I barely squeaked out my card of the month for February. On the last day I managed to make two cards. I was determined not to fall short in the second month of the year, so here you go, two cards made from leftover pieces of other cards.
The blue paper seems to last forever. So far the paper has made it onto 10 cards with more to come. Someday I’ll run it out and that will be it. That’s the goal. Go through the stash and start using it. Use up the materials I have on hand before looking into new stuff.
I do accept donations when people have stuff they want to offload, keeping it out of the trashcan a little while longer. I know not all of my cards will be kept forever, but at least the materials were used to their fullest before being discarded.
Something I am adding to my monthly updates are my cross-stitch projects. I have 5 large, 3 medium, and 1 rotating small cross-stitch projects. I started the first of the 5 back in April 2023, it’s clearly going to be a while before there’s a blog post on that one. Which is why I’ll add smaller updates here. This month will be an intro of what else I have going on.
The big 5
It all started with my first full coverage piece Cats Library from Heaven and Earth Designs. It was the second pattern I downloaded, but first to start. I didn’t know cross-stitch like this existed until I started using my Instagram more. The second pattern I started was Disintegration, again, Heaven and Earth Designs.
In 2025 I discovered Twitch. This is when the additional projects started. Many of the streamers I follow have 50+ WIPs going on, and for some it’s all cross-stitch. This is how I came across the Witchy Stitcher’s Universal Monsters SAL from 2019. I saw the tarot project, found her website and ended up with Universal Monsters. Starting this was inspired by the Secret Snowflake activity I participated in 2024.
Note: I chose to work the black and white version of the pattern.
This one was started September 2, 2025.
After that, I was watching a streamer Blueeyedkat81, and saw Trelawney’s Library. This introduced me to the Cross Stitch Studio. There are five Harry Potter characters that have library cross-stitch patterns. Now these are HUGE. No joke, stitching on 32 count fabric 1:1, the finished stitched size will be 25 inches x 25 inches.
My niece really loves Harry Potter so I sent her all the names and asked which character she liked best, it was between McGonagall and Dumbledore. I sent her the images of the libraries and she went with McGonagall.
In the end that was a good choice as about 42% of the overall piece is 310 and 3371. I felt that made it manageable. Not sure just yet as I recently crossed .5% complete (yes, a half percent) and am not quite done with the first page.
The last pattern I had on my mind for a while. Not sure when that started or when I first saw it, but in late 2025 I decided to stop thinking about it and actually purchase it. That pattern is Super Mario World Map. I have all the parts and pieces to get started and as luck would have it, my Twitch chat chose it March 1 before this blog post was published. The pattern is from an Etsy store called Box Cat Shop.
These five projects are what I track for the game Wanderlust which I start last September or October as part of the beta. If you catch me on Twitch, my country stamps show up on the right side of the screen. As of this writing I am in Uruguay. I decided to play the game by going through the countries as if I’m actually traveling.
Then came Monopoly
Monopoly is a game that is popular among many Twitch makers & crafting streamers. I joined the Discord and was an observer for a long time. After trying out Wanderlust, I had confidence that I could start another game. This game is more complex as it involves other players and isn’t completely “at your own pace.”
Thankfully my first roll didn’t land on one of my three new projects. I spent many hours charting all three of them into WinStitch so they could be imported into Pattern Keeper. I didn’t chart out the backstitching or the complexities of the dolphin pattern, but at least I will have digital stitch counting.
You may be counting and notice one pattern is missing. That is Turtle Tower from DailyCrossStitch.com. This is a site I subscribe to, however the individual patterns are inexpensive if you have under $5 USD to spare per pattern. There’s no picture of it anywhere and I’m using all stash floss for it, meaning the colors on the pattern are inspiration for what mine looks like. This one may or may not be finished with Monopoly as I have the next small pattern picked out, I just need to digitize it.
As of right now, these projects are exclusive to the Monopoly game and will only be worked when I land on the correlating WIP number. The exception being Turtle Tower since that is mostly done and I have a recipient for it.
How did February go?
I only longer-term track my stitch counts on the ‘Big 5’. Of those only four have actually been started (as of the end of February). I put in a total of 1,515 stitches on those in the month of February. Which is more than January with a total of 1,410. The big 5 have a combined stitch count of 1,295,620. I’m 3.75% complete with all 5, which isn’t bad considering only four are started.
Need to make it an FFO
There is one project, Red Panda, that has been sitting fully stitched since October. I’ve decided to turn it into an ornament, but that’s as far as it’s gotten. Once that gets finished up, there will be a blog post for it. (Yay bonus post!)
Happy crafting!
