How did I do for "Stitch every 'Day' in 'May' " ?

 Hello Friends,

Hope you are doing well.

My personal goal was to Stitch every 'Day' in 'May'. I'm very happy to report that I was able to stitch/craft on 29 days out of 31 days of the month. I'm realizing that setting this personal goal helps me come out of my comfort zone(read laziness) .
My main focus was to finish creating gifts for my colleagues . I had a deadline as I had asked one of colleagues in Mumbai to carry the gifts with him. You see I don't trust the postal system to send handmade stuff by mail.  

Here is what I made for them :

For Ms. J -Blackwork version of  a Italian motif  to celebrate her recent vacation to Italy and a wash cloth with her initial

For Ms. K -Cross stitched version of a Indian motif to remind her that she always has a friend in India and a wash cloth with her initial.

Happy to report I managed to finish a gift for a friend's 40th birthday. The gift is late only by 1 year 5 months 😀

Meanwhile , I was chatting with a fellow Indian cross stitcher on Instagram and we agreed to do a SAL from 1st June...details to follow .

This gave me a chance to pick my oldest WIP, Indian Peacock by Dimensions .I started this piece on 1st January 2017. I last stitched it on 31st May 2020.Here are the progress photos.

Progress as of 31st May 2020

Progress as of 31st May 2025

I will make separate posts for these finishes with details.

I hope you had a productive month, doing what you enjoy.

Let the People Choose-April 2021 Update

Hello Friends,

First Saturday of the month I join Jo for The People's Choice SAL, however its been half a year I last joined. Jo takes a poll for people to choose a topic for the month and the participants then post about stitchy projects related to that topic.

This month's topic is Blue. Blue is a lovely color and at one stage of my life, most of my clothes were blue.

As blue is such a lovely color, it finds its way in many cross stitch designs . I will share few finished projects which are predominantly blue:

Annee Du Lapin
Freebie by Gazette94

Say it with stitches

Designer: Rhona Norrie

Pattern source: Freebie from Gathered.how

Designer: Susan Bates
Freebie from gathered.how

Cat Trio
Designer: Durene Jones
Pattern source: TWOCS Magazine,Feb 2016

One that is a long time WIP:

Indian Peacock By Dimensions

There are few other blue projects I have finished, I will save them for future themes.

Happy Sunday.

How did I do for "Stitch every 'Day' in 'May' "

Hello Friends,
May month has come to an end, I hope 'Maynia' in the cross stitch world has settled down. I have enjoyed looking at the various versions of Maynia . I hope you enjoyed whatever version you followed, after all its about enjoyment right?
My personal goal was to Stitch every 'Day' in 'May'. I'm very happy to report that I was able to stitch/craft on 29 days out of 31 days of the month. I'm realising that setting this personal goal helps me come out of my comfort zone(read laziness) .
My main focus was to make some progress on my oldest WIP, Indian Peacock by Dimensions.I added 3711 stitches, full and half, to the project and the progress is clearly visible.

Before and After

I started and finished a small project for our anniversary which I showed in my last post.

I also knitted these bookmarks from left over yarn , such a quick project.

A new craft learnt and key ring made.

I think I will try to stitch every day in June as well as the lock down has extended my part of the country. My city is the worst hit in the world and numbers are rising by thousands every day. Its a scary situation, thank God for our crafts to keep us sane.
Hope you are safe and staying home wherever you are.

Stitch Every 'Day' in 'May'

Hi dear Friends,
                          Happy May!
How are you ? We are still under lockdown and with the given circumstances , I won't be surprised if it extends till June.Well, I have never had any problem being at home, so the lockdown doesn't bother me much.
However to make most of being home , I thought I would do a personal challenge called "Stitch Every 'Day' in 'May' ". I was going thru my old posts and realised I do this challenge every two years. You can see my post for 2018 and 2016 here.
I know for many of you stitching every day is a way of life , however I tend to get distracted easily by social media and watching online series that's why I took this challenge.The idea is to stitch atleast for 15 mins everyday.
My focus piece will be my oldest WIP-Indian Peacock by Dimensions.
This piece was started on new year day in 2017 and has been neglected since due to priority of gift stitching. With the lockdown, I'm not making any gifts as there is no way to send them.So I thought I would put some stitches in this project. I stitched for 10 days in April on this project and added 1261 stitches.
Before and after pic:

I was finding it difficult to stitch this in the Q snap I had so I'm now stitching this in hand.
The last two times when I did this challenge some of you joined me, join me this year too if this is something you would like to do .
I'm not going to make it a SAL or any compulsion to post on blog. Just use #stitcheverydayinmay if you post pictures on Instagram.I will post an update on the challenge at the end of month.
Are you finding more time for stitching during the lockdown or rather the opposite?

IHSW June Check-in

Hello dear friends,

It's time to show what I stitched for International Hermit & Stitch weekend . If you don't know what  IHSW is, its a SAL which was started by Joysze at Random Ramblings .Here is how she describes it "International Hermit and Stitch Weekend takes place every 3rd full weekend of each month, from Friday till Sunday. In our very busy and hectic lives, IHSW is a chance for us to squirrel some time away for ourselves and "Hermit and Stitch." It is a time set aside to take care of us and our love for stitching."

Weekend in my part of the world is on Friday & Saturday, so I will be stitching from Thursday to Saturday and post on Sundays whenever I participate in IHSW.

We had a extra long weekend due to Eid holidays from Friday to Monday  . I was a true hermit this time , stepping out of the house only once in 4 days to visit family friends who live 500 m away from our house 😁.
If you think this would have given me a lot of stitching time , oh well this isn't the case. 
Thursday : I sat down on Thursday evening to finish  Eid gift  called "Eidee" to be given next day. After few hours I could clearly see that I wouldn't be able to finish it during the night. 
Friday: It is weekly cleaning day which meant very less stitching time in the day. I decided to visit our family members for Eid on Friday evening without the gift and told them I'm late and will finish it soon. Friday night I sat till midnight to finish the stitching . 
Saturday : Morning I FFOed it with help from Dana's tutorial .  The gift was delivered and appreciated by the recipient.The rest of the day was spent cooking for a pot luck dinner at my place. 
So what is this gift which took me so long... ha ha another small project  .

Dimensions kit : Flower Mason Jar

This is my first cross stitch finish in a hoop and I quite like the result.This Dimension kit was a recent gift from my penpal in USA . I really liked stitching it , the floss was nice and in excess of required quantity .  However, I made many mistakes while stitching it. I had to frog thrice and decided to continue with the two mistakes I made as I was short of time. I guess stitching when you are going thru emotional problems is not such a good idea.

Now about the pot luck dinner ..the dinner was a success , everyone liked the food and there were leftovers which were shared and eaten next day. We played UNO and Tambola with kids which was lot of fun.

You see my cat, Twitch is not used to having kids in the house and associated sounds . She was hiding under the bed the whole time while we had guests. After the guests left, we went to bed at midnight and Twitch came to our bed after a while. She was scared and disturbed and didn't wanted to sleep alone. We have trained her in a way that she never sleeps in our bed. But this time she didn't wanted to leave the bed and wanted to sleep with mommy. It took us two more hours to put her to sleep and sleep ourselves. 
Sunday was a hangover of sleep deprivation .. ha ha which meant no crafting. 
Yesterday we were busy packing for vacation , so I put 10 stitches in my WIP. 😄 

Well I have no regrets of lesser stitching time as I enjoyed spending time for my other hobbies :cooking and travelling.

That my friends is an account of my long IHSW . I fly tomorrow for our vacation in Georgia. There will be no Smalls SAL post this month, I'm shoe horning the finish as my Small SALs entry too.

If you have any tips on how to calm down an elderly cat for a new cat momma, pls leave a comment.

IHSW March Check-in

Hello dear friends,

It's time to show what I stitched for International Hermit & Stitch weekend . If you don't know what  IHSW is, its a SAL which was started by Joysze at Random Ramblings .Here is how she describes it "International Hermit and Stitch Weekend takes place every 3rd full weekend of each month, from Friday till Sunday. In our very busy and hectic lives, IHSW is a chance for us to squirrel some time away for ourselves and "Hermit and Stitch." It is a time set aside to take care of us and our love for stitching."

Weekend in my part of the world is on Friday & Saturday, so I will be stitching from Thursday to Saturday and post on Sundays whenever I participate in IHSW.

My stitching bug has been MIA , nothing unusual, happens to me every time I come back from a vacation.As I wasn't stitching sitting at home, I decided to go out of the house and socialise instead on Friday. Saturday was my craft meetup and I'm very excited to share that a new cross stitcher has joined the group. She is an avid cross stitcher who stitches Mirablias , uses scroll rods and hand dyed fabrics ! It was so much fun to talk in cross stitch lingo..parking, HAEDs,start from the centre or side , linen. As I went out twice during the  weekend, I extended IHSW to Sunday to accompany you ladies.

I worked on two projects, something I don't do normally.
I stitched on Mill Hill Kit- Emma Owlet. This was a new start during my vacation and was supposed to be a  birthday gift for hubby. Well that didn't happen, blame it on my mom , she kept me busy in other things 😁. I don't have a before picture to show, just the latest progress. This is my first time stitching on perforated paper and beading. As much I hated stitching with three strands, I'm enjoying beading to my surprise.

Next I stitched on Indian Peacock by Dimensions.Before and after pics

Though I didn't stitch much during the weekend, I did select a new project to start and kit it.So overall a good IHSW.

I would like to thank you all for the lovely comments on my last post about my husband's stitching. All I can say is :I'm blessed.

IHSW February Check-in

Hello dear friends,

It's time to show what I stitched for International Hermit & Stitch weekend . If you don't know what  IHSW is, its a SAL which was started by Joysze at Random Ramblings .Here is how she describes it "International Hermit and Stitch Weekend takes place every 3rd full weekend of each month, from Friday till Sunday. In our very busy and hectic lives, IHSW is a chance for us to squirrel some time away for ourselves and "Hermit and Stitch." It is a time set aside to take care of us and our love for stitching."

Weekend in my part of the world is on Friday & Saturday, so I will be stitching from Thursday to Saturday and post on Sundays whenever I participate in IHSW.

Very happy to be showing you a new WIP for this post, I'm sure everyone was bored to see the same project -my nemesis project for 2 years now.

I picked up my new year new start for 2017 on Tuesday after stitching some smalls . This was also my project for Work That WIP 2018 - February SAL on Stitch Maynia. Here is how the project looked like on Wednesday 

Progress over the weekend

After working on 25 count evenweave for last few months, it feels different to work on Aida, the squares on fabric look so big , working with two threads is clumsy as the threads keep twisting and have to railroad for the stitches to lie flat. But then there is progress which is visible.I'm trying to do one color at a time, which I find very satisfying.

If you are wondering why the progress is less for a full weekend of stitching , its because Murphy's law came into play. You see I rarely go out on weekends or have any social life apart from my bi monthly craft gatherings. But I have observed that for IHSW , I will have social visits or will have to go out.This Friday we had a distant family member come over for dinner , on Saturday I met a bunch of expat ladies for breakfast whom I met thru Instagram.
Here a few pictures of the arabic food we had at Ayyame, all delicious.

Cheese & herbed Tabliya

Falafel with arabic bread

Gerse Ogaily

Though I must confess I'm not complaining about lack of stitching time , I love cooking , meeting new people and trying new food ☺.

I would like to thank you all for the comments on my last post, it felt like we all were celebrating my finish together. 

2017 Crafty wrap up and 2018 plans

Happy New Year friends

I hope you had good time welcoming the new year, in whatever way you did. I had a day off and we had a relaxing time at home and I tried a new recipe which was a success.

I have been reading everyone's wrap up of crafty finishes in 2017 and plans for 2018. I love reading statistics...numbers and pictures speak to me rather than just plain text.

Let's see how I did with my 2017 goals.

Goals for 2017

1. Dedicate more time for crafting specially on holidays/vacation   ✔ Non crafting reduced from 42% in 2016 to 34% in 2017

2. Try blackwork       ✔ Made a blackwork ATC for swap

3. Learn 2 new ways of finishing cross stitch ❌ Only one new way, biscornu

4. Pick fabric painting again ❌

5. Keep trying to crochet       ✔ Made a crochet hat

Plans for 2017

1. Participate in following monthly SALs

a) New Year New Start with Stitch Maynia (FB group)- I will start Dimension kit "Indian peacock" on 1st Jan 2017. ✔

b) Tour de Designers 2017 - SODA stitch with Stitch Maynia (FB group) - I will start "The Love Rain" on 1st April. ❌

c) Tour de Designers 2017 - Lizzie Kate with Stitch Maynia (FB group)- I will start "I Cannot Count"  on 1st July. ❌

2. Blog SALs/Activities 

a. I will continue to participate in Gifted Gorgeousness SAL . ✔ Yes managed to post all months.

b. I joined Kaye's Friday Frolicking somewhere near April 2016 but shamefully posted only once in 2016. Will try to post more often. ❌ Posted only once

c. Catch up posts for The Alphabet Club. Haven't posted about this since April 2016. ❌ Posted only four times

Apart from above I joined the blog- A New Stitchy Start 2017 and posted only once. I also joined Theme-tas-stitch 2017 hosted by Kerry in February and posted 5 times for the SAL.

Wrap up for 2017 

2017 was clearly a year of exchanges, I participated in 4 cross stitch exchanges and had fun making things for my partners. I enjoy the process of getting to know my partners, making something they will like .I had a total of 6 cross stitch finishes this year. 

I added 9844 stitches to the only WIP from 2016

Progress as on 14th December 2016

Progress as on 31st December 2017

My new year start will be the second WIP I will carry into 2018.

Indian Peacock by Dimensions.Design by Suzanne Nicoll

Knitting caught my interest this year and I learnt some new stitches .I had 9 knitting finishes, achievement being finishing my first baby blanket. Shown here are 5 which have already been gifted.

I'm very proud to say that I hosted a national level knitting event -WWKIP day here in Kuwait. The event was a huge success with considerable media coverage.

I also helped my friend Tammy with a cross stitch workshop for kids in December.

I'm more confident with crochet now and made one hat for hubby.

A little about how much I spent this year on needlework:

Cross stitching supplies                                                 $51.8

Knitting supplies including badges for WWKIP              $122.4

Needlework exchanges                                                  $36.9

Apart from needlework, I took a dig at a new hobby: Postcrossing. It involves sending postcards to random people in the world and bringing a smile to their face.

I finished reading 7 books this year.

Just noticed that my last post was 100th post on my blog. I would like to thank my readers who visit and leave a comment on the posts. Your comments encourage me to blog.

Goals for 2018

I have set simple goals this year to craft every day and finish the WIP from 2016

Plans /SALs:

My choice of designs prevents me from joining any designer specific SALs. As the idea of a SAL is to stitch along with other crafters, I enjoy stitching and posting for a SAL, when the host is involved. By now I know which are the SALs host who make special efforts to leave comments.

I will be joining following SALs this year:

1. Gifted Gorgeousness

2. IHSW

3. I may join an Instagram SAL called #gardengatesal later in the year.

I'm thinking of joining Smalls SAL as usually I stitch birthday cards all thru the year. Need to check what the perquisites are for this SAL.

I will also like to blog more often and leave comments regularly on blogs I follow.

So that's it my friends for 2017 and I hope you have lots of crafting time in 2018.

August crafting report

Hello Friends,

Wow its been more than a month I posted on my blog , I have been feeling so lazy to write a post, comment on blogs and craft .

Today is first day of 5 day long weekend here and I thought I will gather myself together and write a post at least on the last day of the month.

This month has been busy with deadlines at work, vacation planning and festivals. But there have been days when I had time to craft but I sat on the sofa wasting my time on my phone. At least I have started reading again and managed to finish 3 books this month.

Here is what I have to show for the Gifted Gorgeousness and Theme-Tas-Stitch SAL run by Jo and Kerry respectively.

As you know my craft group meets fortnightly and it has become a tradition to receive gifts from very generous friends every meetup. This is what I have received over last 2 months:

Gifts from Tammy: A card made using chain stitch crochet, a crochet bowl and a bookmark

Gifts from Z: Solar eclipse coaster, Friendship day card and tiny embroidery hoop kit

A market bag, belated birthday gift from E

My house is full of such crochet gifts now and anytime someone visits for the first time they can't help notice all the crochet/knitted/cross stitch decorations in the house, out of which only one is made by me ..ha ha

I have been trying to finish the knitted blanket for my friend's baby. The baby arrived a bit early but I started missing cross stitching after knitting straight for two months. I started a weekly rotation to get some progress on my WIPs, which worked most of the times.

Here is the how the blanket looks like as of today

Progress on the Butterfly Project I'm making for my bestie, see if you can see any difference from last time :)

I picked up another WIP "Indian Peacock" for the Animalia August for Theme-Tas-Stitch SAL. This project grows faster than others as it has lot of half stitches. Love the colors in this one.

I sewed two bags to hold my projects with help from my husband during the month

Bag to hold Qsnap of 11*17 inch

Drawstring bag to hold knitting projects

What a feeling it was to use fabric from my stash for making these bags! My fabric or any other craft stash isn't big but I start feeling guilty/bad if I don't use the stash after more than one year I have bought it. Does that happen to you? Do you feel guilty of not using every single thing in your stash?

Next month we will be travelling for our annual holiday , which means time for some exchanges. I have already committed for two swaps, may do some more...ha ha.

That's it my friends for this month, I'm really dying to finish some of the WIPs. Its been too long I had a proper finish.

I will try and leave comments on your blog this weekend , hoping the lazy spell gets over soon.