WIPocalypse January Check In

For the WIPocalypse SAL I’m in, we’re supposed to check in at the end of every month to show our progress and answer a common question. Since this is my first one, I’m not sure of the format, but I’ll figure it out eventually, right?

First up, the presents. I finished presents for three of my friends.

Yarn ball embroidered with yarn and metallic crochet hook for Nichole

Moomin for Christen

Finish Him for Gina

It was great getting those completed, especially the one for Gina, since it wasn’t for any actual occasion, it kept getting moved to the back burner.

I did make some progress on the Mario Nintendo SAL.

So. Many. Bricks.

I decided on, and started work on, my Project 365 Somethings which will involve working on stitched letters and words.

Stem stitch as a fill stitch

Stem stitch as a fill stitch seemed to work fairly well for the straight part of the “R”, but didn’t go smoothly for me in the little curved parts of the “C”.

I didn’t get any work done on the other things though. Still, I feel good about getting the presents made. There are bits and bobs here and there that I worked on too, but these were the main things.

The WIPocalypse question of the month is: What Stitch-A-Longs are you participating in this year?

I should preface this with “I have ambitions to do…”
The 8 Bit Stitch Game of Thrones SAL
The Connie Gee Back stitch only SAL
A monthly Mandala one that I am blanking on the official name of…
Hopebroidery Television Sampler
Steotch-a-long will have another one in the summer that I will join.

The WIPocalypse group will also be hosting a Stitching Olympics during the month of Feb. There are a couple of choices to join, but I think I will be doing the Endurance path. This means that I will be working on only one thing during that time. I’ve chosen my Nintendo SAL for the Olympics. Even if I manage to get Mario done, Duck Hunt, Pac-Man and more are waiting right behind him!

 

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Project 365 Somethings

I am a starter of things.

A lot of things.

Too many things.

Unfortunately, I am far less often a finisher of things. Also, unfortunately, I have always struggled with the “journey” part being the point. What this means is that when I start something and don’t finish it, I feel like I have failed. EVEN IF I have learned something along the way or I “Made Something” for 178 days, but didn’t make it until 365, it still feels like a failure, that I have let myself down and wasn’t able to follow through. Heck, even the fact that I’m typing up this Project 365 post on January 25th instead of January 1st feels like a huge failure to me. But I guess I’m working on it.

Around the second week in January I found Project 365 Somethings on iHannah’s blog. I’m not sure how I missed it. You should definitely stop on over to her beautiful blog and take a look. The short version is that you end the year with 365 Somethings. You can do this as a daily practice of one thing a day, a weekly goal of 7, or work in whatever number of batches works for you. Some people are even breaking it down to 52 Somethings to start. Then, post progress updates to your blog.

The overall idea is to really delve deep into something you’d like to learn or something you love to do. This is like the 10×10 board game challenge that I have started several times (and only completed once). As people near me know, I have been focusing more on embroidery lately and moved a little further away from beading. I still love beading, but I have this other, newer, love right now and that’s demanding a lot of attention. I’m in several challenges and groups dedicated to it: 1 Year of Stitches, WIPocalypse, Stitch From Stash, etc. But most of those focus on finishing individual and specific projects.

My biggest reluctance and hurdle with Project 365 Somethings is that I had a hard time figuring out WHAT that End Something could be. I mean, making 365 different embroidery pieces is too much for me. Even *I* know that! Looking at all the embroidery I love, I am often most impressed with people’s handwriting and lettering. Especially since it’s the snarky things I like the most so they almost always have words. I’ve never had particularly bad handwriting, but it’s not Embroidery Worthy handwriting. So I think this is where my end game lies: to be better at embroidering mine and others’ lettering.

BIG GOAL: My goal for this year will be to Embroider 365 Words. Included in this will be the weird fonts on presents I am working on for friends, handwriting and lettering practice done on my own for no REAL purpose (this in and of itself–terrifying), and just general practicing of new stitches in lettering form.

First up: a Mortal Kombat present for a friend that I’m still working on…

Finish Him!

That font man…I tried to get the two H’s to be as similar as possible, but that’s as close as I got on that. I definitely need a lot of work on stylized fonts. But it’s a start, right? And 178 days of making things is better than none, right?

For now? 2/365 #365Somethings2018

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WIPocalypse

Another day, another project…

As a chronic starter, I have A LOT of Works in Progress (WIPs). This year I happened to find what many already have found and that is the WIPocalypse SAL. Less like a traditional Stitch A Long and more like a support and cheerleading group, the WIPocalypse SAL is a place for kindred souls. Starting in 2012, this is the 6th consecutive year. Go ahead and take a look all about it on Melissa’s blog Measi’s Musings.

This is my “official” kick-off post that is supposed to let you know what projects (for now at least) I plan to focus on. Fortunately, we can add projects throughout the year. Several of my WIPs are presents so I can’t post those here, but just know…there’s always an extra 3-5 behind the scenes. 😉 Plus, I do too many other things besides cross-stitch so I have a lot of other projects going onto this list.

My biggest stitching to-do is probably the Nintendo SAL by Armada Designs.

Mario…January 2017

There are 12 different games and I don’t plan on doing all of them, but there are quite a few I’d like to do–I’m looking at you Duck Hunt and TMNT.

At one point, I bought a little stuffed panda embroidery project (I have a thing about pandas) so that has to go on the list too.

I also wanted to try out the Silk threads, but I didn’t want to invest in a whole line and figure out a project so I bought this great little kit from Sublime Stitching called Feather Pincushion.

I got mine in the “flashy” colors 🙂

I also took a Shishiko stitching class at a great new(ish) local store called Blue Bar Quilts. Of course, that class sample was never finished.

Just getting started during the class.

And since I used to teach beading, the number of unfinished projects I have from that is TRULY stunning.

Then there’s also the summer Stitch A Long for Rebecca Ringquist’s book Embroidery Workshops that never actually was Stitched a Long with. So…yeah. I have a lot of unfinished to-dos that I would like to turn into to-dones.

Hopefully you all and the challenges and the new thing called “focus” I’m working on will help make that all happen.

 

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