The People Chose Wild Animals

       

This SAL is all about what you want to see on the blog.  I asked for suggestions for themes and then put them up to the members of the IHSW Group on FB to vote for their choice.  Now we are working through the choices.  This is what has been chosen:

October - Wild Animals

November - Travel

December - Glitter

Looking through my Happy Dance blog, it appears that most of my animals are fantastical, mainly dragons!

There is this stately lion from Teresa Wentzler's Fantasy Sampler:

A fabulous Egyptian Hunting Scene from a kit back in 1996:

A lovely stripy zebra from an alphabet sampler I stitched for my son:

A whole Ark full of animals from this Joan Elliott design, also stitched for my son:

A rhino for his teacher, she collected rhino toys, something a little different to stitch!

A cute little armadillo as part of a name sampler:

And my latest piece, another Just Nan mouse.  Mice are wild animals although not very ferocious!

stitched on 32 count grey linen

And now it's over to you.  All you have to do is make a post on the theme of Wild Animals, mention The People's Choice SAL (you can copy the picture I used at the top of this post and in my side bar) and my blog. Please link up using the URL of the actual blog post, not the home page of your blog.   I look forward to seeing what you all post.

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Finally, I need your suggestions for the next poll.  Anything, no matter how obscure, weird or random will go into the poll.  Keep the theme suggestions to a single word or two - so you could have Elephants, or Green, or Holidays, or Warmth etc.   Really anything which could be illustrated in cross stitch.

September Stitch from Stash and Pie

 It's time for some Pie!  This is a special French pie which arrived for my Birthday along with a personalised napkin:

You can see I cleared my plate!  I don't think it's dishwasher proof though.

As I "ate" each piece of pie, there was a lovely message underneath:

Where did this lovely pie come from?  The answer is in the Gifted Gorgeousness post.

And now for some stitching pie:

I decided to just do a few days on Halloween at Hawk Run Hollow this month as I had two other projects to work on thanks to WIPGO.  I continued with Block 8 which went from here:

to a finish here:

then on to Block 9:

stitched over one on 25 count Cassia Rose evenweave from Chromatic Alchemy

I won't do many days in October as I have so many other projects I want to stitch for Dark October!

So far the number of days is:

Block 7 - 13 days

Block 6 - 16 days

Block 2 - 19 days

Block 3 - 20 days

Block 4 - 15 days

Block 1 - 19 days

Block 5 - 25 days

Block 8 - 15 days

Block 9 - 2 days and counting

The WIPGO Board called for a Hands on Design's Scary Apothecary project so I chose Snail Slime which was a finish in just 6 days:

stitched on 28 count Radioactive Linen from Chromatic Alchemy

The main change I made was to stitch the potions in DMC Satin rather than cotton and metallics.  There's a nice sheen to these parts that you can't really see in the photos.

I only have one of these left now which will go on the list for next year.

The next WIPGO project was Bothy Threads 12 Days of Christmas.  I'm up to Day 4 which was slow-going unfortunately.  A combination of short stitching days and the blue background being very fiddly, having to count gaps for the leaves and the metallic number.  And the very floppy linen.

The Colly Birds were fun though and much quicker!  One more to go.  This project still has one more square on my board so I'll be able to finish this block by the end of the year.  It's a long term project...

stitched on 32 count grey-blue linen

I've kept my usual bath-time stitching pie as well.  

The Cabinet of Curiosities has dominated.  You can see photos of both these projects in my Smalls post from earlier today.

Finally, Stitch from Stash:

I started with my usual Shannon Christine 12 Days charts and finished with my Cross Stitcher magazine subscription but the rest is Birthday Spending.  I got a Sparklies voucher so I treated myself to 3 charts from the Bewitching Pixies and the fabric for the next Zodiac Girl.  I decided on Taurus.  They haven't arrived yet but will be here as soon as the fabric is ready.

The Halloween Advent Calendar was an impulse buy, another Ukrainian designer so a good cause and a gorgeous design:

Art Inspirate on Etsy

September Smalls

        

The Smalls SAL is hosted by Mary's Thread

This year my Smalls are supposed to be the Jardin Prive 12 Days of Christmas which I started on Boxing Day 2021 for the 12 Days of Stitchmas.  But I got into the Spooky Stitching instead!  First the 3D Haunted Mansion and then the Stitchonomy Cabinet of Curiosities.

The Haunted Mansion needs a roof

Scream House needs putting together:

My Just Nan Mermaid Heart was a finish: 

stitched on 32 count grey-green linen

Finally, the newest free SAL from Stitchonomy.  The Cabinet of Curiosities is a series of small motifs, we are currently on Day 14 which I will stitch tonight, here are the latest motifs:

stitched on 28 count tan evenweave

I've made a few adjustments - beads in some blocks, inverted the bats and stitched the skeleton hand over one.

WIPGO and Dark October Plans

WIPGO is Bingo for our WIPs.  At the start of the year, we create a Board with 25 goals we want to achieve that year.  Each month 2 numbers are called out and we work on those projects.  The centre square can be a "free" square or you can add a goal there.  I use it for my Longest Day Marathon.

This is my Board at the moment, the numbers for October have just been called:

Which means I can start planning my Dark October!  I was hoping for two spooky projects to be called but have decided that I will include the CCN Halloween Village instead of the Joan Elliott project.  Then work on Joan in November or December.

So what else have I got planned?  October starts on a weekend so I have this lovely little Just Nan Stitchy Witchy Mouse:

 Once she is completed I will turn to my CCN Village which currently looks like this:

The next shop will be next to the Grimoires, so wait and see what it will be selling.

I also have some FFO'ing to do.  I've made a start on Scream House and have sewed the base and three roof pieces together so far:

Outside

and

Inside

The ribbons are to tie the whole thing together at the top and the trailing cotton is to attach each piece to the relevant roof piece in due course.

The second building which needs FFO'ing is my 3D Haunted Mansion which currently looks like this:

Plus I have the roof pieces to actually stitch!

I need to put a few days into Halloween at Hawk Run Hollow since it's been called but not too many this month. 

I want to make time for this project, the Mani di Donna Halloween Basket I bought in 2020

 Finally, my continuing progress on Stitchonomy's Cabinet of Curiosities:

I am enjoying this so much.  It's my bath-time stitch which as regular followers will know - this means while my son is in the bath not me!  Even I don't stitch actually in the bath.  Not even with colour-fast threads!

So, those are the plans.  Stay tuned to see how many come to fruition and how many fall by the wayside.

September WIPocalypse Seasonal Stitching

       

WIPocalypse is hosted by Measi's Musings

Each month we have to share the projects we want to complete before the End Of The World.  Since 2011 I have chosen a number of projects to focus on that year, starting with my "11 in '11" and increasing to "22 in '22" for this year.  Since my last post I have stitched on 5 of them and have 2 finishes.

4. Bothy Threads 12 Days of Christmas

stitched on 32 count grey-blue linen

5. Carriage House Samplings Halloween at Hawk Run Hollow

stitched over 1 on 25 count Cassia Rose evenweave from Chromatic Alchemy

9. Just Nan Mermaid Heart

stitched on 32 count grey-green Linen

10. Stitchonomy Cabinet of Curiosities

stitched on 28 count tan evenweave

12. Hands on Design Scary Apothecary Snail Slime

stitched on 28 count Radioactive linen from Chromatic Alchemy

The full list can be seen here - WIPocalypse and 22 in 22

Finally, Measi always gives us a topic to discuss too.

September - Are you a seasonal stitcher? If so, which seasons do you find yourself more productive or less productive?

Any season is stitching season!  This year I had a little more stitching time in the summer holiday as it was really too hot to go out much.  The depths of winter are good too for the same reason.  Now everything has reopened after two years of lockdowns I do seem to have more to do outside the house but I can usually manage to stitch between 3pm and 5pm most days.  Unless I'm working.  Then there's always bath-time stitching which is when I'm working on my Cabinet of Curiosities from Stitchonomy.

September TUSAL and Stitching Library

     

It's TUSAL time!  

Here is my TUSAL jar with my current projects:

To the left is my Bothy Threads 12 Days of Christmas project, stitching away on Day 4.

stitched on 32 count grey-blue linen

The other project is Stitchonomy's Cabinet of Curiosities.  We now have 8 motifs.  I am mostly stitching as charted with a few tweaks.  There will be a spider charm in the top right (I rotated the web 180 degrees too).  The Eye of Newt and the Magic Mushrooms have beads and the Apothecary Scales have gold metallic:

stitched on 28 count tan evenweave

I used gold metallic to make a chain-stitched chain for the scales:

What's on my Shelf?

This is a feature I'm going to include on my TUSAL post until I run out of books! I started a Page on my Happy Dance blog for my Stitching Library and realised what a huge task it was so decided to break it down to one book per month. For the next four years...

Title: The Ultimate Cross Stitch Alphabet Book

Author: Kooler Design Studio

Publisher: American School of Needlework
ISBN: 0881954772 (published in 1992 so no 13 digit ISBN!)

This is a great "Does what it says on the tin" book

quite simply, over 100 different alphabets!

from decorative fonts, to quirky lettering

Some large, some small, upper and lower case letters

The final page is rather useful too.  For each colour group there is a suggested list of Anchor, Coats and DMC colours from very light to very dark.  This is obviously useful for designing samplers but also very helpful for making conversions which I do quite often. 

Here is the selection of greens:

Finally, I'll be back later today for a WIPocalypse update.  Let's see how much I can get done on my Bothy Threads this afternoon.