The People Chose Hallowe'en

Regular followers will be aware that for over 3 years now I have run a themed SAL on the first Saturday of each month.  First we spent 26 months doing The Alphabet Club and then 12 months of the Zodiac.  Now I have decided to listen to the People and post about your choice of theme.  In September I asked for suggestions on the blog and then made a poll in the IHSW Facebook Group from those suggestions.

The top three choices were:

Hallowe'en

Birthstones

Dragons

So I will do one for the next three months.  At the end of this post I will ask again for your suggestions and one of those will become the theme for January.  In November, we choose February's theme and so on.  I will post the results in my sidebar so you have plenty of time to decide what to show.

Hallowe'en

Obviously this post could be twenty pages long and I could still be typing but I will try to keep it to less than that!

Hallowe'en is one of my favourites themes to stitch.  I always have a spooky project (or three) in my WIPs and several more in my stash and on my wish list.

This is the first ever Hallowe'en projects I stitched:

stitched on 14 count aida

Back in 1996 I stitched this alphabet from a Better Homes and Gardens book.  It is now framed and lives in my son's room.

The witch motif seems to feature most often and here's a collage of my own Coven:

You might think of Hallowe'en as Dark stitching, I'm doing Dark October right now but it can be very bright and Orange:

The majority of my pieces are framed, like this sampler by Prairie Moon:

But I have also made cubes, boxes, 3D models and scrapbook pages:

You can see all my Hallowe'en Finishes on my Happy Dance Blog if you click on the Hallowe'en label at the side - Come Happy Dance With Me - Hallowe'en

I mentioned Dark October earlier; that is where I abandon my usual rotation and just stitch on spooky projects.  This year I am using the Tiny Decisions App to chose the daily project.  So far, Jardin Prive and Nora Corbett's Raven have come out twice and 2 other projects once each.  Here's what I've been stitching:

Days 1 and 4 - Jardin Prive Happy Hallowe'en Night

(I also stitched some bats at the other of the piece)

Days 2 and 6 - Nora Corbett Raven (on Nebula fabric)

Day 3 - Just Nan Autumn House (for a Mouse)

Day 5 - JBW Smiling Jack O' Lantern

It's been fun seeing what the wheel chooses for me each day.  I do hope to get a couple of finishes this month.

In future months I plan to go through my stash and show you the pieces I hope to stitch in the future but again, 20 pages of designs to share!  There are 15 Just Nan designs for a start, including 3 of her mice.  Apart from the mice, my top two choices of starts are The Hallowe'en Sampler by Cottage Garden Samplings:

acquired in August 2018

and the Trick or Treat Fairy by Nora Corbett

I have the magazine but you can download it direct from Herrschners now.

What's on my Wishlist?  Everything!  But this is my main objective:

Hallowe'en at Hawk Run Hollow by Carriage House Samplings.  I even have a piece of fabric for it but not the chart.  This will be a BAP to be started only after I finish my Discworld Mappe.

I've been following this Mystery SAL this month - Stitchonomy.  It's part of the Drawlloween project which is a drawing challenge.  I've been incorporating this challenge into my rock painting.  Here are the first six days:

If you want even more Hallowe'en goodness then do visit the Hallowe'en Ornie SAL Blog and view the list of Spooky Freebies there.

Now it's over to you!  All you have to do is make a post on the theme of Hallowe'en, 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.  Any thing, 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 Dragons, or Cats, or Blue, or Spring, or Holidays, or Warmth etc.  Really anything which could be illustrated in cross stitch.

Looking forward to reading them all!

Pumpkin Pie on All Souls' Day

Hope that you are all enjoying the Hallowe'en Blog Hop which is open until 7th November.  There are some gorgeous spooky designs on display and lots of enabling too!

I did something new for October this year; Dark October Stitching with a different Hallowe'en design every 3-4 days.  So the Pie looks rather different to usual:

Here's a little recap of each project:

Project 1 Just Nan's Haunted Autumn Mouse in a House was also my 30-a-Day project for the month.  I very nearly but not quite completed the carpet square on the 31st so I finished it off doing more than 30 stitches that day.

Mouse stitched on 32 count Cognac linen

Carpet Square stitched on 32 count Antique Ivory linen

Base of the House stitched on 32 count Antique Ivory linen

One Wall stitched on 32 count Antique Ivory linen

Project 2 was Jardin Prive's Happy Hallowe'en Night

stitched on 32 Cognac linen

Project 3 was JBW's Smiling Jack-O-Lantern

stitched on 32 count Platinum linen

Project 4 was Stacy Nash's Cast Your Spell

stitched over 1 on 32 count Platinum linen

Project 5 was Dam Good Craft's Dracula Book Cover

stitched on 32 count Amortentia by Chromatic Alchemy

Project 6 was Nora Corbett's Bewitching Pixie Raven

stitched on 32 count Nebula Belfast by Crafty Kitten

Project 7 was Shepherd's Bush Spooky Night which I finished in the four days.  I just need to add a little bat charm above the P.

stitched on 32 count Platinum linen

Project 8 was my conversion of Lavender & Lace's Enchanted Alphabet, I have reached Q.

stitched on 32 count Tiger Lily Murano by Sparklies

Project 9 to round off the month was a freebie from Plum Street Samplers called Brew Ha Ha.  I stitched this as part of a SAL to celebrate Tracy P's Birthday.  Tracy doesn't have a blog but she does have a FlossTube channel and set up a group on Facebook too.  This is as far as I got in 3 days.

stitched over 1 on 32 count Platinum linen

Finally I need to look at my spending last month!  I was doing well until DMC decided to release the new range of colours in a limited edition tin which Kate from Lakeside Needlecraft had on special offer.  She also had some offcuts of fabric very cheap so I added them to get free postage!  The spend for the month now looks like this:

October
Crazy sub	£25.99
New DMC tin	£24.50
Lakeside fabric	£5.15
Gold Petite 28 Needles	£5.30
Total	£60.94

See how pretty they are.

The Large Boy was disappointed that the Golden Skein was not included with them!

October Smalls SAL

The Smalls SAL is hosted by Stitching Lotus

This year I will be showing my Hallowe'en and Christmas SAL partworks and any other Smalls I may stitch.

First of all, here is the Christmas block from 12 Days of Christmas by Joan Elliott. A merry Lord a Leaping:

I started a new SAL - the Zodiac Club with Libra by Donna Kooler:

Dark October was all about the smalls, from Just Nan's Autumn Mouse:

In a Haunted House:

To JBW's Smiling Jack-O-Lanterns:

Stacy Nash's Cast Your Spell:

The latest start is Shepherd's Bush Spooky Night:

(Colour changes galore!)

Finally, I have decided upon the phrase for the Hallowe'en Blog Hop and will be emailing participants over the weekend so they can prepare to post on Tuesday 31st.

Dark October TUSAL

It's TUSAL time, the Totally Useless SAL where we all show our ORTS and link-up on Daffycat's blog.

Here is my ORTs jar with my current project:

This is Dracula from Dam Good Crafts, stitched on an awesome piece of 32 count Amortentia by Chromatic Alchemy

I've completed my four days on that one (didn't get much done on days 2 and 3 because of work) and tomorrow I start one I am really excited about!  I deliberately saved this one for a four day stretch over the weekend and two non-working days so I can maximise the time spent on her.

This is Nora Corbett's Raven from the Bewitching Pixie series, to be stitched on a piece of 32 count Nebula Belfast from Crafty Kitten.

I've continued with the carpet square from Just Nan's Haunted Autumn Mouse in a House as my 30-a-day project:

Day 19

Finally, it's time to sign up for the Spookiest Hop on the Block - the Trick or Treat Hallowe'en Blog Hop.  All you have to do is leave a comment or send me an email.  I will send you a letter of the alphabet which you show on your blog on 31st October along with some spooky stitching.  We all hop around collecting the letters which will spell out a spooky phrase.

Dark October Update

As you know I've chosen a number of spooky projects to stitch for Dark October this month.  I started with the People's Choice of Just Nan's Haunted Autumn Mouse in a House and posted about it here.

I have continued to stitch 30-a-day on the carpet for the house and here's where we are today:

By the time I started Mouse House, Jardin Prive's Happy Hallowe'en Night had actually overtaken it in votes so that was an obvious second start.  I set a goal of completing the three pumpkins and stitched for three days to achieve that goal:

stitched on 32 count Cognac linen

The whole piece:

After 3 days on that one, I moved on to JBW's Smiling Jack-O-Lanterns.  I stitched all the border while watching Total Recall on Sunday afternoon:

stitched on 32count Platinum linen

There's not much to do on that one; lots of flowers in the border, her hair, the words around the inside of the border and a few finishing touches and it will be done.

The next project up has only had one day so far.  This is Cast Your Spell by Stacy Nash.  I have a question, there are only three colours.  A dull brown, an orange brown and black.  Looking at this portion of the chart, which colour would you stitch the border in?

Black?  The symbol for black is always the darkest symbol, right?  No, the symbol for black on this chart is the white triangle.

Never mind, my border is black.

stitched over 1 on 32 count Platinum linen

I am stitching the border in satin stitch rather than cross stitch because I like a zigzag satin stitch.  I also substituted the orange-brown for a more red-brown.  I will probably do the vase in 3799 to contrast with the black border.  Three more days might see me knock out a finish on this.  Especially as we have the weekend coming up and no work shifts.

Finally, it's time to sign up for the Spookiest Hop on the Block - the Trick or Treat Hallowe'en Blog Hop.  All you have to do is leave a comment or send me an email.  I will send you a letter of the alphabet which you show on your blog on 31st October along with some spooky stitching.  We all hop around collecting the letters which will spell out a spooky word or phrase (depending on how many people sign up).