March Small

I finished Heart of the Northwest Territories this month. Next month is recharting Yukon. I guess I should dig out the graph paper...

February Small

Pretty much a repeat of my last post since it was my finish of Heart of Newfoundland and Labrador and that's what I did for the Smalls SAL.



I actually got as far as taking out the cardboard to finish-finish it, and then came to my senses. There's no point in finishing one off when I can just do 14 all in one shot like a giant assembly line. (I can always find an excuse to procrastinate XD

I forgot to post my finish of Steampunk Seaserpent. Oops. Tomorrow?

This Week In Minimal Crafting

This week had me sleeping every spare minute I had. Not sure why. I didn't do anything different than last week, but I was just so tired. Maybe all the productivity of the first half of the month caught up to me? Or maybe I'm just getting old(er). The big three-oh is coming this year lol

One of the things I missed was the post for the Smalls SAL.
Heart of Alberta was finished earlier this month, and is my only finish so far.


I also got a few repetitions of the cable on my mitts. Let's just say there were colour pencils and graph paper involved when I modified the pattern and leave it at that. Handy at modifying patterns I am not!


And then because I got bored I put several stitches into Autumn Winds (no picture because I forgot) and a few into Steampunk Seaserpent:


Phew!

Next time I'll try to remember to spread things out instead of dumping a bunch of photos all at once. And hopefully I'll have more progress than a couple of hours worth of stitching XD

Break A Slate, Carrots

So it turns out that yesterday was the last Wednesday of the month, aka Smalls SAL day, and that there isn't another Wednesday in November like I thought. Oops.
So I sat down, put on a good audiobook, and whipped out this month's Heart. This one is Prince Edward Island, usually called PEI. It's the smallest province and famous for being the home of Anne Shirley/Blythe aka Anne of Green Gables, the famous redhead.


Pictured are the Lady's Slipper, the Blue Jay, and the Red Oak, the national flower, bird and tree respectively. At the bottom is a lighthouse of which PEI has a surprising number.

The specialty stitch is the Herringbone Leaf and makes up the trees under the bird. It was an odd stitch. It's a departure from the bands of the other Hearts. I was thrown off.

Title	Heart of Prince Edward Island
Designer	The Victoria Sampler
Start date	November 26, 2015
Finish date	November 26, 2015
Total time	4.75 hours
Fabric	32 ct white lugana
Floss	As charted

SFS & Smalls

Month: October
Spent: $10.77
Carryover: 70.41

Yet another DMC run. It would be easier to stitch to my budget if I didn't keep running out of thread. I have enough patterns and fabric to last for several years and not much desire to buy any new charts, but floss. I just keep running out.

This month's finish for the Smalls SAL is Heart of British Columbia, which I just squeaked in.

Title	Heart of British Columbia
Designer	The Victoria Sampler
Start date	October 24, 2015
Finish date	October 27, 2015
Total time	5.5 hours
Fabric	32 ct white lugana
Floss	As charted

Smalls & Goals

This month's finish for the Smalls SAL is Heart of Manitoba.

Do the individual parts of Boo Club count as their own finishes? Because technically I had to play six times for the whole design so two parts are one pattern, right?

This month's review:

Goals for September:
1. Start and finish two Heart. I stitched one, but I completely forgot I was planning on stitching another!
2. Finish at least 6 of 12 Boo Club sections. Done.
3. 10 hours of Cables and Columns. 8 hours. But considering how many times I had to frog, it was probably 5 hours of actual progress :(

Goals for October:
1. Finish Boo Club for Halloween.
2. Finish Cables and Columns, since I want to wear it this winter.

Voila! Violin!

I didn't post this yesterday because I had the faint hope that I would have time to cut it before the end of the night. Alas, no. I still haven't cut it out, so here it is in all it's finished but not finish-finished glory.

This month was the violin. Like the mandolin, I couched the "strings" instead of backstitching them. The one of the bow was nerve-wracking because I wanted it to be tight but not so tight that it was bending the paper. But it came out well, so it's all good.
Next month is the last of this series: Trumpet

Title	Violin
Designer	Mill Hill
Start date	May 5, 2015
Finish date	May 9, 2015
Total time	5.5 hours
Fabric	14 ct white perforated paper
Floss	As charted
Beads	MH 330, 2011, 2022, 2055, 3043

April Small

This month's small is Mill Hill Mandolin, as previously posted here.
Next up is either Violin or Trumpet. Probably Trumpet.

Third Instrument

I still haven't figured out how to take good pictures with my phone, so it's a truly terrible picture of French Horn for the Smalls SAL.

Title	French Horn
Designer	Mill Hill
Start date	March 2, 2015
Finish date	March 25, 2015
Total time	3.75 hours
Fabric	14 ct white perforated paper
Floss	As charted
Beads	MH 252, 2011, 2055, 3043

Harping On

I stitched Harp from Mill Hill's Harmonic Holiday series. Unlike last month, I actually cut it out this month. It's missing the harp-strings, but that's because I ran out of the gold Kreinik. Maybe next month I'll have something completely stitched and cut out and ready to hang? One can only hope!

Title	Harp
Designer	Mill Hill
Start date	January 31, 2015
Finish date	February 1, 2015
Total time	4.25hours
Fabric	14 ct white perforated paper
Floss	As charted
Beads	MH 2011, 2022, 2055, 3043

January Smalls SAL

I'm not taking part in many SALs this year, mostly because I'm getting too lazy. But I am sticking with Smalls SAL since it encourages me to dig out my smaller projects that I could normally ignore.

This month's finish is Mill Hill's Drum. This is a series of six and I'm planning on stitching all of them. Hopefully by July I'll have some idea of what to stitch for the second half of the year.

Last Biscornu Of The Year

This is not actually the last finish for the year. That was Sheep Needleroll. I finished Winter Biscornu by last week but didn't post it.
It's a bit plain since I didn't stitch the second side. I realized 90% in that I had gotten mixed up and the tops of half the stitches were in a different direction than the other half. And the berries all face the same direction instead of being symmetrical. I thought about frogging; then I though about who would actually be looking that closely; then I thought about my perfectionist streak; then I gave up. I still finished assembling it, but it's going to be the black sheep of my biscornu collection.
Speaking of my collection. These are all twelve biscornus I stitched this year for the Smalls SAL. I won't be stitching biscornus next year. I have some Mill Hill ornies to knock off and then I'm not sure :)
My yearly stats post will be up later tonight.

Title	Winter Biscornu
Designer	Ancsanapló
Start date	December 15, 2014
Finish date	December 20, 2014
Total time	8 hours
Fabric	28 ct black lugana
Floss	As charted

Red And White (And With A Button)

This month's finish is an Aurelle biscornu, but I don't know which one and I can't find a link to it.
I'm determined to use up this piece of red aida and I just use white because it's such a lovely contrast and I never have to think hard about colours.
Both sides are the same but with the bottom lacking the giant motif at the centre.

Title	Unknown Aurelle Biscornu
Designer	Aurelle
Start date	November 2, 2014
Finish date	November 5, 2014
Total time	11 hours
Fabric	16 ct red aida
Floss	DMC B5200

Squeezing In

Unlike my usual habit of finishing a biscornu a few days before posting I finished this two weeks ago, and almost forgot to post it today.

This is Papillon Creation's Magic Carpet freebie.
I like it, but I still feel like the colours all bleed into each other too much. You can barely tell that there's orange and blue in the flowers.
The overlapping fly stitches were pretty fun.

Title	Magic Carpet
Designer	Papillon Creations
Start date	September 27, 2014
Finish date	October 14, 2014
Total time	18.5 hours
Fabric	28 ct black lugana
Floss	Dinky Dyes Aquamarine, DD Cloudy Sky, DD Desert Sands, DMC White
Beads	MH 2002

Late Biscornu Finish

I'm so happy this one is done!
I was so sure that I was going to run out of red before the end. There turned out to be just enough for one side so I had to use a different darker red for the bottom. I think it gives the sides a gradient look so I'm happy with it.
The colour variation in the green is a bit more noticeable in person.
I haven't been able to figure out the name or the designer, so this will just have to be the Unknown Biscornu ;(

Title	Unknown
Designer	Unknown
Start date	September 18, 2014
Finish date	September 27, 2014
Total time	17 hours
Fabric	28 ct black lugana
Floss	Dinky Dyes Aquamarine, WDW Cherry Tomato, Gentle Arts Cranberry

TUSAL and Small SAL Miss

Yay my TUSAL jar looks nice with all that white and the metallics that can't be seen.


Boo! My biscornu isn't finished. I actually thought there was another Wednesday this month and was congratulating myself on how early I was going to be done until I saw the posts today. Oh well, at least I was on point for 8 months, and I'll have this one done by the end of the week.
I will be honest and admit that I have no clue what the name of this biscornu is, nor do I know who the designer is. I apparently saved the image without noting the name or any information whatsoever and Google Reverse Image Lookup isn't finding anything. If anyone has any information I would greatly appreciate it.

Winter in August

This month's biscornu for the:
Winter Petersburg is done! It's by Olga, who has a lot of very pretty freebies. The blog is in Russian but pictures are a universal language :)

The three squares that repeat. I love the pattern and the combination of stitches. I really enjoyed stitching the squares and it didn't get boring even though I had to do each five times.
Assembly was tricky since 5 corners come together at the top and bottom and 4 at each side. I went across and back and forth to narrow the gap. There was still a pretty big gap at the top and bottom so I put a bunch of beads to cover that up.
It's actually pretty massive and I had to hunt for ages to find a needle that could reach from the bottom to the top and still go through a bead. The beads are giant so it wasn't too bad.
I'm not sure if it's something that happens with all 15-sided biscornus or if it's because I used aida but the corners aren't smooth and stuffed. They are even more pointy in person.
I really enjoyed working on this. I'll probably do a few more if I can find any nice 15-sided patterns.

Title	Winter Petersburg
Designer	Olga
Start date	August 8, 2014
Finish date	August 24, 2014
Total time	23.75 hours
Fabric	16 ct red aida
Floss & Bead	DMC B5200, MH 16603

Oh Canada

I'm late posting this for the Smalls SAL, but everything about this project is late. Oh well.

This was my project for Canada Day. (For the non-Canadians in the crowd that's July 1st which celebrates the British North America Act of 1867 which united the then-existing colonies into a country). I started it on June 30 and had no hope of finishing it by the next day, and I actually did finish it by the last Wednesday but then I didn't post it. I'm just late everywhere.

And assembled:

I had to restart this because I ran out of floss and the second skein didn't match the first. I was particularly shocked because it was DMC! And then the leftover fabric wasn't enough to stitch the whole thing so I had to leave out the border.

Title	Canada Biscornu
Designer	Antonia
Start date	June 30, 2014
Finish date	July 30, 2014
Total time	10.25 hours
Fabric	32 ct white lugana
Floss	DMC 321