February Smalls: The Birds and the... Cats?

Allo, world~ Already the end of February, egad.  It's time for another installment of the Smalls SAL and I'm actually timely with both finish and post.

click for info!

The little bird I had started for GG has been completed~  There was a day when I felt quite bleh so I just took a mental health day and finished stitching it up.  The actual finishing was completed another day, or rather over a series of days to allow the fabric glue to fully dry.

before

after

I did make a few changes.  Some of the gingham didn't match up for my liking so I adjusted some squares.  The original pattern is actually for a Christmas heart but I felt I have a decent start on Christmas decorations and hardly any for Valentine's Day.  So I adjusted the green and red heart to be pinks and reds.

stitch by stitch

I haven't put up one of these little "Stitch Movies" in a while and seem to have forgotten my settings for making them!  Sorry it's a bit wobbly with terrible colors hah.  I used ezgif this time around; it'll do the borders and add any text you may want.

Finished-Finished

Since all the floss, fabric, needle, and finishing bits were provided with the magazine, it was quite easy to know what to do with it after stitching, hooray!  I added the heart buttons though, instead of the round ones provided.  Yay, I have a new Valentine's Day decoration to put out next year!

Technical Details

• "Gingham Bird", pattern found in Enjoy Cross Stitch, Christmas 2012.
• Designer: Maria Diaz.
• 2-over-1 on white 14-count Aida.
• Finished size: approximately 4" x 4" (~10cm x 10cm).
• Started: February 13, finished February 20, ~6 hours.  

⊱ ────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────── ⊰
I'm not sure if knitting is allowed for Smalls (it's stitching, right? with two [in this case, four] needles, riiight?). But I had to put this little guy in and he is certainly small!

Tiny Cat

Do not be deceived by his close up; Tiny Cat is a whopping 2" tall, if that. Such a fun, if fiddly, knit! I have never made an amigurumi anything before so this was a great learning experience. Especially picking up stitches. On wooden DPNs. When you're a tight knitter. I really shouldn't use wooden needles. I didn't break any but they certainly bent.  I'm not sure I knit the top of his head correctly either but it worked out in the end.

Tiny Cat watches you sleep

I am pleased to say my husband was Greatly Amused at Tiny Cat and took it to work with him to live on his desk.  This one was roughly modeled after Klondike so I suppose I should make Oreo and Peanut at some point.  Then he can have a little (literally!) herd of cats on his desk.

Technical Details

• "Tiny Parlor Cat" by Sarah Kellner, freebie pattern found here (ravelry).
• Yarn Used: random scrap leftovers.
• Needles: Size 4 (3.5mm) DPNs.
• Started January 28(?), finished February 6, ~3-4 hours.

That's all, folks!  See you next time!  I hope it will involve an awful lot of exclamation marks. :D

FotM - July Edition and Giveaway Winners!

Hi there! Here we are for the end of July (gasp) installment of the Flower of the Month SAL as hosted by Alyssa at Brownie's Chair! I think my mojo has taken a break. It has been very hot here (heat index of 115-120F, 46-49C) and I just wilt with that sort of heat. Summer has always been my least favorite season because of this; I lose all motivation to do anything at all.  It is even warm in the basement where the computers currently are and so, I'm behind on blog reading.  I'm sorry. :(

Before it got hotter than hot I did manage to finish April's Sweet Peas.

Yay!

Despite the abundance of pink, this one was a very enjoyable stitch! It went quickly and the only hiccup I had was at the end -- I washed it and one of my subbed pinks bled. Luckily I caught it while washing so I just kept washing until it was gone. I made sure to mark the offending floss so I know to be careful with it on future projects.

~it's show time~

Technical Details

• "April: Sweet Pea" freebie pattern by Ellen Maurer-Stroh, found here
• 2 over 1 on 14-count ecru huck towel (called for 3 over but I thought 2 looked okay)
• Finished size: 4.50 x 4.50" (11,50 x 11,50 cm)
• Started: June 22, Finished: July 4. 11 hours.  

floss toss!

somewhat started

I also got started on May's Lily of the Valley. I had hoped to have it done as well but I have not been enjoying this particular flower. I suppose it's the colors; they seem so much more drab than the previous ones have been.  Or it could be the heat.  Or both.  One amazing thing though -- I wound up having almost all of the colors for this piece.  That almost felt a bit weird.

snow ice cream, delicious noms

Good thing about all this hot hot hot is fishing out the snow ice cream that I made back in February.  It sure tasted good and made me think of much happier (read: colder) times.  I do hope my mojo comes back soon though.  It will be time to throw myself fully into canning garden veggies in a few weeks and I won't have time to sit down!  I have started with bread and butter pickles (to give away, I don't like them myself).  Also I made some salsa verde from green tomatoes harvested from plants that volunteered where they weren't supposed to.  I think next will be pickled honey jalapenos.  I'm about to drown in them lol.

Lastly!  My Dolphin Trio winners! :D  I got to use the random number generator gadget again and the winners arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreee~

Mini at Miniz Diary

and

Preeti at Creat-E-witty Unleashed

Yay! :D  Please send me an email with your address and I'll get it out to you guys ASAP!  It will just be the kit and no fancy extras so hopefully the parcels will teleport themselves to you.  :)))

Thank you for reading!  I'll be back to ramble again for Gifted Gorgeousness.

FotM - June Edition!

Here we are for my June installment of the Flower of the Month SAL as hosted by Alyssa at Brownie's Chair! And I have emerged victorious! The February Violets are finally done!  More exclamation points!

YAY

I can't believe I had so much trouble with this particular design. I suppose it was as Preeti said, so many color changes! I have looked over the remaining patterns and it looks like the rest are not nearly as involved as this one.  whew

And here's the GIF of this project! Towards the end it looks like I've gotten a bit better at taking mostly similar pictures haha.  I will try to do one for each of the months excluding March as it was finished 5 years ago and I am unfortunately not in possession of a TARDIS or Delorean.

Technical Details

• "February: Violets" freebie pattern by Ellen Maurer-Stroh, found here
• 2 over 1 on 14-count ecru huck towel (called for 3 over but I thought 2 looked okay)
• Finished size: 4.50 x 4.50" (11,50 x 11,50 cm)
• Started: February 19, Finished: June 16.  unknown hours as I didn't keep track during vacation, oops!

where the collection now stands

But wait!

:o

:O

I got started on April's Sweet Pea! It's stitching up much faster than violets; there is only one large flower and two tiny ones left to do.  It helps when one doesn't have Must Do projects haha.  Again, I didn't have all of the charted colors so I went stash diving to see what I could come up with.  I hope they look okay!

I shall see you next time!  It is a wonderful 3-day weekend for the celebration of MURICA.  Even though I don't have any stitches for it, the 4th is hands down my favorite holiday.  Bring on the fireworks and BBQs~! :D

FotM - January and Messy-to-Classy

Well hidey ho! I'm gonna jump right in here with I HAVE A FINISH!!

January - Carnations

Weeee, my first finish of 2015! At this rate maybe I will have a solid 11 finishes by the end of the year! This is the first check in for the Flower of the Month SAL hosted by Alyssa at Brownie's Chair and I'm so happy to have it ready to show off. Well... I guess mostly finished. See that big empty space above the flowers? I'm hoping to eventually design a "Rosey's Kitchen" or "[month] Kitchen" or just "[month]" (on all of them!) but no fonts have inspired me thus far. I'll keep lookin'. I started off unsure on the colors I selected as they were not the ones called for.  Now that it's finished, I am happy with them but not that bottom carnation.  I think.  It may grow on me.  You may notice I decided to not stitch the border.  It's a tight squeeze on the huck towels as is.  And as I've been mostly quiet this month with no WIP pictures of this project, I thought maybe you would like to see a little GIF of my progress.

grow and bloom!

It is incredibly hard to get the same lighting and position haha.  I'll try harder 'cause I think this looks kinda neat.  :D

Technical Details

• "January: Carnation" freebie pattern by Ellen Maurer-Stroh, found here
• 2 over 1 on 14-count ecru huck towel (called for 3 over but I thought 2 looked okay)
• Finished size: 4.50 x 4.50" (11,50 x 11,50 cm)
• Started: January 1, Finished: January 30.  19.5 hours.

finishes - before

finishes - after

I have a little addition to the Messy-to-Classy link party hosted by Preeti. It is still fairly cold in my craft room so I've been stubbornly ignoring its messiness until warmer weather. Instead, I took advantage of a decent Internet connection and organized my finishes and wishes pages! I originally had them sorted with pictures but my connection cannot handle too many images and as time goes on, the finishes page will grow (I hope!) beyond what I can load. So, I changed everything over to links with a short description.  I may have gone a bit, erm, overboard with the wishlist though, lol. I dream big and will never accomplish half (quarter!) of the stuff listed! I even went scouring HaED patterns after seeing so many wonderful starts with DUCJC I had to give it a second chance. I did not realize there were over 10k patterns on that site, lol. I hope this somewhat unorthodox "cleaning" is okay.

Hi!

In other, less stitchy news, we have a new kitty! Please find yourself admiring this rather potato picture of our newest black and white, Klondike. Peanut took to him rather quickly as Peanut is a loving goofball and Klondike has an unending supply of energy. It's kitty terrorism when they start playing. Oreo, she is still being worked on. She's always been a bit of a stubborn butt-head (even with Peanut, who she grew up with) so I'm not worried. She tolerates Klondike and will play in the same area as him, so small steps. :)

Whew!  That is a lot of stuff; I hope you survived~!