February Update

I had a good stitching month in February. 

Mini At the Steps was one of my focus pieces. I stitched on this for 8 days and put in 3424 stitches which took me to 50%

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo and have started already for March

Fairytale, the HAED 2026 SAL was my other focus piece.  I stitched on it for 7 days and put in 3440 stitches which took me to 12.67%

I made good progress on Cat Nap, finishing the second page I put in 4971 stitches over 7 days,  and im at 8%.

Flirtation remained as my one strand a day project. I put in 2392 stitches and worked on it for 22 days.

I had a new start.  This is Gloria and the Gargoyle,  artist is Alisa Smith Williams, charted by Stitches Sew Beautiful.  I'm doing this as part of their monthly sals. If you meet the minimum number of stitches per week, you get a reward chart.  As I do tent stitches,  the minimum is 500 per week.   I put in 3713 stitches out of 160,000 over 5 days and have a page finish and am at 2.32%

This is what the chart will look like when finished

In total i stitched 15,548 full coverage on 27 days and 2392 on my Long Dog.

I decided to start temperature knitting.  I've heard a lot of people doing temperature stitching, where they assign projects a number from 0 to 9 and when the temperature ends in that number, then they work on that piece.  I've a number of knitting projects that aren't being touched, so I thought this is a good way to get a little progress on them.  When their number comes up, I do half an hour on them.

In February I worked on

Douglas cardigan   8 days

Socks 6 days 

Jaunty shawl 8 days

Cosy blanket 4 days

Jigsaw blanket 1 day

Rain or Shine blanket 1 day

I've decided to change how I do my focus pieces.  I'm not going to continue with Fairytale as a focus.  While there are charts I would like if I complete 6 pages for thr SAL, Stitches Sew Beautiful have a lot of charts I'd rather work on.   At the Steps will remain my focus piece.  However I'll stitch on it each Sunday to get the required number of stitches to finish it in November.  At the moment that is about 800 stitches .  If I don't get all the stitches in on Sunday, I'll continue until I do.  I'll then start rotating projects every 3 or 4 days. Between rotations I'll do 500 stitches on Gloria to meet the Sal requirements,  so that will be a  secondary focus piece.  I'm not entirely sure how many days to stitch on focus pieces, or whether to stitch a certain number of stitches, or even spin a wheel with either the days or number of stitches,  maybe I'll even try applying temperature stitching to it.   I need to ponder on it.  

See you next month.

January update

Well my plans changed again.  But only by a little bit.   I'm still working on Fairytale for the HAED SAL and aiming for 6 pages, still working on Mini At the Steps, aiming to finish in November  and working on Cat Nap.  However I've changed my mind about starting both the Aimee Stewart Sanctuary for stitchers and Lakeside Cabin Crop.   I know Aimee Stewart patterns are hugely popular, but I feel a lot of detail is hard to make out, even in the super sized versions. I would never do a supersized version, as I want a chance of finishing and even the regular sized version is bigger than what I want to work on.

I toyed around with cropping the Lakeside Cabin crop, but it was still too big and do I really want a huge picture of basically an armchair, on my wall. So I abandoned that idea.

 So here is what I did in January.

Mini at the steps.

In January I put in 5829 stitches over 10 stitching days and did 28 hours.  This takes me to a total of 27,152 stitches out of 61,200 and 44%

Cat Nap was started on Xmas Day and this is what it looks like now.

I have a page finish.  I've done a bit more than in this photo, but havent taken another picture.

In January I did 5561 stitches over 7 days and did 22 hours.  In total I've done 9826 stitches out of 179,000 for 5%.

On 1st January I started Fairytale for the HAED SAL.   

I've done the first page for a total of 7795 stitches out of 88,650 for 8.8%. I worked on this for 12 days and spent 22 hours stitching. 

  I had a yearning to do another Long Dog piece.  I decided on a small one called Flirtation, from their Peccadilloes range.  This is what the finished piece will look like.

And this is what it looks like now. 

I'm using Silks4u left over from Sans Souci and it is 2 x1 on 18ct Aida, full cross. I started on 14 January. 

I am stitching 1 thread a day on this, which gives approximately 100 stitches in 30 minutes. I've so far done 1581 stitches and worked on it 14 days for 8 hours.   1581 out of 7643 for 21%.  This is a small project so I expect to finish in April.  

In total for the month, I did 20,766 stitches, 19185 on full coverage,  stitched on 29 days and a total of 101 hours.

Plans, continue working on the above. In February I am going to start my first Stitches Sew Beautiful pattern.  The one I want to do is Gloria and the Gargoyle by Alisa Smith Williams.

I just love this picture. It just makes me feel happy when I look at it. 

I will be entering the Stitches Sew Beautiful Sal. The conditions are to stitch either  250 full cross or 500 tent each week for a month and get a reward chart at the end. I will be doing my usual 25 count 2x1 tent. 

I also finished a knitted garment, the zipper vest by petite knit.  

This pattern calls for a bulky weight yarn. I used Southlander from Skeinz in the colour oatmeal.

That's all for now.  I will update again at the end of February.