OhSewCrafty Blog

January started with We Do Harry Potter.  A bit less than 5 days (and 1573 stitches) yielded a finish.

Prancer was another finish goal.  I gave it a few hours, 468 beads & stitches… and had to stop because I need Wisper thread to finish the tail, which should arrive tomorrow.  So a finish post is forthcoming soon, here’s hoping!  

My ornament projects got partial days, just an hour or two here and there for HW and such.  Toy Ornament (+328 stitches) and Batty Belinda (+257 stitches) are well positioned for finishes next month or whenever.

I spent several days model stitching for Ingleside Imaginarium and finished the project, though I can’t share the pics yet.  I’ll just say they are great patterns and check out Ingleside Imaginarium (Etsy) if you like fantastical stuff like I do!  (or food, animals, and cute, quirky charts in general)

I spent a few days on Save the Stitches, enough to finish Part 13, excluding metallics, with a total of 1240 stitches. 

At first I wasn’t in the mood for new starts.  January 1 2020 was the first New Years Day in many years without a new crafting start of some sort.  I didn’t even stitch on January first!  (I was tired from traveling.) But on January 12, I finally got myself in gear and started Rapunzel on 32 count belfast in “Heather” by Picture by Plus.  I’ve given her 2.5 days and she has 1,901 stitiches so far, I really love it and she may be my new fave.

I finally got down to business with my heaviest lift of 2020, TW Fantasy Triptych.  It was slow going with a lot of color changes, but I gave it 4 days. Previous progress, from November 29:
Over the 4 days, I got 1,387 stitches and a page finish.  I’m happy to see the upper page is a lot easier, fewer color changes and not full coverage, either.  The knight’s face is charted over 1, but I’ll do that part last.  I’ve started working the background at the top, in half cross, as directed.  I’m thinking about adding a tent stitch blue sky, too.  (The sky is empty area on the chart).  Now:

As the remaining days in the month dwindled, I took out my last focus project, Twilight Bridge.  Previous progress from November:

I’ve given it 4 days love so far and 1,411 stitches.  Most of those are tent stitch with 4-5 strands, it counts for half, and the progress looks more like 2,500.  

My goal is 1,667 stitches per month, as I’m attempting the 20k in 2020 event with Full Coverage Fanatics (FB), but I’m not going to stress too much about the numeric goal this month.  I’ll work on it a little more tonight then rotate, I’m starting to feel a little burned out, and new stitchy week begins tomorrow.  Most of what remains on the bottom left page is tent stitch in just a few colors, black and green-black blend.    

Question: What SALs are you participating in this year?  The School of Magical Stitches (FB), which has a Disney theme this year, with weekly, monthly, and yearly challenges.  I’m a Resort Manager 😂 at Boardwalk (my fave resort).  Semisane Stitchers (FB) has several fun events where I’m playing along such as Alphabet Soup and Once upon a Fairytale.   I’m doing Jessie Marie’s WIPGO (FB), which is very similar to WIPocalypse, just with a Bingo model.  For January, the blocks called were both framing projects (highlighted below).  I’m doing Year of WIPs with Soulful Stitchers (FB), again similar to WIPocalypse but a bit more ambitious since 20 projects are required, so I’m including several new starts for that one, mostly small projects and/or freebies.  Here’s my WIPGO board. As for stitching SALS, I’m keeping an eye on the Letters from Hogwarts SAL by Cunning Cross Stitch.  I’m intrigued by what I’ve seen so far but it’s a big project and I won’t commit until I see more, probably until it’s finished.  As I rule, I don’t do mystery SALS because I only what stitch what I love, and I can’t know if I love it before I see it.  Even my favorite designers have some patterns that are not to my taste.  Another one that sparked my interest recently is the Mythological Alphabet by Paine Free Crafts.  I love what I’ve seen so far, and spoiler alert, the full alphabet (original art by Stanley Morrison) is easily found online.  But it’s a big one, and I don’t have any fabric for it, so it will wait awhile.  

My plans for the end of the month include a new start, which I need for extra credit in the school of Magical Stitches.  Finishing Prancer, which will only require an hour or two, is also on the agenda.  I plan to do some framing, the two projects highlighted in the table above.  As for February, it’s a short month, even with the extra day for leap year, and it’s my son’s birthday too.  Still, I hope to work on lots of things, and make some major progress!