I'm getting better

He's looking more like a Dragon, and I'm remembering to update occasionally... however I've now been on this page for a month, which is bloody awful even by my standards, so I think I need to get a shuffle on with this little dude now and get the page finished!

And now I'm back...

February was a tad busy so I didn't really get much stitching time, but I'm back now, and so is Dragon Rider, and it turns out that I do have more to show that I thought I did, which is nice. Although I am now about to hit confetti so this is probably about to slow down a bit, but at least it shows that I'm still alive & kicking!

He's back!

A page finish means that Dragon Rider it back out, and I've realised that I'm working on his head, all is good in the world. Look at the little cutie! I got all excited this week because I thought I only have 5 pages left, and there was the vaguest of chances that I might finish him this year, I have eight pages left, that isn't going to happen!

It's the end of the green as we know it...

Well, it is for now anyway. Another page finish means that he's tucked away for a while, but I'm quite proud to see another page, this is my third page this year, which is my record since I started this dude, so I'm hoping to be truly amazing and do one more page before the end of the year, although I'm going to have a page or two on other things before I go back to him. But, I finally feel like I'm making some progress, three pages is a column, I've done an entire columns worth this year, I am so proud. So, another project is out, and I've picked something with a Halloween theme (and also to compliment a couple of birthday purchases - ooops).

And still more green

It is a lot of green, but it's progressing! I've done some gap filling this week, which always makes it look like I've progressed more than I may have actually done. But it's been a good week, and I'm hoping this week will as well, there's the vaguest of possibilities that I'll actually manage to finish this page this week, but don't say it too loud! I know it's not exactly the most exciting page to look at, so hopefully I'll have something interesting to show when I move on. I know what my next page will be, but I also have my monthly SAL theme to do something on which is Halloween, so I'll probably pull something out for that for a week or so before moving on to my next page project.

What you have created, if it has a name, is some green!

I have actually lost track of how many times I've found an excuse to use that title now, it may well be my favourite Blackadder quote and makes me laugh every time.

Anyway, here is this weeks green, and it is, indeed, very green. I've achieved more than I thought I would, but not as much as I would have liked, I'm hoping that the next couple of weeks might go okay for me. I'd like to get this page finished before the end of the month because I've also got a Halloween SAL theme this month, with a couple that I'm currently working on for it.

New.... page!

I was good I resisted (at least temporarily) another new start, I went back to Dragon Rider, I'm determined, this one is going to be finished it two years... I know, two years is still a long time, but I'm ambitious, not stupid!

Back in the light of day

It turns out that this lovely lady, who was originally the New Year New Start 2013 stitchalong, and she hasn't seen the light of day since 2015 - I had no idea it had been so long.

I was away for a mini stitching retreat with friends this weekend, so she was lovely to take with me because I could chat and stitch without worrying that I'd miscounted, and because of that I've also manage to move her on a little bit. Hopefully it won't be three years until she's next out, but considering how many projects I have on the go I really wouldn't count on it.

Finally!

You'll be glad to know, after having to see me bitch and moan about this for the best part of a month I have finally finished my page. I moved on from the brown and found some other colours, some oranges and pinks, and I've finished it, woohoo! It's now tucked away and I'll move on to something else. Dragon Rider is back out next officially speaking. But I've got a mini stitching retreat next week (ie I've hired a cottage with a couple of friends) and confetti is not my friend when there's gossiping happening, so I'm going to take something simpler along with me.

Nearly there

This is actually working up pretty quickly, the love of a nice repeatative pattern, it makes up nicely and I don't have to concentrate to hard on it (a good thing for my poor sleepy brain), and I'm starting to see the progress in my rainbow as well, you can't quite see it in this slightly poor picture but it's just starting to edge into green at the top, green is where my favourite colours start, greens, blues and purples make me happy!

This one is the same as I say every week, it's getting there, the end of this page is in sight, I can survive the brown. I have a duvet day planned on Thursday (as long as I manage all my jobs on Wednesday) in which case there is the vaguest of possibilities (I know, I said it last week as well) that I will finally get this page finished, I can't remember the last time a page felt so much like it was dragging, but slow and steady and all that. It's not like I'm going to finish this in the next ten years or anything.

Little bits

 The blanket is growing, and I'm really loving it now. Because of how I'd ordered the colours it turns out that all of my least favourite colours were in the first 10 stripes, now that I'm past those it's all bright and happy, and I'm really enjoying it, I've started the rainbow and this is one of my go to patterns anyway. Cosy Stripe by Attic24, with a slight modification as my second row of Granny never seems to be very well defined.

Second up, I'm really loving my spinning. I've finally got into it and am starting to manage to make something vaguely passable. The two on the left prove that I've got very definite tastes. They were from different places but it turns out that their colours were almost identical, although I like one a lot more than the other. My original plan was to ply them together but because I like one so much more than the other I'm still deciding what to do. I've had some suggestions from a spinning group so I'm sure I'll make a decision one day.

And finally, some stitching progress. I'm blaming the above two pictures for the fact that I don't have as much stitching to show as I would like, but it's coming on, I'm starting to get over just how brown it is, and hopefully another week or two will have my page finish. It's brown which isn't my favourite colour (in case that hadn't been clear from my recent moaning about it) and there isn't really anything happening on this page so I'm struggling to get through it, but I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

Slow and steady

 The crochet is back out, a combination of my spinning and the slightly cooler weather means that I've been able to get yarny projects without feeling like I'm going to melt. I put this away when I got about eight colours in to it and realised that there was a mistake in it, it was definitely tapering in. So I pulled it back to the first row and started it again and I'm now at the lovely point of doing new bits, I'm not just repeating the bits that I did wrong the first time, I'm now doing new bits. It's not looking like a blanket yet, but it's starting to get there. Plus if if was too blankety I wouldn't be able to work on it because, despite the fact that it has got cooler I don't want to be working on something that is still a massive blanket, so I can probably work another five to ten rows before I start to melt and need to wait until October before I can work on it.

The stitching is growing, although not as fast as it should be. The brown continues, it continues to be worked on and it continues to be so brown, but as I had pointed out to me a few days ago, there are other colours I just haven't quite reached them yet, and sadly I won't reach them on this page, but at least I know that they're out there, waiting for me, one day.

I'm so easily distracted

First up, my stitching, because there isn't really any colour variation in this page, it doesn't really look like it's growing at all, it was brown and black last week and it's still brown and black this week, but in a slightly fuller week. As some who's loving colour at the moment (and let's be honest, I'm a bit of a colour junkie all the time) I am struggling with this page at the moment, just because I want something to pop out with some brightness, However, I'm hoping to have a bit of stitching time this week so hopefully I'll have something more exciting to show next week. (Well, this week, running a little late this week).

And here's my pop of colour for this week, seeing as I am missing it from my stitching this week. Last September I treated myself to a Spinning Wheel at Yarndale, I had a bit of a play, but it wasn't clicking for me, and I didn't really have the time to practice and try and get better at it. The spinning wheel has come back out in the last couple of weeks and it's sort of clicked some now I'm spinning and it's not instantly falling apart, and I've managed to spin two different colours and ply them together and it almost looks like yarn. Don't get me wrong, there are flaws, but for my first and second attempt I'm pretty happy with these. The one on the right looks awesome (I'm so modest) in the hank, but I know that the colour jumps are too abrupt because I how I spun it (I literally jumped from colour to colour). I'm slightly disappointed by the one on the left. It was a beautiful rainbow fibre, but because all of the colours are trying to blend together it's come out a little bit brown. If you look at it up close you can see the different colours in there, but at this distance it's come out a bit brown. What am I going to do with these? I have no idea! I'll think of something, and I need to choose my next fibre for spinning, I've already got a pretty massive stash, and it's less than 8 weeks to Yarndale, lucky I've been saving. I came home with a wheel last year, who knows that I'll come home with this year.

I'm not good an evening photos

That fabric is a very light cream. I can't work out if it's my camera of my terrible photography, I suspect that it's my incredibly bad photography skills (at least I hope it is).

The Steampunk bookshelf doesn't look like much, but it's grown a bit. I didn't think this start through, I'm loving colour at the moment, and a whole lot of brown was not the right choice, but I'm getting there.

I do have lots of other things to show in the next few weeks, but nothing was up to my poor evening photography. I've done some dyeing in the last couple of weeks but I don't think it deserve to suffer that orange colouring (well some of it is awful and deserves to suffer, but not all of it.

I've picked my crochet up in the last couple of years, and the spinning wheel is out, but there really isn't anything to look at there yet.

Woohoo and ooops

 I think you can probably guess what both parts of that title means, but lets do this in order. Firstly Aratama, woohoo, I've got my page finished already, I think this might be a new record for me, less than three weeks. Granted it was a nice easy page, with very little confetti, but a page finish is a finish, and I know that it's mostly pink and red, but there is a cream and orange patch on the left, and that is the beginning of her her beautiful kimono. It doesn't look beautiful yet, I am aware of that, but it will do, one day, quite probably any years from now, but beautiful is definitely there in potential.

Secondly, yes, we all knew how this was going to end up, especially with my complete and utter startitis (I've just been told that I've been stelling that wrong for many years) at the moment, look, it's a new start, and not just a new start, but a wholly massive new start. This is one of Aimee Stewart's truly humungous Bookshelves, this one is the steam punk one, and it is completely amazing, or again, it will be, one day, possibly when I retire if I'm honest, but I don't need to worry about that now, so it's fine.

Happy stitching!

I'm not getting bored of the new starts yet...

Don't worry, it's not another new start, just yet... give me another couple of weeks though, I promise nothing. So far I've made a page of red, and I pretty much think that that is what it's going to be, a whole page full of red. But I'm flying through it, I reckon I might just have it finished by the end of the month. If you're interested this is Aratama by Haruyo Maorito, and I've recently fallen in love with all of their artwork. This is my Japan memory piece as one of the  most exciting things about the trip was meeting Tomit-suyu, a trainee geisha and I've been trying to find the right piece since then. I think I'll have to do everything released at some point, but this is my favourite.

What could it be???

And here it is, another peg in the startitus board, another page that looks like absolutely nothing, but it makes me happy all the same.

And what could this be? Okay, at the moment I accept that it's just a splodge of pinky red, but I'm quite excited about this one, as this is my reminder of our trip to Japan project. It's beautiful.

It's still a leg, but it also has an arm...

Do dragons have arms? I don't know what else to call it, as it's definitely not a wing (although they are there too), so I'm going to have to refer to it as an arm... and now that I think about it, I'd better hope he's got arms, or else how is he steering that motorbike? More accurately it's actually an elbow... yup, once again I've moved my nose more that four inches away from it, and suddenly the whole has come into focus.

I was planning on finishing his leg this week, but it hasn't quite happened, however I didn't plan on getting as much below his leg done as I have so it sort of evens out. As is often the case, all the colours in that little patch just below his belly are also in the silver and blue of the bike, so as they were out I did that bit as well, but it meant that the leg isn't quite done, but I'm on the last colour, so hopefully not much longer until it is... and then hopefully I'm not that far off a page finish (sssh, don't say it too loud)

And secondly, the crochet is back out (because this is the weather to be working on blankets, but never mind). I was slightly enviously watching people crocheting at my craft group last week and figured that it was definitely time for mine to come out. Sadly, the first thing I did was frog 13 rows of the project on the right, but I'm back on that now, and on the left is my third attempt at working out what to do with one of my many whirls. I like corner to corner blankets, so hopefully this is the one. We'll see what happens anyway.

Oh... it's a leg!

Those words actually came out of my mouth yesterday, I'd been stitching away with absolutely no idea what I was stitching. In my head I think it was part of the bike, it only clicked yesterday.

He's coming along, and, third week in a row and I'm not yet considering moving on, miracles happen!

Green, so much green

He's not had a bad week, although I was actually hoping to be more productive than this, but all in all, not to bad at all. The bike is taking shape and there's a fair amount of green shmush for my little dragon dude as well. Hoping for a similarly productive week this week as well (famous last words).