End of January - can December be far behind?

 No I'm not wishing away the year, but it seems like I'm in January and then all of a sudden the year is over and it's time to start again!!  But until then I will do monthly updates of my stitching progress as part of the WIPocalypse, which is hosted by

https://measi.net

The January question is to tell you all about my oldest WIP -  if you are talking about actual projects that are in process the oldest would have to be my owls, these were started in 1973 or maybe it was 1974 as a present for my Mom who loves owls.  There were two in the kits, the covered bridge and the owls.  I knew nothing about needlepoint except that all my stitches needed to go in the same direction - too bad I didn't realize that when I started to cross-stitch.  I need to finish this one up one day, just have the background left to do, the covered bridge is complete.  I will put them in small frames or maybe make small pillows out of them.

Now if you are talking actual WIPS that I'm working on and will touch this year, then it would have to be my Lavender & Lace Ice Angel.  My daughter was into purple and wanted a purple angel.  At the time she wasn't planning on having any kids, so it seemed appropriate to stitch her an angel.  So I went to the local shop and pulled the called for colors and then replaced them with purples, it seems like every color was changed when I was done.  So I started to stitch it, but soon found that I really didn't like working with rayon threads :(.  Many a time I really wish I had switched to silks, but I never did, also not too happy with the linen, but back in the day we didn't have many options of what we used, we were happy if we found anything that wasn't white or cream Aida.  

Stitchers today have so many more options and wonderful dyers making those options hard to make because they all look so lushes.  

So here is my Angel, the one picture is what she should look like the second picture is where I am today, although I thought I had more done.  I've got a long way to go, but there is no hurry anymore - I might re-purpose this angel as there are a couple of people who have expressed interest in it.  My daughter's daughter has her own angel, which was stitched after she was born.   But before I actually find it a new home, I really need to get it finished.  My goal this year is to assign April and August to working on my 4 angels and see if I can't get them all a little bit closer to a finish.

So how old is this WIP?  Problem about 20 years old now - I know a lot of you are saying - why are you still working on this one, to be honest it was put aside for many years because I just couldn't work on it, if you've read my blog you've all heard the story, but we lost our daughter to cancer 9 years ago this month.   I can work on it now and will eventually get it done and it will find a happy home.

OK now on to what I've been working on in January.  I decided that I have less than 40 active WIPs, so I would give each one a week.  I've been just pulling them out without really looking to see what is in the project bag.   Some will get a full week, others maybe only a couple of days, some more than a week, but in the end I can get about 10-20 hours of stitching done in that week, so good progress will be made.  This month I've worked on the following:

Awake my Soul - is a new start.  It's a relatively small design so I'm hoping I can get it finished this year.  It's by La-D-Da.  I love the material that I started it on.

Next picture is my Shepherd Bush stocking - Peter - figured I should get two stocking going so when the great grandchild arrives in July I can put on name on the appropriate stocking and get it to the new parents in time for Christmas.  

I started this one when my daughter was expecting, but I had a feeling she was having a girl - so this one was put away and the girl stocking got most of my attention.  No feelings one way or another on this wee-one, but just thought I would get it done anyways.  The Shepherd is almost done, this is an older stocking so didn't call for any fancy threads.

Next up that I worked on is Peola's angel, she is turning 3 so I really should get going on this one.  I usually do the faces over one, but this time I just couldn't get it work right so opted for the over two face, it still looks nice.  When this comes out in April I plan on getting the hair done and the sleeve so I can get the back stitching done.  Again this is an older angel so there are no beads on it, but I might find something special to add before it is framed.  

I've done 3 angels for the first 3 grandchildren, number 4's is still in process and she is now 10 :( so to be 11.  It will be worked on at least twice this year and maybe 3 times, so should get some nice progress done on it as well.  I think I burned myself out on angels, I love them, but they are a lot of work.

The last WIP that I worked on was a Dog's Last Will and Testimony by Heartstring Samplery.    It is about 66% done, so I'm hoping for a finish this year.  It is a long sampler - over 300 stitches long,  with lots of words!!  The last time it was out I did about 6 lines of words.  I have 8 more lines of works, a line of dogs and then the bottom border.  The words do go quickly, but they are boring to do.  I decided to heck with the color changes in them, I just stitch one strand of thread in one color and then pull the other color.  they are so close that you really can't see much of a difference.  I'm sure when it was designed there was more contrast between the two colors, but like all hand dyed threads each dye run is a little bit different.  I pulled what I had in my stash and I'm happy with it.

No picture from my current stitching session - it will stay out throughout today, I'm hoping for a page finish on it.  then I will move the q-snaps and take a picture.  I thought I was about 1/2 done with it, but looking at the chart I'm only about 1/3 of the way done.  I really love it!!

Can't wait to see what others are doing.  I'm loving this group, it is keeping me on task :)

Sandy