Happy Last Day of the Year

For the final WIPocalypse of 2017 the question is
 Recap your accomplishments for the year!  (Your finishes, your final before/after photos, etc.)
Usually I'd just point you to the Finished Projects tab on the blog, but I seemed to have forgotten to make one for 2017, I guess that will be a project for tomorrow.
So I've had a few finishes this year especially in this last month as I put aside the poor fractal once again to spend time making ornaments, cause it's fun. I started Fractal in January and have done 13 of 20 pages.










I finished all of this. in no partiular  order, there is more than I thought,  Mulan was finished last year, but I FINISH finished her this year.

As for what I watched

Critical Role and Talks Machina  

Saga’s of Sundry - Madness: I mean, Dread was great, but this was amazing, 

The Nut Job 2 - The store I work at puts on a family movie night at Christmas and this was the movie. Rather cute, a little too slapsticky for my taste, but hey, free movie so I won’t complain.                                                                                                                                                                                                   The Santa Clause 1,2 and 3 Because it’s Christmas

The Christmas Prince - Apparetly Netflix has a bunch of clichéd Christmas romance movies, I am diving down that rabbit hole.                                                                                                                                                                 The Polar Express - Perfect tree decorating movie

White Christmas - Can’t have Christmas without it.                                            Star Trek: Deep Space 9 - S01 E01-04 Finally getting around to watching this on Netflix, this is my

favorite of the Treks but I missed the last couple seasons. I shall make up for that now.

Frequency - Starts as a time travelish mess with history things, ends as a murder mystery, this one stays interesting the whole way through, might check out the TV series now.                                                                                                                                                                                                                              The Greatest Showman - This was soooooo good and joyful and everything a musical should be and I can’t wait to buy it. And watch it again and again and again.

Ornament Time

I'll let you in on a secret, I love making Christmas ornaments, and this year I decided to lay down Fractal for November and December and just make fun Christmas stuff.  I fell like I've put aside Fractal a lot compared to most of my big pieces I'm not sure why, but I doubt it will continue. I will finish it next year I am sure.

The first ornaments I made were from a pattern I made last year.  I had wanted to make a Dala Horse for my father whose parents were from Sweden, and we have several of the little wooden horses around the house.  I had looked for patterns and found nothing that was right so made one myself and Dad loved it.  So this year I decided to make one for each of my siblings.  Here is where I oops a bit, I gave my brother his just after I finished and therefore the only picture I have of them is this little stampede of all three.  The one with blue was last years one for Dad.

My friend Pinky  has a monthly feature on her Deviant Art page and this month she was asking for cottages, I missed finishing this little thing by a day but it's still cute and my favourite use of variegated fabrics that I've done, this will probably be finished up and used for the Stitching Pirates Ornament Exchange, unless I whip up something else in the next 4 days. The pattern is from the Just Cross Stitch 2008 Christmas Ornament issue, which is perhaps my most used magazine to date, and the ornament is 3x3" and used 7 colours.

This is also a WIPopacalyse blog and this months question is

What finishing style have you never tried but would love to do?

I have tried a lot of things, making pillows is my favourite. I have never done a full quilting type finish which would be fun to try, but I don't know if I'll ever get around to that.

As for what I watched

Critical Role and Talks Machina 

Saga’s of Sundry - Madness - This really is the best thing on “TV” this year

Stranger Things 2 - S02 E01-09 -  Though this does come close,

Murder on the Orient Express - I know I’ve seen other versions of this, I knew who the murderer was but it’s been a long time and I didn’t remember why, and this spun the tale marvellously. Also the scenery was amazing.

Thor:  Ragnarok - I didn’t actually see the last Thor movie, but the trailers ofthis one were so good I couldn’t resist, which was smart of me as this was awesome

Flatliners - This was always a favorite or mine, and what a cast it has, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, Oliver Platt,  Keifer Southerland, so great.  Basically a group of medical students decide to kill themselves briefly to find out the secrets to death, instead there sins come back to haunt them.

The Beginning of Everything

I'm only a week late for the WIPocalypse, But I had a busy weekend last week so this is as close as it gets.
The November question is How did you begin stitching?
This is a two part answer, first, I went to Micheals with some friends one day, and one of the group was a stitcher, so off we went to the stitching section where I saw the kit for Magnificent Wizard and fell in love, mind you it was around $60 and I had no knowledge of the craft and I'm not insane, so I just admired and forgot about it.  Fast forward a few years and I'm in a job with a lot of free time, I was bringing puzzle books to work on, but one of my co-workers brought knitting and I thought doing a craft at work was a great idea. At the time I did a lot of painting, which wasn't really that portable, or practical for a photo lab.  I remembered that amazing pattern, but was smart enough not to start there, but still I went and bought a " How to Cross Stitch" kit and never looked back,  I did eventually get to do my wonderful Wizard too.

It's November now which means I'll be going nuts doing ornaments for the next couple months.  Already got one finished, a lovely little Mill Hill kit.

But I haven't left behind Fractal, I'm partway through page 10 now

As for what I watched

Critical Role and Talks Machina  - The Vox Machina campaign is over, so until the start of the year everyone is taking turns at being DM and are having so much hilarious fun.

Geostorm - This one will come as no surprise to anyone, I go to all disaster movies, and it was a fun ride as disaster movies should be.

Skate Canada - Yay, figure skating season has begun

Oops

I have actually finished things and forgot to blog about it, but first I finished pages 13 and 17 on the fractal.  The bottom page (17) has very little on stitching so it became part of page 13 by default.

I also finished the Halloween Cat by Satsuma Street for Carla and Leo's Halloween Stitch Along
This was such a fun pattern and then I decided to do metallics for all sorts of things on it.  I AM INSANE!,  But it looks really cool

As for what I watched

Critical Role - The Vox Machina campaign is over and it was 450 hours of amazing.  Now we get a few months of one shots and a new campaign starting in the new year.

Game the Game and Talks Machina



The Frog Prince - The muppets version, which is by far the best
version out there

Feet of Flames - Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance from Hyde Park, I adore all thing Irish dance and music. And this is just one of the many I have

The Kids of Fame - I loved the TV series Fame as a kid, and this is a concert from around the second season, I’m so happy I randomly found this one day as , while this was shown on the TV                                       show it is not included on the DVD set I have.

Magic Mike XXL - Joe Manganiella was on Critical Role recently and Carla reminded me that he was on Magic Mike which reminded me I hadn’t watched XXL yet, so I did. I do love watching Channing Tatum dance.

Blade Runner 2049 - A worthy sequal, kept the same style quite well and had some expected and unexpected twists.

It's WIPocalypse, September chapter

I thought I still had a week to do this and was actually thinking of doing a mid quick blog before the Wipocalypse happened, but I failed at that miserably as I am unable to read a calendar properly. Which means I have a bunch of stuff to report on, beware this will be photo heavy

First though, the question of the month: Which floss (or color of floss) do you absolutely adore and want to stash constantly?
I'm not to picky on type of floss as long as it is good quality, I love the look of metallics even though I hate working with them, and variegated colours are such fun.  So I suppose I'm more of a colour hoarder, blues and green, and especially teals out number everything, though I do love anything vibrant.

This has being a busy month for me, the fair is always an important part of my life, I am an convener for the fruit division, which means I take in and organize all the entries and make my division look pretty, It's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun, I work with the Vegetable convener a lot as we share table space.

I also enter stuff as well, usually some photography, which unfortunately I didn't win anything on this year and of course I enter cross stitching,  five pieces this year which is probably a record for me.  And I did awesome, I won 2nd with my Canada 150 pillow int he cushion category, third with my little Dala horse for the original design category.  I won second with Vimy Ridge in the Sampler category AND it also won for most patriotic stitching which is a special $50 prize this year only, to celebrate Canada 150,

Also I finally won the BIG prize, best Best Picture Overall in Needlework with Mulan which is a framing gift certificate worth $75, I've been chasing this prize for years and am insanely happy that I won it.

I took the 10 days off  work so I could work the fair, it makes my life so much easier to do that and since I had that time off I grabbed my parents the day after the fair and we went for a drive to Yoho park, the home of my favorite waterfall, it's a long day but so worth it, and I got some amazing pictures.

But I also got stitching done, I am almost finished the adorable Halloween Cat for Carla and Leonore's SAL

I also started a little Christmas ornament, but I don't have pics of that yet, as there is nothing really to see

As for what I watched

Critical Role and Talks Machina

Shadowhunters S02 13-20 I really enjoy how they adapted this series, looking forward to season 3

Moana - I know I’m a year late on this, but I finally watched it and it is so
adorable

IT - I’m not much one for horror movies, but due to a high school friendship, I have a deep emotional attachment to IT, and this movie was definitely  worth seeing, can’t wait for part 2