Flapping Parrot & Game of Swannes update

 I've been making an active effort to have more me time and thus have been stitching more. I have the next two weeks off so hopefully that's even more stitching time, even factoring the traveling I have to do. Without further ado, here are the updates.

Flapping Parrot before:

After:

Game of Swannes Before:

 After:

 I'm pretty happy with my progress on both pieces. They are both really pleasant to stitch but in wildly different ways. 

I'm on a bit of a kick lately to clear out my stash, both in knitting and in stitching. I just finished knitting my first sweater with yarn I've had for close to a decade. IT was really satisfying to cross that off my list. Now my focus is on a commission piece, which I really want to finish as soon as possible and move on. There's something really motivating about actually finishing something, especially if you've been working on it for a while. As a result I'm trying not to start new stuff and just focus on what I have going on, finish it up, and move on to the next thing I have going on. We'll see how it goes, but so far I'm really enjoying it. 

Some of you asked me what I'm reading. I just finished A Shadow in the Ember. Then I took my Goodreads "to be read" list, ran a random number generator, and picked up whatever book it landed on. That turned out to be Credible Witness: Paranormal Police Stories which I must have heard about on a podcast or something and added it to my to be read after which I promptly forgot about it. It's kind of a fun way to decide what to read next. 

So that's basically it. I'm much happier with the way things are now. I hope I can keep it up.

Happy stitching, everyone!

Big Update (Flapping Parrot page finish, Game of Swannes, Faery Tales)

 I have been really bad about blogging lately, which is on me. Work, as always, has been exhausting and I just haven't been in the right frame of mind to blog. But I've been stitching, so here are the updates!

Finished a page of the Flapping Parrot!

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 After:

Put some more stitching into Game of Swannes!

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After:

And inching toward a page finish on Once Upon and Faery Tale!

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After:

I've really been throwing myself into crafting lately. My stress levels have been pretty intense and my health is suffering for it. I'm cutting back on work to the extent I can, but the effects are still there, though lessening day by day. I took the week off work so hoping to do a lot of relaxing, reading, and stitching.

I hope you're all well. Thanks for bearing with me through my ups and downs. 

Happy stitching!

Snow Bears Stocking - Finish

 I have been so bad about posting. Between the house, work, and everything else I haven't been crafting nearly as much. Good news is that construction on my office/craft room is complete and now I can start moving my stuff in there, once I acquire furniture. 

I also had LASIK eye surgery just a little over a month ago, which has been a quality of life game changer. It's not without its side effects, but generally I'm really happy with the results. 

I did, however, actually finish a stitching project. My Christmas stocking is finally done!

Before:

And finished:

I even ironed it! So that's something. 

I'd like to get back into the habit of blogging. Usually I'm so tired it just doesn't even cross my mind. But blogging right now reminds me how much I used to enjoy it. 

Having a finish also send a bit of motivation to keep working on my projects. 

So hopefully this is a restart of some good habits. On to the next!

Faery Tales - Page 19 Finish

 So it has been forever since I posted. We moved into the new house and a lot of energy has been put into fixing basically everything. I absolutely love the house, though, and I'm so happy we bought it. It's a different world having a place of our own. It doesn't come without its difficulties, of course, but we're working through everything. 

Work continues to be absurd and at this point I have to set as many boundaries as I possibly can otherwise they'll keep taking advantage of me.

I've been knitting a lot lately, and stitching on my Christmas stocking. I'll post a photo when that's done. Lesli and I have returned to our Faery Tale SAL (last week of every month) and although I forgot to take a picture last month, last night I managed to finish a page.

Before:

 After:

 The new house has much better lighting than our old place, hence the difference in colors. 

This project is an absolute beast to stitch, but I'm really enjoying having something new and exciting on each page. I'm going to try to put in a few stitches on the next page today even though I have company coming soon and need to tidy the house a bit. 

Once I finish my Christmas stocking I'm going to go back to my rotation. Hopefully that will mean more posts here! I didn't mean to abandon this blog honestly, life just got a little too hectic and before I knew it, it had been months!

Glad to be back, now. Happy stitching, everyone!

Catch-Up Post (Flapping Parrot and Faery Tales)

 I haven't posted in a bit. Things have been hectic. Work has absolutely exploded and we bought a house (!) so there has been a lot to take care of, organize, handle, set up, etc. I have been so focused on the house-buying process and achieving this goal for so many years that I don't know what I'm going to do with myself once we move in in a few weeks. 

I have been stitching, though! I have a status update on the Flapping Parrot as well as Faery Tales. I'll be going back to stitching the Flapping Parrot next and instead of Game of Swannes I'm going to move on to my half-finished Christmas stocking. Now that we have a mantle and Christmas is only a few months away, husband wants me to finish it so it's ready for this coming Christmas. I don't have too much left to stitch on it so might as well.

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After:

Before:

After:

As you can see, almost a page finish on both pieces! 

I'm really hoping that with the house-buying out of the way, I'm going to have more time to myself. I've been running on empty for a while now, trying to take care of everything, so getting this huge thing out of the way will, I hope, be a huge relief.

Of course now we have a huge list of house projects we need to take care of. Some of them need to happen before we move in, and they're already in the works. The rest will, I suspect, be spread out over a few years.

I hope everyone is safe and healthy and, as always, happy stitching!

Game of Swannes - 1

 I realize I have never posted my Game of Swannes by Long Dog, despite working on it for a little while. So, here's the first post ever:

This is stitched on a 32-count natural linen, 2 over 2, using the called for cotton threads from The Gentle Arts with the exception of one color I had to sub out because I couldn't find it anywhere so I used a color as close to it as I could find. 

This is a really pleasant stitch, a nice break from the huge full-coverage pieces I usually work on, and it goes pretty quick. The floss is very slightly variegated in tone, not color, the effects of which you can see in the above photo. I have a special method of stitching with variegated floss to maximize the effect and I've applied it to this piece, the effect of which I'm happy with.

I have been working so much I'm on the verge of burn out. I'm completely maxed out on my PTO and very likely losing money, despite taking time off as much as I can the last two months (I haven't worked a full five day work week since May). I do have a week off in August coming up, and I can't wait to just veg out. 

With that has come the need for a creative outlet. I've had so many ideas of what I would like to do. One of them is a YouTube channel. I'm not sure if I'll go through with it, but if I do I'll post about it here. As with my instagram, it would not replace this blog, merely supplement it. 

Besides that, just trying to get through each day as it comes. 

I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy and safe.

As always, happy stitching.

Flapping Parrot 32 (Page Finish!)

 Despite how much I've been working, I managed to finish another page of the Flapping Parrot!

Before:

After:

I'm fairly happy with it. I have some page lines showing but I think once it's done and has a good wash and stretch, those will come right out.

I've been thinking and rethinking my rotation lately. I'd really like to close out my WIPs before starting a new one and I like having a focus piece (currently the flapping parrot) that I mainly stitch on, since it makes me feel like I'm making progress. My main issue, however, is that I have a lot of other projects that are in progress, and that's been nagging at me, because of the number of SSMC pieces I have on the go that it feels like before I finish one of those, a lot of time will have passed.

So here's my solution. I'm breaking down my projects by type:

Focus Piece:
Still Life With Parrot (Golden Kite)

Large WIPs:
Once Upon a Fairy Tale [SSMC] (Heaven and Earth Designs)
"Surprise Stitching" [SSMC] (Heaven and Earth Designs)
QS Curl Up (Heaven and Earth Designs)
Mario (Some Random Chart Generator from years ago)
Riding the Wave (Dimensions)
Medieval Shelf (Heaven and Earth Designs)
Middle Earth (Heaven and Earth Designs)
Greek Mandala (Chatelaine Designs)
Library Adventures (Heaven and Earth Designs)
The Wizards Implements (Heaven and Earth Designs)

Small WIPs:
Game of Swannes (Long Dog)
Birds (Tiny Cross Stitch)
Magical Creatures Calendar (Cloudsfactory)
12 Doctors Clock (Cloudsfactory)
Celestial Dragon (Joan Elliott)
Snow Bears Christmas Stocking (Dimensions)

That's a lot of WIPs. So here's my tentative plan.
7 days of stitching on focus piece (Flapping Parrot)
7 days of stitching on small WIP (Game of Swannes)
7 days of stitching on focus piece (Flapping Parrot)
7 days of stitching on Large WIP (until page finish, then rotate)

I would love to be a one project at a time stitcher, but it's just not in me, and I end up getting bored and losing my stitching bug. It seems like rotating pieces is a sure-fire way to keep myself interested and motivated to stitch. Don't get me wrong, I love all my WIPs (I wouldn't be stitching them otherwise) but I need variety. So, could be you'll see some "long lost WIPs" pop up in the coming months that you haven't seen in a while. 

I also have no idea what order I'll be stitching the "long lost WIPs" in, but whatever order, I'll write it down and hopefully keep to that order. So I guess Once Upon a Faery Tale is first on the list and I'll go from there. 

So that's that. I'm basically maxed out on PTO (or very close to being maxed out) so all of June and half of July I have 3 and 4 days weekend which will be spent cross stitching, video gaming, and turning into a general potato. 

Hope you're all well and happy stitching!

Faery Tales (SSMC) 008

 I should have posted this update earlier since I kept saying I would do it and then I .... didn't. But I'm doing it now, so that's something.

Before:

After:

The new rotation is really working well for me, especially because work has just been so busy lately and I definitely don't have time to stitch every night. Most weeknights, now, I knit and then on the weekends I have more time to stitch. The result is I end up working late almost every night (sign off anywhere between 8pm and 10:30pm) and maybe get at least 30 minutes of knitting in a night. I make an active effort not to work weekends (which is why I work so late on weeknights) so that's more time for stitching with an occasional video game thrown in.

 I've been receiving some requests from friends for small stitching projects. Not sure how I'll sneak those in but I'll try and post the results. Stay tuned.

 On a personal note, we're doing well. Have some major life events on the horizon, if the stars align, so crossing my fingers that they all align. H³ and I have both been vaccinated now and although we're not exactly bar hopping or anything, I am looking forward to hugging my mom for the first time in a year. 

Flapping Parrot 31

 It has been a while since I posted. Work has been absolutely insane, and then some things went down at work that were so blatantly unfair to staff and insulting to us as members of the "team" that I told management if they actually went down in the way they had planned, I'd be giving my notice without hesitation. Suffice it to say management backtracked and I am still employed. 

But because work has been so busy lately I have been doing more knitting than stitching as it's a bit easier to pick up and do a row than set up my hoop, threads, stitching space, get the tension right, etc. That being said, I have managed some stitching, I just haven't had the time to post it here. I took some PTO from work, though, since I'm almost maxed out (use it or lose it) so I took the opportunity to video game, stitch, write, relax, sleep, etc. I have today off, too, so going to stitch some more and run a few errands. Back to work tomorrow.

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After:

I have also taken the opportunity to re-vamp my rotation to work in a manner that made sense to how much time I actually have to stitch. Previously, I was working it by date i.e. March 1-7 stitch this, 8-15 that, etc. That meant that I was basically getting maybe one day of stitching on a project. So now I go by "sessions stitched" instead. 7 session on the Flapping Parrot, then 7 on Game of Swannes, back to 7 on the Flapping Parrot, then 7 on Faery Tales, rinse repeat. It's working out really well and I'm making progress. I just have to make the time to blog about it!

I hope everyone is doing well and hanging in there. 2020 and 2021 have been wild rides. 

Happy Stitching!

Flapping Parrot - Page 13 Finish

 Work has been, to put it bluntly, kicking my ass. Doing my best to keep my head above water but it's just not going well. I have never seen it this busy in the 5+ years I've worked there. My supervisor hasn't been this busy in the 20+ years she's been there. It is busy. I'm doing my best to get a little relaxation in here and there and sneak a few stitches but some nights it feels almost impossible.

Nevertheless, I persevered and finished page 13 of the Flapping Parrot.

Before:

After:

This is my focus piece for this year so we'll see how far I can pull this along. The current plan is the first two weeks of the month stitch this, the next week stitch a smaller project that's not full coverage, and the last week stitch Fairy Tales, rinse, repeat. Sprinkle in some knitting which I've been really into lately.

Which reminds me I owe you a Fairy Tales progress picture. I'll try to take care of that this weekend. If I remember. 

That's about it. I signed off of work for the night but back to it tomorrow...

Legendary Creatures Finish

 Happy New Year! May your 2021 be better than 2020!

Per tradition, I'm going to make a bunch of grand and unreasonable claims of goals I'm going to meet in 2021 and then I'm going to not meet a single one of them:

- Catch up with my podcasts. I'm currently in September 2017 and have a ton to catch up on but hey, stranger things have happened
- Wash up the kitchen in the evenings before bed instead of in the mornings when I wake up
- Go to bed on time and try to get around 8 hours of sleep a night (this one will be very, very difficult for me as I average about 6 hours of sleep a night)
- Fold my laundry when it's done instead of leaving it in the hamper until it gets all wrinkly
- Be kinder to myself
- Finish at least one stitching project and one knitting project
- Gal Godot bod
- Read 27 books
- Bill 2,000 hours at work

Obviously some of these are more attainable than others.

I've been silent the last few months mostly because I haven't had much time to stitch. End of year is always the busiest at work for us and I've been working 10-16 hour days, daily since October. I have a week and a half off in January so I'm excited for that and all the stitching and video gaming I'll be doing. H³ got me Hades and I have been obsessed with it. It has been a nice escape (that's a pun for those of you who know what the game is about) but I try to only play on the weekends and stitch or knit on weekdays. My friend commissioned a gorgeous blanket (that will take me forever) so that's been on my needles for a while. 

 In other news, I did finish the Legendary Creatures SAL (from 2018 whoops)!

Before:

Finished:

I think it turned out really nice! I have already had it framed and it will be given to my nephew (2 years old) to hang in his bedroom. I felt like it was a nice kid gift. 

I've also done another week of stitching on Fairy Tales but I'll post that soon. 

With that, I'll wrap up this post. Again, happy new year. Happy 2021. Happy end of 2020. I hope everyone is healthy and safe. Here's to a better year.

Happy stitching!

Flappping Parrot 29 + Once Upon a Fairy Tale Page Finish

 Whew, a whirlwind the last few weeks. Thing at work are going back to normal which means no more pay cuts and no more capped hours. It also means the floodgates have opened for work-related requests and I was working until 10pm last night (I start at 8am). So that was fun. But I took Monday and Tuesday off so hopefully a bit of a stitchy / video gaming weekend ahead for me. 

First up, a bit of progress on the Flapping Parrot.

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After:

 

 And then, during this month's SAL, I managed to finish another page of Once Upon a Fairy Tale. I had to cheat an extra day of the SAL but I was 202 stitches away from a page finish so feel justified in doing so.

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After:

SSMC is fun in a masochistic sort of way. There's so much confetti that while you're stitching the picture doesn't really come together until POP! and there it is. 

I'm sorry I don't have anything exciting to report. We're still sheltering in place. H³ is picking symbols diligently. Tomorrow is our wedding anniversary. Usually we treat ourselves and either travel (I was in AUSTRIA this time last year!) or go to some fancy Michelin star restaurant (once a year, we're allowed, I think). This year we're hanging out at home. But we've been together 24/7, just about, since the pandemic started and we haven't gotten on each other's nerves yet so I take that as a win.

Happy stitching!

Medieval Shelf 16 (Page Finish)

 I was stitching away late into the night last night thinking maybe I could finish the third page of Medieval Shelf but around 11:30 I gave up and decided I valued sleep over a page finish (blasphemous, I know). But I finished this page by 10:00am today! So here it is.

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After:

I've been jumping around pages a bit on this project so I'm not sure where I'm going to go next but once I decide I'll go ahead and grid the page and then move on to my multitude of Christmas stitching and baby blanket knitting. And since I have the day off I'll probably also be playing extreme amounts of video games today.

So much to do!

Stay safe and healthy and happy stitching!

Once Upon a Fairy Tale (SSMC) 6

 This post is a bit late mostly because, after 8 years on my old grad school laptop, I caved and bought a new one. There's been a bit of a learning curve as I have to do things a little differently than I did on my old machine, mostly because this one actually works. The biggest thing to get used to was that the SD card slot on this laptop doesn't fit the SD card to the camera I use to capture stitching photos, so I had to dig out the cable. Which is fine, but it explains why this post is so late!

Without further ado, here's the August progress on One Upon a Fairy Tale (my once-a-month SAL with Lesli).

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After:

I'm hoping to finish this page during this month's SAL. And I'm hoping to finish the current page of Medieval Shelf I'm working on today or tomorrow. Only 400 stitches to go there.

Other than stitching life has been pretty uneventful. My best friend is pregnant with her second and due in October so I'm knitting a baby blanket as fast as I can. I've been reading a lot, writing a lot, and I have a whole batch of Christmas stitching I need to attend to (nothing overly ambitious this year, thank goodness). Other than that I'm still working, we're both still healthy, and that's really all I can ask for.

I hope you're all staying healthy and safe.

Legendary Creatures - September (Complete)

 Legendary Creatures was next in my new rotation and I managed to finish the September installment!

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After:

R for Rainbow Serpent and W for Wendigo made an appearance.

I have three months left of this (woefully late) SAL and I'm going to try to push through as many letters as I can the next time it comes up in the rotation. Ideally I'd love to get it framed in time to be able to give it to my nephew as a Christmas gift. Not sure how successful I'll be, but that's the plan, anyway.

New rotation is good so far. I've been swamped at work since coming back from vacation so not much stitching has happened but I'm hopeful for this weekend. Fingers crossed.

Stay safe and happy stitching!

Medieval Shelf 15

 Did my first installment of the new rotation! 

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After:

Didn't finish the page but that's okay. I have come to realize that I've been treating stitching (and my other hobbies) like goal-oriented obligations. Yeah, I want to finish my projects and make progress but at the end of the day I'm doing this hobby to relax and I haven't been feeling relaxed while stitching for a while, just stressed out about "meeting my minimum." So I'm trying to chill out. 

Everyone, be kind to yourselves, and happy stitching!

Once Upon a Fairy Tale (SSMC) 5 & Medieval Shelf 14

So apparently I never posted the halfway point of Medieval Shelf and although I've surpassed the halfway point, I might as well post where I'm at now before I finish the page.

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After:

Next, Lesli and I did our July SAL so here's the progress for that.

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I'm really hoping to be able to finish this page on the next go-around, but we'll see!

Unfortunately for July, my stitching bug completely left the building and I had trouble bringing myself to do anything including reading, writing, diamond painting, running, video gaming, pretty much anything. I think I'm at the point of burnout with work and life so I ended up taking a week off in August. Hoping to get some good stitching done but also take care of life stuff like car maintenance, etc.

I think I might switch up my rotation to keep my stitching bug going. After discovering that I enjoy the 7-day SAL immensely, I'm thinking a 7-day plan for my WIPS with the last 7 days of every month reserved for my SAL. I'll have to fudge the plan a little bit for flexibility but I'm okay with that. So I've got a calendar open right now and I'm moving stuff around and plotting things. Maybe you'll even see more WIP posts. We'll see!!

I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and, until next time, happy stitching!

Once Upon a Fairy Tale SSMC 4

I completely lost my stitching bug this month. Honestly, I kind of lost my drive to do anything. I didn't finish my page of Medieval Shelf, didn't even make it halfway. I didn't make my goal of finishing the half page of this SAL on this round. Just all around didn't make it.

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After:

I'm almost at the halfway point for Medieval Shelf so I'll post that when I get there in the next day or two. H³ has been diligently picking symbols and trying to motivate me so hopefully I'll get out of this funk soon.

Hopefully.

Once Upon a Fairy Tale SSMC 3 - Page Finish

I stitched like a fiend this weekend and over the last 7 days of this SAL managed to meet my goal of finishing page 33!

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After:

The little confetti stitches in the SSMC charts are killer but I have to say I'm quite happy with how the page turned out. I'm not quite sure which page I'll tackle next. To the right will be more sky/castle/moon, to the left, castle wall with some gorgeous ivy, above is the shelf border with some mushrooms, and below more grass and a shelf border with a scroll. I'll make H³ decide and you'll get to see next month! My goal will be to finish a half page. I'm not a particularly fast stitcher so that in and of itself is a bit of a lofty goal, but it'll give me something to work toward.

I think I've mentioned it on this blog before but I do creative writing on the side. I'm not a great writer by any stretch of the imagination, but I really enjoy doing it and publish my stuff on FictionPress. Either way, lately I've been completely consumed by a story idea. It has infiltrated my dreams and basically every waking moment. I write via Scrivener, so when I'm not working or stitching (my brain has a tendency to mull things over when it's occupied elsewhere so stitching is extremely conducive to my writing) I have Scrivener open and I've been world building and outlining like no one's business. When I'm not writing character profiles or plot outlines I'm reading other books for research. It's all a little overwhelming. I kind of feel like I'm not actually writing anything but discovering something that was already there.

I hope you're all well and staying safe. Until next time, happy stitching!

Legendary Creatures - August

My stitching dreams are coming true. I'm getting more stitching done and meeting my goals. With that, I finished August's installment of Legendary Creatures just in time to start this month's installment of Once Upon a Fairy Tale SAL.

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After:

I actually had a really rough week, emotionally, this week. In the middle of it I screwed up on the "P" in this piece and I just wanted to throw it right in the bin and give up. H³ convinced me not to and I worked around it. But yeah. I know there's a mistake in there. I hate that there's a mistake in there. But it is what it is. I'll be giving this piece away when it's done anyway so that's that.

I finished the above Saturday night and the Once Upon a Fairy Tale SAL starts today so yesterday I worked a little bit on Medieval Shelf. I'll go back to it after this month's SAL but have it timed out for number of stitches so that I finish it by next month's SAL. Hopefully I can make it!

With that, I gotta get to it! I want to finish the current page of the SAL this month which will require some hunkering down! Happy stitching!