July thru October

Catching up is hard. It's so hard I've been putting it off for a while, which only makes it harder.

Hi all! Long time no see. I can barely remember what I've blogged about so far this year, so I guess I'll just dive right in and start rambling. It was a crazy summer. I've moved. My mother sold two houses and bought a new one. She also had knee replacement surgery. Her new husband fell twice and broke several parts of his anatomy (but he's all healed now). And overtime at work didn't end until September 28th. So I've been a bit worn out.

My stitching progress overall hasn't been that spectacular, but I actually did manage a few finishes, all from Little House Needleworks. The first is the Virtue Sampler, which I kind of picked up and didn't put down back in August. So in 12 days, I went from here:

to here:

This one took 22 days total, and was pretty fun to stitch. I used all the called for colors on 32ct Limestone Belfast from Zweigart. I haven't framed it yet, but I suppose I should pretty soon. :)

My other finishes were from the Sheep Virtues series. I finished Love on August 2nd and finished Peace October 25th. So far, each of these has taken 7 days to stitch.

It's nice to have the first three of these done. Maybe I'll just do 3 a year. No rush, right?

My stitching has been really off since I moved (only managed 1691 stitches in July) and my rotation went out the window, but things are beginning to get back to normal. When things got super stressful, I didn't switch my projects as often and worked on things for 2 or 3 weeks instead of one. Since I didn't always stitch every day, I didn't see a ton of progress, but I think it's enough to share a couple things.

After I finished Virtue Sampler in August, I picked up Summer on Cherry Hill. This one feels like an August project to me, I don't know why. But it does have Summer in the name:

I'd say this is almost halfway done. About that, anyway. It's hard to say because I know the grass is going to take forever. But the bees are done, and I've started on her massive skirt, so that's something.

In September I spent a few weeks on Autumn Fraktur. I didn't plan to keep working on it, but once I started, I couldn't stop until the right side was finished:

I almost kept going on the left side. Almost. Maybe next year.

I've worked on a few other odds and ends, but I'll save those for later. I wish I could say I've made massive progress on Luna as well, but I haven't even finished the page I was working on back in May. It's very sad really, but I still don't have a stitching spot for my floor stand set up in my new place. Very sad.

I'm trying to get a few more goals met this year on various projects, but I've got a lot of distractions. I've been trying to declutter for a while now, and in the process I've stumbled across all my hidden treasures from other hobbies. So in the interest of use it or lose it, I've been quilting, knitting, doing puzzles and paint by numbers again. It's been a lot of fun, but it's also been a challenge to work everything in and share stitchy time. But I'm learning.

I think that's all for now. I've pulled out Jack's Bash by Plum Street for this week, so we'll see what kind of progress I make. Until next time!

October Wrap Up

Hi guys! Got a lot to share this week, I almost don't know where to begin. Guess I'll start with last week's focus piece, which was Autumn Fraktur by Plum Street:

My, how that little plant did grow! :) I feel like this has sort of been a year of Plum Street for me, but I really love her designs. The only thing "bad" about them (not that I would change it) is that they take a little longer to stitch because of all the little details that require stop and start stitching. Like those little dark bits on the acorns, for example. I do a pin stitch for all of those because I don't like to carry thread (unless it's full coverage) so they took a while to complete, but I love the end result. I was happy to get the bird started as well. It feels like I'm stitching him a nice fair isle vest. I'm stitching this with one thread on 36ct, so the coverage is a little sparse, but not too bad.

Now for my full coverage pieces. As always, I stitched two more columns on Moon Indigo, so I was able to complete the moon (at least for the time being):

I'm definitely going to finish the row this year, but I'm going to try and push myself and see if I can get a start on the next row this year as well. Three more pages and I'll get to start on her wings! It's a ways off, but I can't wait to see what they look like stitched up.

My other focus piece for October was supposed to be Crystals and Crows, but you probably already know about my little distraction that interrupted that plan. Nevertheless, I was able to get a good bit done, about 2,000 stitches altogether:

You might notice I started page 3 stitching cross country, but decided to try out diagonal stitching on this project as well. I wasn't sure if I would like it since there's quite a bit more confetti in this chart, but I liked it much more than expected, and over all, I think I'm a little faster at stitching this way (at least on this chart) although the EZPdf app is helping a lot, too. I've already got a wing done of that pale green butterfly, and it keeps calling for me to finish it. So maybe I'll get in a few more stitches in November.

As for my distraction, aka the Marquise, I managed to reach the bottom of page 1, though I am halfway across the top of page 2:

I'm going to stop these diagonals with the first row of pages, otherwise it would be too difficult to stitch, but I like the way it's shaping up so far. Each diagonal will have 670 stitches now until the end of the row, and I really like just working my way down them. It's kind of addictive, actually. I'm hoping to finish off page 1 completely this month, which means 4 diagonals. I hope nothing else comes along to distract me. :)

Last but not least, here are my Temperature charts, all done through October:

You can see we're cooling down quite a bit, with lots of green (finally!) and a little blue. I think this is how April should have looked, but it just kept snowing! On the ornament chart, I've finished off the alphabet round, and now I'm on a round of diamonds. There's only one round after this one, but each side will represent one day, for the last four days of the year. It's strange to think I've only got two months left on these projects, but I'm looking forward to seeing them completed. The average temperature for October was 65.8°F, which is 704, the lime green which is hard to see in these pictures.

Whew! That's all for now. I'm hoping I can stay this productive through the end of the year -- it's a good distraction from online shopping. :) Happy stitching everyone!