WIPocalypse Check-in: January Progress

At the beginning of the month, I shared my Cross Stitch Goals for 2017, and set my intentions for January, as a part of the WIPocalypse Stitch-A-Long, a monthly gathering of stitchers showing off their monthly progress hosted by Measli's Musings.

I'd deliberately set myself some challenging goals that were within the realm of reason if all went well.... and then got derailed by things going not so well.

The month started off fine - I began with the first ornament the Satsuma Street 12 Days of Christmas set, and as I noted the other day, got it done on schedule!

Next, I turned my attention to one of my new starts - Mountain Bluebird with Black Currant, by Ajisai Designs.

I made pretty good headway on it for a few days, and then had to move onto something else because that was a whole lot of shades of blue, and I was starting to go cross-eyed! Thi will be added to the WIP (work in progress) pile until the next time it comes up on rotation.

What I didn't realize when I picked up the next item on my list (Ink Circles Metamorphosis) was that I was actually getting sick - I stitched a good way into the medallion on the far left, went to be feeling feverish and woke up to see that not only had I gotten it off by a couple stitches, I'd also apparently been stabbing at random, because many of my stitches weren't even X's!

Argh - so I put it away before I could stand the idea of frogging them all out (it is so much harder with variegated floss, but each X is don't completely, instead of going over a row in one direction, and then back across the whole row.

I was so discouraged, I didn't stitch anything at all for a week!

In the end I got it all frogged out and managed to lay in about half of what I'd taken out.  I'm going to keep working on this in February, because I'd really like to get it done.

Finally, I attempted to work on another small - this one a Halloween ornament - By the Full Moon, also by Ink Circles, originally published in the October 2010 issue of Just Cross Stitch magazine.

Here again, I would have been farther along, except I chose a small bit of yellow silk thread for the moon, and got about half way through it before I realized there was no way I actually had enough for the job.  So, I frogged that back out so I could use a different floss - not only losing the time and effort, but I lost that silk, too.  Disappointing!  I'm going to put this one into the WIP pile for later, too.

For February, my intentions are to continue working on Metamorphosis, to do the 2nd in the Satsuma Street series, to pull out Lizzie*Kate's 100 Years to work on, and to do Primitive Hare's Regency Witch as my Halloween ornament for the month - this piece is a part of the On Wednesdays We Stitch Black SAL Primitive Hare did last year.

Finally, I'm going to turn my attention to some backstitch/blackwork, and tackles Steotch's Needle of Steel.

For this month's WIPocalypse, Melissa asked, "What Stitch-a-Longs (SALs) are you participating in this year?

This is the first time in several years that I've participated in any - I decided to be more orderly (and accountable) about my stitching for 2017, and went looking for some of the old SALs I used to love -and happily, several of them were!

So, in addition to the WIPocalypse SAL on the last Sunday of the month, I'm participating in the TUSAL each month on the New Moon, and the 2017 Smalls SAL on the last Friday of the Month.

I'm also posting on the Halloween Ornies blog and on the Christmas Ornies blog, and plan to participate in a few for the offerings on the Stitch Maynia Facebook group.

There are a few others I am peeking in on, but I'll enjoy them as an observer for this year, and decide what I can reasonably add to my own list for next year.

If you stitch - or just appreciate stitchery - I hope you'll check these SALs and hops out - there's a lot of creative inspiration out there!