WIPocalypse – The January Update

A few days late, but we got there in the end, 2012’s first WIPocalypse update. Sadly the afghan is taking forever, I just can get comfortable with all that fabric and as a result I get tired of it pretty quickly. The polar bear cubs are fortunately nearing completion, but after them there are 5 more animals. And less than a month left till the pink bump arrives. Luckily blue bump isn’t scheduled until the end of February, very lucky since I haven’t even started his afghan yet.

As you can see I mostly have filling left to do, the eyes and noses are being done next and then all the white. I’ve ran out of a color as well, DMC 415 so I need to pick up another skein of that to complete the shading on the cubs. Then I might got straight to the next one on the list and save the back stitch for another time, we’ll see.

I also put some stitches in my Sleepy Hollow Sampler recently, and there really isn’t much more to do on it. I ran out of a color though so I’ll have to order that soon, and try not to order other unplanned stash at the same time.

How did everyone else do with their WIP stitching?

WIPocalypse 2012

A few months back I signed up to Measi’s WIPocalypse 2012, which in her own words is:

“a stitch-a-long playing up on the joke that the world will end in 2012. It’s short for Works In Progress Apocalypse.
The goal of the WIPocalypse is to make progress on your projects. How you go about this is your choice.”

I’ve completely forgot o post a list of my WIPs, well I do have a constant list on my WIPs page here on the blog, but I wanted to do a post where I tell you which ones I’ll be focusing one each month etc.

So here we go:

Solo Brode SAL ‘En attendant l’été’

Jungle Scamp

RTR – Sleepy Hollow Sampler

Emily Peacock ‘KISS cushion’

PINN Stitch ‘Tranquille Valley’

Panda Baby

Stitcher’s Sampler

Lizzie*Kate – Summer Alphabet

Lizzie*Kate – Halloween Rules

Baby Afghan – Baby Animals

Joan Elliott’s Christmas Lady

Baby Afghan – Winnie the Pooh

Hot Water Bottle Cover

Wedding Sampler

Biscornu for mum

HAED ‘QS Rose Dreaming’

HAED ‘SK Blue Moon’

Abi Gurden – The Great Escape’

These are listed in no particular order. For the first few months I’ll be focusing on the two baby afghans, once they are finished (hopefully by the end of February I’ll get going on the rest. Apart from the afghans the main pieces I want to finish this year are:

RTR – Sleepy Hollow Sampler

Emily Peacock ‘KISS cushion’

Lizzie*Kate – Summer Alphabet

Lizzie*Kate – Halloween Rules

Joan Elliott’s Christmas Lady

Jungle Scamp

Panda Baby

Biscornu for mum

I’ll be back in a day or so for my monthly check-in to show you how I’m getting on.

Until then, Happy Stitching

Crazy January Challenge 2011 – Round Up

As many of you will remember I started 2011 with the Crazy January Challenge, where I started 15 new stitching projects in 15 days, all to be completed before December 31st 2011.
So how did I do? Do you think I managed to finish all 15 of them?

Sadly, I did not. The challenge might have been a bit to ambitious for me, especially since I kept getting distracted by new starts all through the year. Our move in May which saw me leaving all my WIPs behind in Liverpool didn’t really help either, it was August before I had them back (well some of them are still up there).

In the end I managed to finish 7 out my 15 projects. It was almost 8, but I still have some stitching left on the last one.

And here they are in the order they were finished:

Lizzie*Kate – Time for God finished in January

Valentine Biscornu – Own design finished in January

The Sampler Girl – Christmas Eve Flight freebie finished in January

La Fee Rie – Snowflake Biscornu Freebie finished in January

Lizzie*Kate – All you Need is Love finished in February

Crossstitcher/De Fil en Aiguille – Post Wall Hanging finished in March/April

The almost finished piece is my Sleepy Hollow Sampler, at least it will be finished by next Halloween. I’ll show you a picture of it and some of the other unfinished challenge pieces tomorrow.

I am definitely not joining the Crazy January Challenge for 2012, one big failure is enough for me. Instead I’ve joined Measi’s WIPocalypse (more on that in another post) and I’ve joined Kell’s X-Stitching Xmas Challenge 2012, so I should be able to have some fun with those.

How did everyone else fare with their Crazy January challenge and other 2011 challenges?

A New Start

Happy New Year to you all!

I thought I’d start 2012 as I mean to go on, stop wasting time and doing the things I say I will do and the things I want to do.

2011 was a horrendous year for my family, and just about the only thing that has kept us going is the hope that this year will be better, it has to be better.

I have lots of things to look forward to, the two main events being the birth of my niece at the beginning of February and my nephew at the end of the month. I really can’t wait for the two little bundles if joy to appear.

As for what I want to do in 2012, they can be boiled down to three main things:
1. Reading
2. Writing
3. Creating

1. and 2. are undeniably linked. For the past year I’ve hardly read anything new, I might have got through 20 books or so. As a result my writing has been rubbish, I’ve felt totally uninspired and I couldn’t even get to 50k for Nano this year. So in an effort to write more and better I’m going to read more, I’ve set myself a minimum of 50 books that I haven’t read before, which should be more than doable. I’ve already started my first one and almost finished, I’ll try to give you a review when I’m done.

As for the writing I just want to get back to writing regularly, a few 100 words every day for the first few months at least. Then I can gradually up it and get back to the good old days of 3-4k in a sitting.

The last thing on my list is creating, mostly stitching and then finishing the stitching into sell-able items like jewelry, stitching accessorize etc. I have a few ideas and I’ve collected so many extra bits over the last few months that I should be able to make quite a lot, then set up an etsy or folksy site to sell them.

There is something that isn’t on the list, but is more important than any of it, family. It’s been 5 years since I last visited Norway, which is slightly ridiculous. I mean we were away from Liverpool for only 2 years and the city changed so much in that time, I dread to think what Trondheim is like now, maybe I won’t remember any of it. So in the year which will mark my 10th anniversary of moving to the UK, I promise, I will be going back for a visit.

There is lots more of course, but those are my main to-dos for 2012, general ones at least.

Do you have a goal, wish or resolution for the new year?