did anyone think this was real?), but we still have piles of projects to work on, so on to another year of really trying to get those WIPs done!!!

IHSW - This is a weekend dedicated to staying home and stitching!! Sounds like a dream come true, doesn't it? Don't have that luxury? (does anyone have that luxury?) That's okay, just stitch as much as you can and blog about it the following Monday (even if it's only a few stitches).

52 in 52 - I really love this idea. I posted about this a couple weeks ago, but I have made a few changes since. I have a page dedicated to this project with a tab at the top of this page. I'll blog about it here and there, but for a total accumulation of my progress I will keep that page updated all year long.

Stash diet - The goal here is to just stitch from the stash you already have. You can set further goals and 'prizes' for yourself such as I will allow myself $3.00 worth of new stash for every chart I finish. Other are doing it differently. Not sure how I'll do on this one. I thought I would go binge shopping before the beginning of the year and get some of it out of my system before starting the 'diet', but after breaking my ankle, I wasn't able to visit the LNS. I did buy one project on-line that is for a round robin I'm doing with a few other stitchy ladies.

Because my 52 in 52 project incorporates so many differing kinds of goals, I'm not doing any other aspirations/resolutions. I'm really excited to see the progress I can make on all these challenges. Please feel free to question my progress and cheer me on from time to time (like mid May when I tend to try hiding in a hole for the rest of the summer:).

What challenges and/or goals are you planning to work towards this year?

Dec WIPocalypse

I'm a few days late on this last WIPocalypse of the year, but want to go ahead and post it. Better late than never, huh? I've had a bit more stitching time on my hands here lately, so I did get a bit done on this. This is 'Fishing' from Bobbie G. Designs, and if you can't already tell, this will be for LoveQuilts. This will be my first that is designated for a specific child. He is a 5 year old boy and all he really wanted was a quilt with the color blue in it. They also said he liked trains and action heroes and all things 'outdoor'. Well, trains must have been easy to find since many ladies signed up for that, but this one just screamed '5 year old boy' to me:)

 

 

I also got some good news. The ankle break is stable, so no surgery will be needed so long as I don't mess it up any further. Thankfully my hubby had taken an extended break and so still has a week before he needs to be back at work. Unfortunately, I broke my right ankle, so this means that I won't be driving for the next 4 weeks or so. My hubby and daughter are taking really good care of me, and I'm hoping to have a quick recovery:) Until then, I'll just keep getting on with my stitching and getting some rest. I was hoping to have a 'end of the year' stitchy finish, but I took a nap today instead!! Well, I guess that means I'll have a 'beginning of the year' finish tomorrow:)

 

Until then, I hope the New Year finds you all in good health and with extra time for your stitchy/crafting projects!! 

March WIPocalypse

This is the 3rd WIPocalypse post for the year!!
Got some done this last month, but I was bad and started 2 new ones:) I'll start with those first. These two projects (actually there will be a third one as soon as I get floss for it) is for a group called Love Quilts. They sign up children who have severe illnesses or disablities, find out what theme they want (like frogs, princesses, etc) and then people like me (or you!!) stitch something within their guidelines and send it in. They then make a quilt out of the stitched pieces to give to the children. The fun part is to see pictures of the children with their new quilts:) I've been wanting to do something like this with my stitching and I really like that you can sign up for different projects when you have the time/interest so that you don't have to be stitching for them all the time if you don't want to.
So this is my first on for this group. Can you tell what it is? LOL This one will be for a young man who wanted realistic looking frogs. This project will have 5 rain forest type frogs on it in the end. I have a bit more done on it since I took the pic yesterday. I really like the bright colors in this which is a real change for me. I'm using X's and O's 'Frogs, Frogs, and More Frogs.'

This is another project for this group. This will be flowers/vines in the shape of a heart when it's done. The other project that I'm waiting on until I have the floss is another heart shaped one. These will be for 'non-specific' quilts. They are pre-done for children that may not have 6 months to wait for a custom quilt to be done for them. So they are taking as many heart themed blocks as they can get and will then make as many quilts out of that as possible. This chart (and the one I haven't started yet) are both freebies from
http://www.brigittedadaux.com/

I got a bit further along on my 'His Name Is Jesus' project. I was really hoping to have this finished, but I'm getting closer, maybe by next month it'll be done.

But I DID get this one done!!! This makes my 6th finish of the year!!! :) So this is 'Love One Another' from Little House Needleworks and was a part of my 2011 crazy challenge. It is so nice to be getting some of my older projects done!!

That is all for now, hope you are all having lovely, stitchy days!! :)

WIPocalypse

Running a bit late on my 2nd WIPocalypse post!! I've been doing a fair bit of stitching still.. so here's what I've got done.
The picture above is one that I took before I started working on this again. I should be doing that with all the WIP's so I can track how far they are coming, but this is the only one I've done it to so far. Below is where I am on it right now. This is from my 2011 Crazy Challenge projects.

And below is 'His Name Is Jesus' freebie found here. I got the 'u and s' in Jesus done and 'of Jacob' in the lower left corner done. This is on 28 ct over one, so it is more stitching than it looks like:) This is a project I started almost 2 years ago.

This is an update on my HAED. Before it was less than 1in sq, and now it is almost 2in sq. Just over 1600 stitches done so far!!!

And here are a couple that I finished. This is 'He's a Flake' from LHN. This is from my 2012 Crazy Challenge.

And this one is also from my 2012 Crazy Challenge. This is January Wordplay from With thy Needle and Thread. I love this series and am hoping to do all 12 of them at some point. Really trying NOT to start any new ones this year (except maybe a small one or two for exchange projects). But I did go ahead and order the Feb Wordplay, so we will see if I can hold off or not:)

That is it for this month, I don't think I did too bad:) Hoping to get lots more done for my next post!!!

WIPocalypse

My first offical WIPocalypse post!!! The goal for WIPocalypse is to finish as many WIPs and UFO's as possible throughout the year. These can be ones that you've had around for many, many years all the way to new ones you just started. Then we are to post pics of any finishes and all progress we make each full moon. So this is what I have to show off for this month...
This one is NOT finished. Despite my best intentions of finishing this one off today so I could brag about another one done, it just didn't happen. Too many interuptions happened instead. But this is progress and I am still hoping to finish it off tomorrow. This is one of my new starts for this year, so if you scoll down a bit you can see my start on it.
This is an older WIP (I thought it was from last year's Jan 15, but it was from before that). This is Blessed is the Meek from Little House Needleworks' Saltbox Scripture series. I'm super excited that I finished this one as I only have one more to go in this series and they will all be done. I'll post a pic of all of them together when the last one gets done.

And this one is another one from this year's Jan 15 (so scoll down some and you'll see my start on this one as well). Really happy to get this done as it is always nice to finish a couple off when you are starting so many of them:)

Well, that is all for this WIPocalypse post, hoping for many more to show off next time!! :)