Catstronaut in progress!

Here is Catstronaut by NeedleLot Designs, a little more than halfway done! The kitty is complete and all that's left are some yarn planets and other cute background motifs. :3

The fabric is Old Witch's Cape by Fiberlicious, which is a lot more blue than the picture on the website, making it a perfect dark navy space background. Exactly what I wanted for this kitty! The color is a little darker than my picture shows but I had trouble adjusting the color balance (as usual, sigh).

Why are the kitty's paws and tail sticking out of the spacesuit with no protection? Well... maybe they are actually gloves and a tail cover that just happen to match the cat's fur color, haha.

I'll probably continue with this one until a finish because it's soooo cute and fun! 

Peacock Band Sampler update!

I've already reached my goal on Peacock Band Sampler for this month! Exceeded it, actually, by doing a full repeat of Jessica stitches instead of just filling one enclosed section.

 
Somehow the Jessica stitches were much less annoying than usual. Absence really makes the heart grow fonder, I guess. :p

I even felt like I could do MORE of them, but I held off to avoid getting burned out again.

And here's a closeup of the purple fill because it is SO NICE.

The darkest color was waaaay too dark (almost black! could barely tell it was meant to be purple) so I swapped it for a HDF silk from my stash. This had the added bonus of insanely good stitch definition. Seriously, zoom in on that picture, the lines are CRISP. The Fiberlicious silks in the kit are quite frizzy in comparison (which makes them tangle and knot constantly) but HDF is always so smooth.

I look forward to doing more of these eight pointed stars because they are sooo nice. But first it's time for a little break so I can start Catstronaut! I found a great dark navy blue to use for the background and even the dark colors pop on it, so it's ready to go. :) 

2026 goals (bonus January goals!)

Here we go again. Happy new year or whatever. 🎉

In an effort to retain what little remains of my sanity, let's set some goals for the year. As a bonus, I'll include my January goals here as well. In fact, let's start with those.

• frame my sister's birthday present and send it to her ON TIME
• one section of Jessica stitches on Peacock Band Sampler
• one section of central band fills on Peacock Band Sampler
• start a small (probably Catstronaut)
• 100% no buy of any stitching stuff 

Here's Peacock Band Sampler as it stands today. Well, almost? I already finished the light blue stitching between the satin stitch parts of the huge band, but I guess this picture is a tiny bit older than that. Anyway, I want to fill in the two areas circled in yellow.

And this is the Catstronaut. The light blue fabric is cute, but I wonder if it would look as good on darker fabric to give it more of an outer space vibe. I think the colors are light/vibrant enough to stand out on a dark blue but I might have to tweak a few things.

Alright, good stuff. Now for the year-long goals, mostly copied from last year.

• no large starts until one is finished
• start and finish as many small projects as I want
• sell all finished/destashed charts
• low buy of charts/materials

And more detailed goals for specific WIPs: 

• Amethyste Band Sampler: complete part 1 (of 3)
• Chinese Garden Mandala: complete one side
• Raven Queen: finish 
• Rosarium: complete center
• Peacock Band Sampler: finish Jessica and central bands, then as much of the rest as I like!
• Violet Patch Mandala: complete SE corner, E violet, redo some border colors

I think that's pretty good. Time to go make some Jessica stitches... 

2025 goals recap

Mmm, goals. Who doesn't love a good goals list? :p

So, my goals for 2025 were:

One large start for the new year:
Peacock Band Sampler was started in January after sitting in my stash since Christmas 2019! I'd hoped to finish this but stalled out once I hit the ridiculous Jessica stitch band. Later in the year, I had some health issues that made it difficult to stitch for a few months, so there's hasn't been much progress since then. I look forward to getting back into it!

No other large starts until one is finished:
Almost! The Nature's Journey SAL is technically a large project, but I did each part as it came out and the individual parts are a size that I would consider "medium" by my standards. But I did start Raven Queen by Mirabilia and she's definitely in the "large" category! Honestly I'm pretty happy that I went just over nine months without a large start. I don't think I've ever gone that long before!

Start and finish as many small projects as I want:
Getting off the large projects train allowed me to have TWENTY small finishes this year! Well, more like fourteen, since six were "medium" in my eyes (4x Nature's Journey parts, Luna, and Jams). I had a lot of fun working on cute Mill Hill kits, freebies, magazine patterns, and Etsy patterns this year.

Behold, finishes! :3 

Sell all finished/destashed charts:
Everything is already posted to ebay so it's just a matter of if/when it actually sells. I did manage to sell ten patterns, one magazine, and five pieces of linen this year. Not too bad!

Low buy of charts/materials:
I was doing quite well up until December! Before then I had spent around $80 total for the year on fabric for the Nature's Journey SAL, a 2 year renewal of JCS magazine, a Mill Hill frame, and a few DMC threads I ran out of. Then in December I spent about $120 on Etsy patterns. I'm still happy overall because in the past I would spend $200+ at once, multiple times per year! Yikes.

Progress on existing large WIPs:
I was going to call this a complete fail but after looking back through my old posts, I realized I did quite a bit on Violet Patch Mandala earlier this year! It went from here: 

To here (completed over one stitching around the center, outer part of bottom left corner, bottom violet, inner part of bottom right corner):

I'm feeling the itch to work on it again so expect this to make a return soon. :)

~~~

I guess I'll talk about new goals for 2026 next time.

Happy new year, stitching friends! Stay safe out there. <3 

Nature's Journey SAL - finish!

Well, I guess I was being a bit dramatic in my last post because I managed to finish after all! Very happy to get the SAL done as my final finish of the year. :)

I got my stitches out after a week and while the first few days were pretty awkward, it wasn't long before I could do things normally again. Today is three weeks since I cut myself and it's honestly pretty hard to see where the cut was until you're looking at it from about six inches away. Even then, it looks like a very faint line that could be mistaken for a normal finger wrinkle.

And it's been feeling normal too, which is how I was able to finish!

So pretty! The white areas do show up a little better in real life so any areas that look oddly blank here are the white stitching blending into the background.

And here's a closeup of winter since all the other seasons got one.

My favorite parts are the pine branch with pinecones and the pheasant feather. The twirly maple seed and the branch with red berries are also cute. Okay, the whole thing is nice! I don't super love the color scheme but it's winter so of course there's a lot of evergreens and browns.

Not sure what's next. Maybe more Raven Queen or... something new? :) 

the end of my stitching year

Well, after last post that was filled with excitement about the possibility of a big finish and the fun of a new start, I'm sad to say my stitching year has come to an unexpected end. On Sunday I was working on meal prep for the week, happily cutting up veggies with my recently sharpened chef's knife, and...

I'm sure you know how this story ends.

That's right, with a trip to urgent care and two stitches in the side of my left thumb. You know, the left thumb I use to grip the needle when stitching two-handed. I've tried stitching a little bit since then and it's technically doable but crazy slow. My fingertip is very swollen which makes it hard to grip anything, and there might be some nerve damage as well. Too early to tell yet. Great.

I could stitch one-handed but a) that sucks and b) I also started physical therapy and the exercises are concentrated on my dominant arm. I'm trying to be super diligent about doing the exercises properly, so my muscles are pretty sore. I forgot how tiring it is to move your arm from the front to the back of the fabric over and over! I could only manage a few minutes before giving up.

But I can share how far I got on the winter part of Nature's Journey before I butchered myself!

Ahhh, all that beautiful empty space just crying out to be filled with neat little stitches! Truly a tragedy for the ages. (Almost as much of a tragedy as my camera's color balance settings!) Honestly, I'll probably suck it up and stitch one-handed, even if it makes my arm fall off. I'll go crazy if I can't stitch at least a tiny bit every day.

Actually if you look at the picture, see the incomplete plant with a dark green stem and lighter green leaves? See the tiny amount of light green above the dark vein on the bottom left leaf? Yeah, that's everything I stitched today before my arm gave up, lol.

Despite all this, I'm staying positive. It's hard to go from doing everything myself to getting help for all sorts of little things (seriously do you know how hard it is to put on a bra with only one working thumb???) but I'm doing my best to do what I can and let go of feeling useless about the rest. And obviously I can type just fine, ahaha. Lucky me, the cut is on the side of my thumb that's away from the space bar! :p

So maybe I'll spend some time prepping for next year's projects (whenever I might actually get to start them, reeeee) or organizing stuff. We'll see. 

Mushroom Garden Sampler - finish!

Zzz... too tired to post. It's gotten a bit chilly recently and that totally saps my motivation for a lot of things, including stitching. I feel slow and sleepy and all I want to do is hide away in my "office" and goof around on the computer. One of the things I'm working on is setting up an Etsy shop to sell some vintage collectibles.

Or rather, I was working on it. After examining the fee structure, I realized that you get charged the 20c "listing fee" every time a single item from a multi-choice listing sells. It's not a listing fee, it's a "we charge this on every sale teehee" fee. So I'm leaving my shop open until the end of the year to (hopefully) make a few holiday sales, then I'm nuking it all.

The other downside to having an Etsy shop is browsing around to see how similar items are priced, then remembering your wishlist, then suddenly you've spent $120 on (mostly) cross stitch patterns. Yup. That's fourteen individual cross stitch patterns, one blackwork pattern, one thread painting pattern and tutorial, and one felt ornament pattern. Oops.

Well, I've already stitched two of them! One is the flowery Autumn Bird from two posts ago, and one is this cute Mushroom Garden Sampler by StitchSprout.

What can I say? I love stitching mushroom stuff. :3

I'm back to work on the Nature's Journey SAL and will be sticking with it until it's 100% finished. Then I get to pick another cute indie pattern. Since the SAL is big, I think I'll go with something small. Probably this awesome cat astronaut.

Reminds me a bit of the space level in A Tower Full of Cats. Or maybe it was another game. I dunno, there are a bunch of Devcats games and I've played them all. =^..^=

But anyway! I'm on a pattern no buy starting now. Maybe I'll make up some fancy rules like "finish three, can get one new" but for now, NO MORE PATTERNS lol.