Ten Years of Blogging - Year eight, 2012/3

Here I am again, back to complete the blogging review series.  I've been dealing with a series of headaches, which means I haven't been able to wear the glasses I need for computer work, so have had to delay getting back to this.  Anyway, as the saying goes, better late than never, and without further ado:

The first finish of this eighth year was the hardanger scatter cushion cover for Caleb and Susannah's wedding present, which you can see here minus zip.  I was getting well to grips with sewing up using the machine now, which saved a lot of time.

In August or September I decided it was high time I joined in with Sharon B's Work in Progress Wednesdays weekly WIP check-in in order to motivate me to get on with some neglected pieces.  Over the next couple of years, this proved to be a real help to me in finishing a number of items and having a set day to get something posted.  This Brazilian piece was my first WIPW victory over a piece I'd been dragging my heels over.

I first joined in the Creative Every Day challenge in 2013 and, for the first month, I did some summary posts recoding how I'd done something creative each day.  That was fun, but best only for the short term.  It heped me to see how much creativity comes into many areas of life.  I also joined in the Grow Your Blog Party, which has become an annual event thanks to Vicki's hard work each January!

On my other blogs during this year, I started doing some goals posts for a couple of months in early 2013 on both Fluffy Little Idiot and Polyglot in Training, and caught up with the photos from a couple of day trips up north on my travel blog, which I otherwise hadn't touched for as much as two years before!

I did a number of baby knits over the year, of which here are some samples and close-ups:

I really enjoyed re-learning to knit, creating fancy textiles with yarn and how to work basic garment techniques.  This is definitely something I plan to return to.  I suppose that might count as something I'd half forgotten about but would like to do more of, Rachel. =)

It was quite a good year for stumpwork finishes and related tutorials as I finished this cute rabbit as part of both Work in Progress Wednesdays and Anna Scott's 'Finished in February' Flickr group, and used the creation of the fluffy tail (and the grass) to show how turkey work or ghiordes knot stitches are worked.

Then in March I finished the DMC stumpwork butterfly kit and used the wings to publish a tutorial for wired fabric elements for stumpwork, which sparked off some debate as many stitchers seemed to complete the outer buttonhole or overcasting of the wire before filling in the shape, whereas I always do it afterwards so as to preserve as clean a line of outer stitches as humanly possible.

The blogging year finished in June with a couple of tutorials on how to create the raised, padded stem stitch band for a stumpwork dragonfly, then how to assemble the whole thing.

There were one or two smalls throughout the year too, especially cards, and I worked on a couple of other WIPW projects which you can see more of in year the nine and ten summaries tomorrow and Wednesday.

Thanks for reading and I hope you're all still enjoying the series.  I've kept this one a little shorter as these posts take about an hour to create and I do want to get some time to stitch soon!!! LOL!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2015