Final December YOW Update

Tomorrow is the deadline to update my YOW album in the Soulful Stitching Facebook group. This is the first year I've joined in. It stands for Year of WorksInProgress. You pick a list of WIPs which has to be more than 18. You must complete half of them by the end of the year to be entered into some drawings. This time we had to check in April, July, and October. She is doing some changes next year but still the same idea to finish half the list. I'm planning on picking out 20 again. Anyway let's go through my list and see what I ended up with...

1. August Snapshot from Pine Mountain -- Finished for the July Update
2. Cabin Fever from Mill Hill -- No progress since May. Will be adding to next year's list.
3. Camping Out from Mill Hill -- Not started wanted to finish Cabin Fever first
4. Christmas Celebration from Frosted Pumpkin -- Started this one and got 2 days of progress on it so at least I have progress to report. Will be adding to next year's list. Here is my progress...

5. Christmas Jars from Dimensions Kit -- Finished two jars last year need to do two more. No Progress this year. Will be adding to next year's list.
6. December Snapshot from Pine Mountain -- Finished for the April Update
7. Durene Jones Calendar -- Just in time for the update I was able to finish up the December cutie which marks this one off the list...

So happy to have completed this series. Here are all 12 of them now...

Love the way they turned out. Plus they are finished!! Wohoo!!
8. Halloween Sampler from Frosted Pumpkin -- Finished this one up in November...

9. Hold on to Hope from Heaven and Earth Designs -- Finished for the April Update
10. July Snapshot from Pine Mountain -- Finished for the April Update
11.Myrtle Beach Postcard from Erica Michael's -- No progress since April
12. Ocean of Wisdom from Erica Michael's -- Finished for April Update
13. October Snapshot from Pine Mountain -- Finished in October...

14. September Snapshot from Pine Mountain -- Finished in September
15. Spring Bell Pull from Stoney Creek -- No progress since August
16. To the Beach from Hands on Designs -- Finished for April Update
17. Under the Sea SAL from Lakeside Needlecraft -- No Progress this year
18. Where Stitching Meets from Hands on Designs -- Not started
19. Winter Messenger from Erica Michael's -- Finished for April Update
20. You are Loved -- Finished in August
So here is my final count...

So 12 finished of the 20. I will qualify for the drawing. More importantly I'm really happy with finishing those pieces. It was a great push to get them done.

November WIPocalypse

It's the last Sunday of the month which means it's time for a WIPocalypse update. This fun blog SAL is for us to stitch all our projects before the end of the world. Yeah right! I think since I keep adding to my ever growing pile of WIPs I will help fight off the end so I'm sure doing my part. I like using this SAL to keep track of what days I've worked on what projects. It's so nice to look back and see what I've worked on since the last check in. So let's see what's been keeping me busy since Oct 30th...

Frosted Pumpkin Halloween Sampler -- 5 Days is all I needed to finish this one off...

Beer Dragon -- 6 Days I started this new cutie and got a lot of progress on it already...

I have 3,400 stitches in now. I really love working on this one. It's going to be for my hubby and he can't wait till it finished.

Durene Jones Calendar -- 2 Days I started and finished the November design...

Snowy Visitors -- 1 Day I got a start on this set of sleds from Foxwood Crossings at the Hoosier Retreat. I'm working on them today so will have another update on them tomorrow for my Monday Update...

Thankful Pumpkins -- 4 Days I started this one at the Hoosier Retreat and then finished it off when I got home...

Turkey Time Freebie -- 3 Days Another start at the Hoosier Retreat. I finished this one first when I got home. Couldn't pass this one up when Erica Michaels posted it on her Facebook page...

As you can tell I've been getting lots of stitching time. It's been great. Only 5 Days of no stitching done. We also get a fun question to answer with our post...Question of the Month: What new stitches or techniques did you learn this year? The only thing new so far this year is to stitch on 40ct fabric. I had stitched on the 40ct silk gauze before but now I tried fabric. I really enjoyed it and can definitely see doing it again sometime.

Thanks for stopping by to see what I have been up to. Please come back.

November Gifted Gorgeousness

Tomorrow is going to be time for a Gifted Gorgeousness Update. This fun blog SAL ran by who else but the wonderful Jo has the purpose of sharing things we have either received as gifts or are stitching as gifts for others. I'm posting a day early since I'm leaving tomorrow for my local stitching retreat. So I will add a link up to the post when I get back. You can head over to Jo's blog though I'm sure and find it if interested.

If you haven't been here since my last Gifted Gorgeousness post.....Wait... Why haven't you? I have a lot of fun posts between then and now. Haha Anyway if you haven't let me catch you up. Since the last time I finished up the piece I was working on...

This Frosted Pumpkin Halloween Sampler was a Christmas present my sweet hubby got me for last year's Christmas. He also gave me the Christmas Frosted Pumpkin piece like this that I hope to start soon. Maybe even before the next Gifted Gorgeousness update.

I started a new piece that I will give to my hubby when I finish it. It's the Beer Dragon from Paine Free Crafts. I posted about this new start in the post right before this one so please go check it out. He is waiting very impatiently for me to finish it haha.

That's it for now. Thanks for stopping by to see my Gifted Gorgeousness post. Come back Monday to hear about what I'm sure will be a fun time at my local stitching retreat. I'm all packed up and ready to go just have to wait till tomorrow to finally head that way. Have a great weekend. It's also IHSW (International Hermit Stitch Weekend) so warn the family grab that stitching and take time for yourself.

Monday Update: Last Halloween Finish

Here we are November 5th but I stuck with one last Halloween finish for the year. The Frosted Pumpkin Halloween piece demanded to be finished before I moved on to something else. So I worked on it all week. Friday I really hoped to finish it and Oh I got so close if you follow me on Instagram. I needed only another hour probably. But we had cabin plans and I didn't want to take stitching with me this time. Saturday we had an adult Halloween party. We had a lot of fun. One last real celebration. We put up some Halloween lights on our deck...

The little lights in the front are bats. You can't tell very well. We also had lights around the tree you can't see in this photo and a big spider web over on the right. Hard to get good night time pictures. The weather was beautiful Saturday. 56 degrees and no rain finally. So we could all enjoy sitting around the fire. The pond hasn't made much progress because we've been getting a lot of rain lately. They just mostly pushed some trees and dirt around so no real update with that just yet. Sunday we packed all the decorations away and I admit it was sad. We emptied our snacks from the cabinet. Put away all the extra drinks so they wouldn't freeze. It's the end of the season. We will miss it! The family was all about in tears. We know we can't go the whole winter without going back though. We already said we will probably go down the weekend after Thanksgiving if only for just one night. We will miss it by then. It's been an amazing season. We have sure enjoyed our time in our cabin!!!

So Sunday after we got home and I picked my Halloween piece back up I was right about an hour later I had a finish to celebrate...

(Finish #26) November 4th, 2018

Halloween Spooky Sampler from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery

Stitched on 32ct Bewitched Linen

Threads are Suggested DMC and a few Weeks Dye Works

Started Aug 10th. Took me 17 Days.

This is another YOW (Year of WIPs) piece to mark off the list. I'm so happy it's finished. I really enjoying stitching it and I'm glad I have the Christmas one to look forward too now later this year. I really hope to finish it as a pillow to display. I'm really considering asking for a better sewing machine from Santa. Then I can actually FINISH the things I want to. My stupid machine just causes me too many problems.

Next I'm going to celebrate my Halloween finishes with a new start. The Beer Dragon is finally making his way onto my Q-Snaps. Can't wait to get the first x's in.

Halloween Blog Hop

The wonderful Jo from Serendipitous Stitching has done it again. She is hosting a Halloween Blog Hop. I just love participating in her fun blog hops. This one is my favorite type. You hop through the blog list and collect letters. When you finish you will have a phrase to give to Jo on her blog post check in. She is always so creative when it comes to these blog hops. So if you have found my post before her sending you here go to Jo's blog to see where to start collecting letters. If you are looking for the letter then let's get to it...

The letter you found here is F. Now head over to the next blog on the list for the next letter...

Kitten Stitching

I hope you have a Happy Halloween. I've been stitching on just Halloween themed things since the beginning of October. You can look through the rest of my blog for a few finished already but today I'm frantically working on the last one I want to get finished this year...

Here is where I am now...

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Halloween. I'll be curled up with my stitching and watching scary movies all day!

***Edited to add the end result***
From Jo's Blog...

Now, the news you have all been waiting for - the answer to the Hallowe'en Trick or Treat Mystery Phrase Blog Hop.  Thanks to all the participants; the picture posters and the commenters who hopped around, collected the letters and left nice comments.

I thought the phrase was a little easier this year but apparently some of you need to Brush up your Shakespeare - the quote comes from The Scottish Play AKA Macbeth and is spoken by the witches as part of the ingredients for their Double Double Toil and Trouble spell.

Fillet of a fenny snake

The word "fenny" meaning "of the Fens, swamplike, marshy or boggy".  Anyway, everyone managed to find all the letters and Google the meaning if they didn't already know it.

 

I didn't win but had a blast playing along.

Gifted Gorgeousness

The 15th of the month is time for a Gifted Gorgeousness Update. So here I am finally with my late entry. Go here to the wonderful Jo's blog to see what others have shared. The idea of this blog SAL is to share with everyone what we have received as gifts or are stitching as gifts for others. So let's look back and see what fits that theme since my last check in.

I got a Frosted Pumpkin Halloween piece from my sweet hubby for Christmas last year. I posted my progress last check in and this is where I was with it...

I have been working on this one to maybe finish it by Halloween which is sneaking up very fast. Here I am now with it...

That's all I've worked on that was a gift from someone. I did join in an exchange with a lady on Instagram. She finished up this beauty from Hands on Design...

From my understanding you had to buy a beautiful bag from SewMuch2Luv on Etsy to get this chart. I looked and looked and couldn't find it anywhere. So I asked Luckycatstitches if she would trade and thankfully she said Yes. I sent her another Hands on Design pattern I had finished earlier and she sent this one. Another great exchange. I'm looking forward to adding it to my WIP pile.

The People Choose

The wonderful Jo has done it again. She is hosting a blog hop/blog SAL on the first Saturday of every month. Stop over to her blog to see more about it. She is posting the themes ahead of time. I will add them to the right side of my blog too. Each month will have a one word theme. We are to make a post about the word. Whatever we see fits. So far the themes picked are...

October -- Halloween

November -- Birthstones

December -- Dragons

Can't wait to see what we pick next. I think it will be fun to join in when I have a chance and I have a chance right now. So let's see what I can come up with for Halloween...

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. I love scary movies. I love the decorations. It's just fun! So I also love Halloween stitching. But I don't do it enough. I want to change that. This month I'm trying really hard to stick to Halloween stitching for the month of October. Here is my pile of WIPs for the month...

Halloween Sampler from Frosted Pumpkin, Halloween Minis, October Snapshot, and the October Durene Jones Calendar. I had an Erica Michael Petite Halloween piece picked out but I'm just not going to get to it this year so I've took it off my list for this year. So let's see where I am on these pieces right now...

Frosted Pumpkin I have finished up the border and 3 of the blocks inside. I got a teeny amount of progress on the 2nd L block at my stitching retreat in PA recently. I'm really hoping to finish this one this month. We'll see.

Halloween Minis. I have 2 of these finished of the 8 I want to do. I am working on the Vampire Face now. I got a lot of progress while traveling to and from the retreat. I finally got the white in and started on the other colors now.

The October Snapshot is the last one of the series I need to finish up. I got a teeny start at the retreat. I literally only got the border of the first block done haha. On vacation though I got a little of the witch added too in the first section. I'm planning on working on this one for awhile now that I'm home and ready to get back to stitching full time instead of being a tourist haha.

The Durene Jones piece I haven't got started yet but I need to so it can take it's place on my shelf unit that I love making monthly displays on...

You can see 3 other Mill Hill pieces I have done on my shelf already from years past. I need to get the October Durene piece done so I can put September away.

I also wanted to share with you the gifts Astrid gave me while she was visiting us in Gettysburg...

She said she wondered if we had run out of Hershey treats yet? Of course we always will accept more chocolate and how about that cute basket!! Plus she made me this BEAUTIFUL Halloween scissor fob. How cool!!! So those definitely fit the Halloween theme and needed to be shared.

I'm off to work on the Snapshot more. I hope to have more progress to show soon.

Smalls SAL and WIPocalypse

Even though I'm on vacation I want to get my SAL updates in. First up is the September Smalls SAL. The idea of this fun SAL is to stitch up something each month. I've joined in for 2 years before this and I have decided to use this SAL as an excuse to stitch up a monthly design throughout the whole year. This year I'm stitching a Durene Jones Calendar project. So far I've only missed one by just a day. Not September though. I was excited about stitching up this cute hedgehog...

Now for the WIPocalypse update. The idea of this SAL is for us to finish our WIPs before the end of the world. I don't think this will ever happen. Especially after buying all the new stash I just did haha. So I think I'm helping with holding off the end of the world. I like to use this SAL as an excuse to keep track of what I've worked on during the time frame and how many days on each project. It's a fantastic way to look back and see how much progress I have made on my countless WIPs. So let's see what I've been working on since my last update...

You are Loved -- 1 Day and I had this one finished off

Dragon Moon -- 2 Days I was itching to work on HAEDs again
Here is where I got with it...

Dragon Skies -- 2 Days
Here is where she is...

 Durene Jones September -- 4 Days. The photo for this one is the top one for my Smalls SAL.

Sept Snapshot -- 6 Days. Started and finished this one. Just have October left to do now...

Frosted Pumpkin Halloween Sampler -- 6 Days
Here is where I was last WIPocalypse update...

Here is where I am now...

Halloween Mini - Vampire Face - 4 Days
Got started on this one before vacation and have got a little bit stitched while on vacation even...

October Snapshot -- 1 Day. Got started on this one at the retreat. But spent too much time chatting/shopping and not stitching.
Here I am now with it...

No stitching days -- 13. A camping trip, the cabin, and this vacation is stealing my time. But it's all good time to be spending so I'm okay with that. Looking back I have got a lot done and on a lot of different projects so I'm very happy.

Okay now back to my vacation posts. See ya next month for the next SAL updates.

Vacation Day 5

So I wanted to be at the retreat for opening announcements at 8am this morning. I don't like waking up to an alarm so I figured I would just wake up naturally if I knew I needed to. I did. I woke up at 3:30am ready to go. I almost got in the shower and I thought I better check the time. Nope. Go back to bed. Wake up 5am. Nope. 6am. Really? 7am fine I'm up. I took my shower hurried and got to the room. No announcements. Slept badly for nothing. She didn't get around to saying anything really.

Oh well. The vendors opened at 9am. So I got some stitching in and started shopping. There are 9 vendors setup and they did not disappoint. I spent way too much money just as I knew I would. But I got a ton of wonderful goodies. I will post about them when I have time after the retreat. Plus when I've slept better and can stay awake to type haha. Us girls had way too much chatting then and forcing one another to keep shopping. The peer pressure is really strong. So even more money was spent after the first round of too much money was spent. It will all be worth it when I can start these beautiful new projects.....because we all know that's what I needed. More stuff to stitch haha.

We ate lunch at our hotel and got back to visiting (probably more shopping too). Then it was time for dinner and we all started picking on each other about how we didn't get any stitching done at all. A few ladies didn't even get one stitch in. Supposedly we are going to make up for it tomorrow. After dinner we played a few rounds of bingo to win prizes. Then we were ready to not stitch some more haha.

I (barely) worked on the Frosted Pumpkin Halloween piece today. Here is where I was before retreat....

See my really lame progress today in the whole day of stitching at a stitching retreat...

Yeah I laughed at my progress too. Sad. Maybe tomorrow but I won't promise because I still have visiting to do. Just hopefully no more shopping!

The bed is calling me. So I will obey. Night all!

September Gifted Gorgeousness

The 15th of every month we have a Gifted Gorgeousness check in. The idea of this fun blog SAL is to share things we are stitching as gifts or things we have received as gifts. Pop over to the wonderful Jo's blog to see what everyone has shared this time around.

Since the 15th of August I've worked on so many different pieces but let's see what qualifies for this SAL...

Last time I shared a WIP picture of You are Loved by Hinzeit that my hubby gave me for Christmas...

I finished it August 27th...

I also shared a new project I was going to start that my hubby got me for Christmas as well the Halloween Spooky Sampler from Frosted Pumpkin...

Here is where I am now on this one...

My sweet hubby also got me the Christmas one which I can't wait to start but I'm still in a Halloween mood so it will have to wait till later this year. I'm really hoping to finish this Halloween one. We'll see.

I joined Faith from Faithfully Stitching in an exchange. She was interested in the You are Loved pattern. So I swapped her for this beautiful piece of fabric...

Can't wait to find something to use it for. I'm always in need of fabrics. Thanks Faith for the great swap!

Have a great month! See ya next GG update with hopefully more progress on the Halloween Sampler.

August WIPocalypse

Today is time for a WIPocalypse check in. The purpose of this blog SAL is to finish all our WIPs before the end of the world. I know I have no hope what so ever haha. Only if all the designers stopped putting out new and beautiful things. Plus if my WIP basket and tub somehow got finished. See like I said....Never Going To Happen! So every month the world doesn't end we share our progress on this endless task. I personally like to use this SAL to keep track of what I work on and for how many days each. So let's see what I've been working on since the last check in...

Durene Jones Calendar -- 5 Days
I got July finished up right after my last check in...

I was also able to start and finish August...

Ocean in a Bottle -- 2 Days
Here it was before...

Here it is now...

You Are Loved -- 3 Days
Here it was before...

The after will be posted tomorrow for my Monday update because I worked on it over the weekend at the cabin. I've took this one to the cabin twice now and had two great progress days while there. It's getting close to a finish and I think I'll keep it out till I can mark it off my list. So come back tomorrow to see the new progress photo.

Frosted Pumpkin Halloween Spooky Sampler -- 6 Days
I finally got started on this fun design and am happy with my progress on it so far...

Halloween Mini Skeleton Face -- 5 Days
I had this one just barely started before...

Now the skeleton face is finished up and ready to be finished off and on display for this Halloween hopefully....

Spring Bell Pull -- 1 Day
I'm working on the N block still. Here it was before...

Here it is now. I got the top part finished up...

I only had 6 days of no stitching this time around so that's good. 5 of those were days we were busy at the cabin so that's at least a good excuse to miss stitching. The other day I was busy catching up reading blogs and emails so still an okay reason if you ask me.

Also with the WIPocalypse we get fun questions to answer so we can get to know each other. Question of the Month:Which is more satisfying to you and why – the process of stitching a piece, or the finish? Hmm I like them both equally. I just love being in love with the process of stitching a piece. When a piece is calling my name my needles just seem to fly. This month I've enjoyed each piece I've worked on. I love working on several different pieces and as you can see I did just that from the above photos. But when I get close to a finish it's really exciting too. It's always nice to know you are going to marking one off that long WIP list. So I guess I enjoy both for different reasons. I'm excited about finishing up You are Loved and getting it framed. I think I will hang it in the cabin. I was looking around for the perfect spot while we were there this weekend.

I'll be back tomorrow with my weekend update. Thanks for stopping by.