WIPocalypse February 2020 Check-in An Adventure in Parking

 Hi Everyone,

It has been a great stitching month for me! I decided try parking again.  And I realized that it depends on the project I am working on if like parking or not.  Lets look at my progress in February!

Starting with SK Sunny! Such a colorful stitch, I thoroughly enjoyed working on her after a prolonged period of no progress!

 

The pics don't give it justice to the vibrancy of the colors.

So happy with this finish!


Update on my Facebook group Sals:

Ultimate Cross Stitch Group 

  

I was supposed to work on Ganesha, unfortunately  I never got much progress done on this one. I was too busy with other projects this month. I hope to change that this month!

On the counting challenge each day a number was given to be stitched. Total for 24 days was 5050 Stitches. I was able to stitch that and more, I completed 5443!

At the beginning of the month, I was here:

 

And  at the end of the month I was here!!!!!

So this is where I thought to pick up the parking again. I have had my ups and downs with parking, I love it, then I hate it. However, with this project I loved it.   I decided to park by working on 20x20 blocks. Which meant once I finished one section, that meant I finished 400 stitches!!

Full Coverage Cross Stitch Group

I was able to sneak in just enough stitches on SK Winter Wings

Full Coverage Fanatics Group
I just had to show my progress on SK Winter Wings in this one.

I started her here at the beginning of the month

 

 And ended the month here

For the other sals I used World Travel bookshelf.  I really enjoyed stitching on it and really got in a groove for parking with it.

Question for February WIPocalypse

In honor of "Leap Year", tell the story of a time you had to make some sort o "leap" in stitching - taking a chance on a new style, attending a meetup or class, etc.

Hmmm, a leap that I have taken this year....I thinkn that the leap I have taken this year is with the parking technique.  In the past I have dabbled in it, but this year I have leapt into it with gusto.  Hoping I continue to like it as much as I have this past month!

My plans for the month of march are:

1 - Work on SK Winter wings for the Full Coverage Fanatics Around the World Sal.  This month is Canada!  What better project to pick than Winter Wings!  We are still in the middle of a very snowy winter.  This is from just yesterday.

2 - Continue with my 20 in 20 challenge for Full Coverage Fanatics using World Travel Bookshelf.  As of the end of February I had 6578 stitches complete!  Only 13422 left to complete this challenge!

3 - For the 2020 in 2020 challenge in Full Coverage Cross, I will be stitching on Ganesha, I really need to get to the end of the top row.  Its been a dull/easy stitch but I want to push myself to finish it and move down to the next row.

4 - For the Just Show Progress challenge for March with the Ultimate Cross Stitch group I will use Ganesha again.

5 - There is a counting challenge in the Ultimate Cross stitch group as well, I think I will use World Travel Bookshelf.

6 - And if I manage to make solid progress on these pieces I will pick up another Wip! Or maybe a new start????

Happy Stitching!

~~~Vani~~~

February 2020 Stitching Plans

I am so looking forward to stitching this year, the last month was great. I am really enjoying my self.  I've got plans for my stitching for February, and they all revolve around the SALs that I am participating in.

First a quick update on the last week, I got some stitches in SK Sunny.  Will continue to work on this one periodically until I get the page/Project finish.

SALs update:

For the month of February I will be participating in the following SALs

Ultimate Cross Stitch Group 

1 - Show your progress:
Red Velvet and Lace Cupcake Challenge
(Ganesha)

2 - Counting:
I Love Cross Stitch Bingo
(World Travel Bookshelf)

Each day another number will be revealed for that amount to be stitched.
Day 1 - 325 Stitches
Day 2 - 280 Stitches
Day 3 - 210 Stitches
Day 4 - 300 Stitches
...
(there are 24 days!)

Full Coverage Cross Stitch Group

1 - Complete 2020 Stitches in the month of February.
(SK Winter Wings)

Full Coverage Fanatics Group

1 - Monthly Theme SAL, Brazil, I chose to use a color from the flag, Blue.  I will be stitching on SK Winter Wings

2 - Valentines Weekend SAL, Love is all you need weekend Challenge.

Stitch on something that represents Love.  I chose World Travel Bookshelf.  I just love the detail and colors.

3 - Year Long Sal - Stitch 20,000 Stitches in 2020.
(World Travel Bookshelf)

Since I will be using the same project for multiple challenges, here are the start pics for all of them.

1 - World Travel Bookshelf

2 - SK Winter Wings

3 - Ganesha

Happy Stitching

~~~Vani~~~

January WIP-ocalypse Checkin

Hi Everyone!

This is my checkin for the January Wipocalypse!

Go Checkout our Host for this Wipocalypse Measi's Blog

My first month of Stitching was actually very productive!  I had a few page finishes and progress made on multiple projects!

Question for this month:

What SALs are you participating in this year?

Well, there are so many out there to choose from.  I find myself wanting to do so much and getting overwhelmed.  I had to really look at the multitude of SALs around and see which ones would work.  I don't really join the ones like Linen and Threads Sals, because I like to look at samplers, but much prefer to stitch on full coverage pieces.  That's why all the ones I participate in are motivational SALs.

I had to add a page in my Blog, to help me keep track of all my SALs.

For January I joined a couple of facebook group SALs.  Full Coverage Cross Stitch group had a challenge to complete 2020 stitches each month.  I choose SK Winter Wings and was able to get the stitches in.

Before:

After:

Can't wait to get started on the next page on this one, its all about her dress!

The other SALs I had for January was with the Ultimate Cross Stitch group.

The  first challenge was to just show your progress, no minimum stitch count required.  I used SK Winter Wings again.

The second challenge with them was a counting challenge, there was 11 sections, and each section had a different amount to be completed.  In total there was 4850 Stitches to complete and I did!  I switched projects in the middle once the page on SK Winter Wings was done, I used World travel Bookshelf.

Before:

After:

Thats my Sal update, I found a couple of more Sals that I will participate in from February onwards.  I will post on that at the beginning of the month.

Looking forward to seeing everyones WIPocalypse posts!

Happy Stitching!

Vani

Page Finish and a Rotation Pick

So this past week, I am super happy with the progress I made.  As our daily routine with home and family gets settled, I don't have very much time to stitch. Certainly not every day!  I do try to get at least one stitch in everyday, as that's one of my stitching resolutions.  

I was working towards a page finish this week from this point:

And I am happy to say I completed the page!  There is a certain sense of satisfaction that comes with a page finish.  Its exhilarating, even if you are far from a project finish, a page finish is a huge accomplishment.  I find especially with this one, as it has been a long time coming. I checked back in my notes and I believe I started this one in 2011!! Its definitely been a long time coming.  This happens with the smaller projects that are there to relieve some of the monotonous of the bigger projects.  Lets hope the next page doesn't take that long!

My page Finish!

Can you pick up the sparklies!

As you can see from my progress bars, I have a few projects in my rotation.  I was having a hard time deciding on which project to select next to work on.  I thought maybe I should work on one of the ones that had been put down with a half page completed, but I also really wanted to make progress on my larger projects.  So I put a poll to the group members of the HAED facebook group.  And they selected for me to work on World Travel Bookshelf.

So that's what I am doing, I picked up World Travel Bookshelf.  This is where I started from:

I usually use a qsnap to hold my projects, however I was finding that my arm was hurting from holding the weight of this project.  There is a lot of material and it can get heavy at times. So I have moved this one to my lapstand qsnap.  Much better and I can stitch two handed now.  

I'm sure you can make out the threads hanging in the pic, I occasionally get the urge to do the parking method with a project.  I'll do it for awhile, but it won't take long for the threads to get on my nerves!  I like how the picture emerges when parking, however I found I didn't like parking in a 10x10 block, that seemed a waste of time, threading and rethreading my needle for just one stitch sometimes.  So I do a modified parking method and I park by column, meaning I stitch all of one color in a column and park it in the next.  Even with that, the hanging threads after awhile bothered me.  So with this I am now in the process of stitching away the parked threads.  

I much prefer my normal method of stitching, cross country, but even with CC I am switching it up, I stitch up and down a column however much I can get done with one length of thread and then move on to the next color.  That way I'm not all over the place and less carrying over in the back making it bulky, and I don't have threads hanging and bothering me.  It seems to be working for now.  And with the new stitching app Pattern Keeper, there's no problem with missed stitches, which I will agree is a plus with parking.  Cross Country is my favourite because I am a faster stitcher when I Cross Country stitch.  I'm trying to mix methods to find my ultimate method.

Update on my Challenges:

2020 for 2020:

I have a completed January with 2354!

For the Cupcake Conundrum Challenge:

Section 1 - Stitch 300

Complete with 659 stitches

Section 2 - Stitch 600

Complete with 611 stitches

Section 3 - Stitch 550

Complete with 615 stitches

Section 4 - Stitch 675

Complete with 698 stitches ( I switched projects here)

Section 5 - Stitch 500

Complete with 572 stitches.

Section 6 - Stitch 425

Working on it

Section 7 - Stitch 350

Not started

Here's where I am so far!

As always, thanks for the comments!

Happy Stitching!

~Vani~

1st week of Stitching this year!

So this past week or so since my last post has been great!  I got quite a bit stitching done, in between going back to work and getting the house in order after the holidays. House is still not in order, some days I felt stitching was more important! 

This week I continued to work on SK Winter Wings, I am close to a page finish so I am pushing to finish.  There is quite a bit of sparkly thread in this one, not sure you can pick it up in the regular pics, I tried taking a close up so you can see.  The effect is really pretty in person.  You can almost pick up the sparkle better when the pic is out of focus!

Update on challenges:

The challenge for the Full Coverage Fanatics FB group, Stitch 2020 in January.  This is coming along nicely, after about a week of stitching I have 1338 stitches put in.

Challenges for the Ultimate Cross Stitch FB group are also coming along nicely.  Their cupcake challenge has a few more sections added. 

Section 1 - Stitch 300 

Completed with 659 Stitches

Section 2 -  Stitch 600

Still working on this on

Section 3 - Stitch 550 

Not started, might pick up another project, or this might get me to the page finish!

You are probably wondering if I stitched a total of 1338 stitches how have I not completed the sections. Well I had more than half that amount done before I posted my start pic for section 1. And there are two days between when they post what the next section will be, and I had the first section done with time to spare so I continued stitching until the second section post went up.  Now that life is back to normal busy schedule, it means less time to stitch.

Here is my progress on SK Winter Wings this past week:

Before:

After:

Here is what I hope my finished piece will look like when finished:

On a side note we had a snow day yesterday which meant more stitching time!  Kids were supposed to go back to school for the first time after the holidays, happy to have a snow day!  We got 41cm of the white stuff!

Thank you for your comments.

Carey, I too enjoy the FB challenges, they really motivate me to stitch. I had to be realistic with myself though and pick the ones I thought I had a chance completing.  And there are some out there that are just too complicated so I skipped them, but I enjoy watching others tackle them!  Good luck to you in your stitching

Katie, welcome to a fellow WIPopcalypse stitcher, wishing you all the best in your stitching adventures!

Kaisievic, Thanks! I like working on projects with alot of color, mostly.  This one is a challenge with it's grey and blue tones.

SK Winter Wings

So after putting away Shore Line village for a while I picked up one of my smaller ones to have a go at!  I am determined to finish some of the smaller ones on my WIP list, to give me more time to work on other ones!!!  So I hauled out SK Winter Wings.  I have to say I really get excited when I start in on one of my wips when its their turn in my rotation!  I think thats why I do a rotation with so many on the go at a time!  I get bored easily!  This way I get to work on all of them at some point  in time and I am still super interested in working on that particular piece!  So anyway, here's what I had on SK Winter Wings before this recent stitching session with her...

And here she is after stitching for a couple of days...

I should be soon getting to her face!  Which will be really exciting!

Happy Stitching!!!

~~~Vani~~~



Winter Wings & Shore Line Village

In my rotation I usually work on SK Winter Wings on the 24th and the 25th of every month.  Sadly this month I was able to only put a few stitches into her.  I will say though I think her silhouette is coming out nicely! 

 

As for Shore Line Village, the walk way is taking shape quite nicely!  I am really looking forward to getting to that flower bush in the bottom left corner. 

Happy Stitching!

~~~Vani~~~

SK Winter Wings - 2328 / 25116

My two 'Christmas' days of stitching are done for the month...

I am totally happy with the direction this is going in!  Although it wasn't until I actually posted a picture and stepped back from it that I saw yes -  she is there among all those blue and grey stitches!!! I can now actually see her outline!! Next months stitching should be interesting!!!  I'm interested to see how her hair will turn out with all those lovely flowers!!! And her dress!!! Can't wait!  Makes me really look forward to the next time I will pick her up!

Until the next Stitch....

~~~Vani~~~



SK Winter Wings - 1379 / 25116

I did a few stitches last night for the second night in my winter SAL.  As I was stitching I was thinking oh, another blue, oh another grey!  And then I looked at the chart again and thought doh!  The whole thing is going to be these colors!  I hope it soon comes together, but I won't get to it again till next month.  But heres my canvas of blue and grey stitches that look like absolutely nothing!

SK Winter Wings

Until the next stitch...

~~~Vani~~~

SK Winter Wings - 1089 / 25116

Over this long weekend I  didn't do a whole lot of stitching!  We went out of town and I didn't bring my stitching, so I had a very lazy weekend.  But when we came back on Sunday I got a few stitches in.  On every 24th and 25th of the month I stitch a winter/christmas themed chart as part of a sal on the BB.  The chart I work on every month is SK Winter Wings by Nene Thomas.  I had already in the past worked on her some before picking her up last night, so I just picked up from there,  I have completed a little over 1000 stitches!

I really can't make anything out.  That may be her face in the upper left corner, but its really too close to the edge to be her face, so I will just have to wait patiently for her to appear!


~~~Vani~~~