Update and New Starts

Last month ended up being pretty quite on the blogging front for me. I tend to get that way this time of the year. All the busy-ness of the end of the school year/beginning of Spring, makes me what to hide away and be quite when I get the chance. But now all that busy-ness is done and we have Summer ahead of us I feel like I can come out of my shell and start having fun with the blog again. This year I will actually be spending a bit of the Summer on my own. Dd has a few activities that will have her gone for a few days here and a few days there, so there will be much less running around and (hopefully) much more stitching/knitting time for me!! That sounds like a very enjoyable Summer:)

I have manage to keep my hands busy though, so lets see what I've been up to and what will be new on the needles for this month...

Stitching...

Stitching has been taking a bit of a back seat to knitting/crocheting and I don't see that changing in the near future, but I did get a bit done. First is the progress I made on my May 1st start...

Not much, but I have loved stitching this. The colors are great and the pattern is easy and fun:)

I also made some progress on my YOTA project, but didn't update it last month. I've finished the big tree, both birds, a little of the alphabet and all the inside boarder for the Birds of a Feather Mystery SAL (With Thy Needle and Thread). I will be putting this away for a little while so I can work on 'Horses in the Night' for my dd. It's been a long time since I've worked on it - and I think I only have around 100 stitches in it, because I really dislike this pattern...

This pattern is going to be so time consuming and I really hate that the background has so little definition in it, even the black horse gets a bit lost in the pattern. Dd spent a lot of time looking at horse patterns though, and this is the one she liked best and I have been putting it off for a long time, so I need to get back to it, like it or not!! :)

I even have a finish for May. This is A Tisket, ATasket, from Black Bird Designs...

BBD was my stitching group's designer of the month for our exchange block project. I don't do many of the exchanges, but this one was easy as I have lots of BBD charts:)

And for my new June project...

Heaven and Nature Sing by With Thy Needle and Thread. I love the deer and bird in this piece, but I'm not so happy with the angle, a bit too prim for my taste. So I'm going to leave her out and bring the deer/bird over a bit. Mine will turn out smaller and I think work as an Ornie pretty well.

I also have a patriotic exchange I am signed up to do, but I haven't decided on what to stitch yet. I really need to dig through my stash and get it figured out!!

Knitting...

The last knitting update I gave I was halfway done with this bag...

and I really haven't gotten a whole lot further. I feel like I've been knitting a lot, but most of my projects are in the stage where it doesn't look much different from the last updates, so I won't post them right now.

I do have a couple new projects though. I started this next one just because I couldn't stop myself;) and it will work with a KAL I joined (*side note... On a previous post I noted that I'd never joined a KAL, I should have kept it that way since I've now joined 5!!! I did make sure that most of the projects I currently have going will work for at least a couple of them so that I don't have to start too many new projects!!*) ...

I'm having a little issue with the Strangling Vine Scarf. It should be a lacey scarf and so far you can't see the lacey pattern in mine. I'm liking how the yarn is showing off the wavy-ness of the pattern, though I was hoping that there would be more purple in it, and so far it has only shown up on the bottom rows. I can't decide if I should change needle sizes (do I go up a size?) or keep going and hope that when I block it things will be better.

And then there is my new June start, except that I started it a few days before June because I was really excited about it!!



This is Anne's Imagination Cowl by The Sampler Girl. For the stitchers that read my blog, you may recognize The Sampler Girl as a cross-stitch designer, and she IS!! I didn't know that she also designed knitting patterns too!! What a great find:) And I love this cowl, and the yarn - it is soooo soft!! This is really proving to be a quick, easy and very fun pattern, so I'm hoping it'll knit up in no time.

Crochet...

I actually got the most done with crochet this past month. I had several projects that were so close to being done and once I get buttons on a hat I was making, I will have finished off 3 projects!! I'll post an update on those later this week so I can show them all off at once.

For a new project I actually took apart a knitted bag I was going to make and am going to crochet it instead. I had a comment on the last post that suggested crocheting would be much faster and easier and I am sure she is right. The knitting is fun, but takes so much time and I really want some project bags done, so I will do crochet and see if I can't get a few done. Here are the colors of the first...

I'm kind of doing my own thing with this bag. I want to do a star (or daisy) stitch with the blue yarn, so I wanted to the pattern with the gray yarn not to stand out too much. I've chosen to do a new stitch for me...the wattle stitch (found directions HERE) for the gray yarn. I think this will go together well, but we will see:)

That's it for now, hoping to be back in a couples days to show of my crochet projects. Have a great day!!