Happy Dance - Postcards from the World

Started: 11/20/2016

Finished: 12/1/2016

Started: 12/2/2016

Finished 12/5/2016

The 2016 Clouds Factory SAL is done.  It's stitched on 16-count Aida in Crystal Haven from Picture This Plus with the called for flosses.  There are a few minor changes here and there; the biggest change being that I stitched the borders in 797 instead of the called for white.  

I'm keeping this one and hope to get a frame for it sometime in the next couple of weeks.  I enjoyed the SAL but am not planning to participate in next year's SAL until I see the first few months.

Happy Dance - New York Postcard

Postcards from the World - October (New York)

Started: 10/5/2016

Finished: 10/10/2016

Clouds Factory

This is being stitched on Crystal Haven 16-count Aida with mostly DMC floss, although there are three Weeks colors as well--Cactus, Marigold and Aqua. The only change I made is the color of the stamp, again because I wanted something different than the surrounding stamps.

 

Since I haven't shown it for awhile, here's the whole project.  Only two months left!  Where will we go next?

 

Happy Dance - Postcards (September)

Postcards from the World - September (Tokyo)

Started: 9/12/2016

Finished: 9/20/2016

Clouds Factory SAL

This is being stitched on Crystal Haven 16-count Aida with mostly DMC floss, although there are three Weeks colors as well--Cactus, Marigold and Aqua.

The only change I made is the color of the stamp since it was charted in the same color as Sydney and I didn't want the two colors side by side.

Happy Dance - Postcards (August)

Postcards from the World - August (Sydney)

Started: 8/1/2016

Finished: 8/5/2016

Clouds Factory SAL

This is being stitched on Crystal Haven 16-count Aida with mostly DMC floss, although there are three Weeks colors as well--Cactus, Marigold and Aqua.

I'm now caught up with this SAL and I have the Pumpkin Passport on the Q-Snaps.

Catch up Post - July (Stitching Recap)

Pink Butterfly

Started: 7/1/2016

Finished: 7/8/2016

Cross Stitch Gallery #52

Stitched for Aurelia's quilt for Q4OC 

I changed the flowers from yellow/orange to purple.

Teddy Alphabet - K

Started: 7/8/2016

Finished: 7/11/2016

Stitched for 2016 Challenge for Q4OC

Chart provided by the group

Christmas Owl

Started: 6/14/2016

Finished: 7/13/2016

The World of Cross Stitching #208 (Joan Elliott)

Christmas Ornie SAL - June (Christmas Animals)

20-count gold flecked Lugana (1 over 1)

St Patrick's Day Mouse

Started: 7/15/2016

Finished: 7/17/2016

The World of Cross Stitching #239 (Lucie Heaton)

Stitched for Kyleigh's Quilt

Postcards from the World - June (Giza)

Started: 7/17/2016

Finished: 7/26/2016

Clouds Factory SAL

Postcards from the World - July (Rio de Janeiro)

Started: 7/26/2016

Finished: 7/31/2016

Clouds Factory SAL

Globe

Started: 7/28/2016

Finished: 7/31/2016

Cross Stitch Crazy - Crazy Kids

Stitched for Kyleigh's Quilt

I think you can tell that my stitching mojo came back this month. Since I'm counting the Advent Animals and Postcards from the World as individual finishes, I now have 40 finishes for the year.  Of course, most are fairly quick stitches.

Catch up Post - June (Stitching Recap)

I didn't do a lot of stitching in June, but I finished two squares and two installments.

 

Jasmine

Started: 6/10/2016 

Finished: 6/12/2016

Stitched for Sofia's quilt for Q4OC (chart provided by the group)

 Puppy Alphabet - K

Started: 6/25/2016

Finished: 6/27/2016

Stitched for 2016 Stitcher's Challenge in Q4OC

Chart provided by the group

 Clouds Factory - Postcards from the World (May - New Delhi)

Started: 6/13/2016

Finished: 6/24/2016

Finally, the June installment of the Pumpkin Passport which took us to Russia.  The upper row is now complete.

May Catch Up Post - Picture Heavy

My stitching plans and stitching and blogging mojo both flew out the window in mid-May.  The stitching plans have changed and the stitching mojo came back in July, but I've been trying to decide how to catch up.  I've finally decided just to do a monthly post or two rather than doing a weekly WIP and individual happy dance posts.

First the stitching:
I finished the May installment of the Pumpkin Passport which took us to Greece.

I restarted the Advent Animals on one piece of darker blue Aida.  I wasn't really happy with the way the white looked on the light blue fabric and a wall hanging made more sense to me than individual finishes.  I stitched #6 and #7 and then went back and stitched #1.  I've also stitched the number on #2.

 

I also finished the third Angelic Ornament (the praying angel).  This was my current UFO project, but it was set aside soon after the finish, because of frogging issues with the next angel.

The final finish for the month was an alphabet square for Quilts for Older Children and Adults as part of their 2016 Challenge.

Some miscellaneous pictures for the month:
Kyleigh found a hairstyle on Pinterest that she wanted Janice to try.

 

Janice worked from home one day and Bobby decided to help her by guarding the cable on her laptop and helping her find the right keys.

 

Kyleigh is now tall enough to go on all the rides at Disneyland and California Adventure, but there are certain rides she doesn't like.  This is what she does to show that she's not tall enough yet.

Bob is the good friend who shares his Angels season tickets with us.  He and Kyleigh have a lot of fun together. 

Kyleigh's 2nd grade class did a chapel in May and sang "I Want to be a Sheep".  The first picture is of some of the class leading the singing and the second is of most of the sheep sleeping while the shepherd is looking for one lost sheep.  Kyleigh is on the far right in the tan skirt.

 

Finally, Kyleigh's Brownie troop had their year-end party at one of the Brownie's grandparents' pool.  Yes, this pool is in their backyard.  That's Kyleigh sliding into the raft.

That's all for May.  Hopefully, I'll be back soon with June's update.

WIWO - 5/9/2016

First, I want to show you the finished Angel Tree Ornament.  Finishing it was not fun and I ended up stitching it with the wrong sides together and turning it right side out after I was done.

I also finished the May installment of Postcards from the World from Clouds Factory.  This time we went to New Delhi.

This is the whole thing so far.  (The color is truer in the photo above.)

Since I'd finished the UFO I was working on (the Angel Tree Decoration), I started a new one.  I pulled out the next two in order and I decided to put them in the giveaway bag for the next thrift shop pickup instead of finishing them.  So I decided to go out of  alphabetical order and chose one I'd forgotten about and really wanted to stitch.  It's an old Dimensions kit stitched on plastic canvas.  This is where it was when I stitched on it last:

And here it is as of last night:

I did some backstitching on the bottom, because I was looking for an error.  I found it and it's all fixed now. 

I'm not sure how to count this one. Should I count each ornament as a finish and just do the one that's partly finished? Or should I count it as one finish and do all eight of them before going onto the next UFO?  Your opinions would be helpful.

WOCS (World of Charity Stitching) is doing a travel theme for it's next quilt.  I've enjoyed watching the Satsuma Street designs and had  several in an older Cross Stitch Crazy magazine that I wanted to stitch. There were three designs: Paris, London and New York City.  Since both the Pumpkin Passport and Postcards from the World had designs of Paris and London, I decided to do New York City.  The estimated time is 7-10 hours, but I've already stitched for about five hours, so I don't think that's realistic since I'm not yet half way.

WIWO - 5/2/2016

I spent most of last week catching up on my monthly SALs for April.  I've already posted my April ornament for the Christmas Ornie SAL and Duncan Dog for the Brooke's Books SAL on Stitch Maynia, but here are the other two.

First, I completed the Pumpkin Passport where we traveled to Switzerland.

And then the postcard from Moscow.  I finished this one at 10:58 Saturday night.

Since it was already on the Q-snaps, I went ahead and started the May installment on Sunday.  This time the postcard is from New Delhi. The photo above shows the truer color of the fabric.

And my current WIP/UFO went from here:

to here. 

 I would have finished the cross stitching yesterday, but there's a little reverse stitching needed so I put it away until later today.

WIWO - 3/28/2016

Good Monday Afternoon!  I hope your Easter was all you expected it to be!  We woke up to rain this morning and I'm so glad it waited until today to make an appearance.

I finished my London postcard last Tuesday.  I changed the clouds from 828 to white and the frame was charted in white, but I'm using 797.  The fabric is 16-count Crystal Haven Aida from Picture This Plus.

Here's the whole piece so far:

I've continued with my 1/2 hour a day on A Spot of Tea which is my current UFO.  It went from here

 to here:

You really can get quite a lot done in 1/2 hour.  This is about 3 1/2 hours of stitching.  I don't use a timer so it's not exact.

Finally, I had a new start.  This is Pinky from Donna Giampa.  It's being stitched on white 25-count Lugana with DMC.  I'm already loving this piece and finding it hard to put down.

One of my grandmothers painted a copy of the original and it hung in the hallway of my parents' house for years so when I saw this pattern, I had to get it.  It has been in my stash for years, but when I saw the original at the Huntington Library in December, I decided it was time to start it.  I also plan to do the companion, Blue Bear.

WIWO - 3/21/2016

I did quite a bit of stitching this past week.  I had a finish, a mini-finish and worked on two other projects.  The finish was Mary Mouse which you can see below.

My first mini-finish was Amsterdam, which is the March edition of the Pumpkin Passport.  It's being stitched on an old piece of 28-count Jobelan, but I don't know the color name or who dyed it.  The only change I made was accidental.  In January, I accidentally stitched the top scalloped border in the same color as the bottom border, but it was supposed to be done in a light pink.  I discovered the mistake when I looked at other stitchers' work, but decided I liked it this way so didn't frog it.

Started: 3/13/16

Finished: 3/15/16

Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery

Then I worked on the postcard for March which came from London this time.  I did make a couple of changes on this one.  I've changed the borders from white to blue (797) and the clouds from 828 to white.  I will most likely finish this one in the next couple of days.

Finally, I've been watching a few Floss tube videos and Katy (The Stash Queen) who works on multiple projects each day for a specific amount of time on each (usually 15 or 30 minutes) gave me the idea of doing this with my UFO/WIPs.  I have a large number of these, but keep finding new pieces I want to stitch.  A few years ago, I went through all my stash, pulled out all the UFO/WIPs and cataloged them in Excel, marking them with the approximate amount of stitching left and I've actually kept up with it.

Yesterday, I alphabetized and sorted them by size classification and is a very old UFO titled A Spot of Tea from Cherished Teddies for All Occasions.  This is where it was when I pulled it out of the drawer.

And here it is after 30 minutes of work:

For some reason, I stitched this in lavenders instead of the pinks on the chart, but it's so old, I don't have a clue as to why although I do think I like it better this way.