A Big Finish, WIP Update, and Plans For the Rest of 2020

Hello, hello everyone! I've been trying to organize my blog a bit and get things updated. I won't say all the tabs are updated as I had trouble staying on top of all the challenges, but I did get lots of stitching in. :) That's all it's about anyway.

It's been nice in August stitching on whatever I want without any set schedule. I did have the obsession to finish the Siberian Forest QS and now that it's complete, I feel like I would like a new start to celebrate. I can't decide what to start though. Here's another look at it. :)

I'm still a little astonished I actually completed it. I did make an error in one of the colours, and some of you can probably tell. I don't think it's as obvious to non-stitchers, hence why I will likely gift this to my dad, not a stitcher, and I don't think he'll notice. This was 20,449 stitches total. I had the top 4 rows mostly complete I think before I started, so it used to look like this:

And I know I keep mentioning this, but truly, this would not be complete without Pattern Keeper. I tried parking, I tried cross country, I tried a lot of different things, but could not get my head around an HAED. Which is unfortunate since they're amazing, but also a ton of work. So this was pretty much abandoned despite my best efforts.

One of the challenges I joined this month was called Dodgeball and was part of Semi Sane Stitchers on Facebook. Everyone was sorted into 2 teams and one team threw balls at the other. It "cost" 400 stitches to create a ball and at first was only 100 stitches to "dodge", then that went up to 150 stitches. I was hit with over 3K stitches in the third week, and couldn't dodge them all in time since they hit while I was at work. It was mostly fun and I did get a ton of work done on Princess and the Dragon. It's all black, so it was a quicker dodging project. This is where it was at the start of the year:

and here's where it is now (although the fabric colour is more true above):

I've reached the far right of the project, and there's less than 10K stitches left (53Ktotal). The thought of sticking with this to a finish is very tempting, but I'm also getting a bit tired of black. I was debating about continuing on, but I think I'll be stitching with a lot of black in October for Dark October, so I may put this down for a while. Realistically, if I stuck with it at about 4-500 stitches per night, that's only another 3 weeks or less.

There is a new game in Semi Sane Stitchers that is called Dominoes and you have to connect your WIPs with something, like same fabric, same thread, same designer, etc. I think I would like to join that and stitch on a lot of different things for a while, but I still want to have some goals for the end of the year. It's an interesting event because you need at least 10 WIPs (no problem there!) and you can stitch on different increasing levels. Level 1 add 25 to each WIP, level 2 add 50 to each WIP, level 3 add 100 to each WIP. I'm thinking of level 3 since that would be a good way to get some decent progress on a lot of different projects. I think that's how I'm leaning right now. If I can manage to, I'll even try and have a weekly post to go over what got worked on. :)

October will be Dark October, and I plan to work on the following:

 Spooky Halloween by Durene Jones

this was a Lakeside Needlecraft SAL and I'm on part 3 I think, or just started 4

 In the Gloaming by WBTW

Witch's Gate by WBTW

 Bent Creek one I've forgotten the name

Universal Monsters SAL

Since there's 4 bigger projects, I might work on one each week and see how far along I get. 

November will be Naughty November with Rachel where we plan on some more new starts! I haven't completely determined what those will be, if they'll be Xmas projects or some random stash I've been wanting to get started. 

December tends to get a little busy with finishing things, so there may not be a lot of stitching time. This might be when I bring out Princess and the Dragon again to finish it off. The other option with that one to try and get a finish is to stitch on it once a week, etc. I tend not to stick to these plans though, so probably not. 

The other projects I'd hoped to finish this year are:

Do Not Meddle

This is a long overdue project for someone that can't easily stitch any longer. I definitely made some good progress this year, but it's still not done. 

Letter G from Letters from Nora

This is the last of 3 I'm making for DD and I need to frog this one, then restart and finish it. It wouldn't take long if I stuck with it. Which is apparently difficult for me and why I have so many WIPs!

Bottom line, I'd be happy to finish Princess and the Dragon, Do Not Meddle and letter G. Yes, there are a ton more, and I now have 55 WIPs instead of the 52 I started the year with, and am planning more starts, but that's beside the point. :) Possibly I'll be reasonable in November and only start ornaments. 

I'm happy to hear any suggestions, and please feel free to check my WIP list if there's something you feel I've been neglecting. Lots of them have had some time, but no other major progress besides Princess and the Dragon. 

Happy Stitching!