Check-In Post - July 31st 2025

[badly_knitted]

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.


This Week's Question: What do you like to listen to / watch while crafting?


If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Comments

[badly_knitted]

I had thought I might finish the first owl today, at least the cross stitch, but I still have to stitch her eyes, then do the backstitch.

Have pics of the hearts and flowers designs I just finished.

[spiralicious]

They are adorable!

[badly_knitted]

Thank you! The blue flowered ones were the hardest.

[spiralicious]

I can imagine.

[darkcedars]

Very cute, I'm glad you mentioned more photos. I didn't get to stop in yesterday.

[badly_knitted]

Thank you! Glad you like them!

The only one who HAS to be here every day is me, to put the post up. I know everyone else comes and goes as time and other commitments allow.

[wiseheart]

Oh, they are lovely!

[badly_knitted]

Thank you!

[spiralicious]

I am home, awake, and my device sort of charged all at the same time! It's a miracle.

Still taking care of the chickens and napping whenever possible. (I nodded off for a few moments just 5 minutes ago.) When I haven't been doing those things this month, I've either been making crafts for Winterfest in July bingo at allbingo or doing things for bookopoly (local library challenge). The 4 craft kit reviews I did are 4 separate posts on my journal.

Things I did I ended up not being able to use for my bingo:

Christmas deer painting: a few years ago, an event at the library was giving away canvases with Christmas themed zentangle on them to paint in like coloring book pages. Mine is a deer with ornaments hanging off it's antlers. The zentangle patterns are in the image of the deer and the ornaments. They are very tiny so I hadn't been confident I could color them in without obliterating the whole thing, but I was able to get tiny enough lines with my paint pens. I stuck to a pallette of red, greens, off white, 3 shades of brown, silver, gold, and a tiny bit of yellow. The background was blank, so I painted it with a layer of dark blue. After it dried, I put a layer of clear texture paste over it, then dry brushed antique metallic gold paint over it. Unfortunately,the ornaments sort of blended into the background after that, so I outlined them with a thin line of medium grey and then the darkest blue in my paint pens around that. It helped them stand out without drawing attention to the lines themselves.

Bookmarks: I made gifts for my book club. I cut strips of watercolor paper (2x7 inches). I then painted horizontal stripes in watercolor across them, each one has a different color palette of 6 colors. After they dried, I took my finest art pen and drew designs in the blank spaces and outlined shapes I saw in the dried paint. When I was done, I rounded the corners with a punch for durability and fanciness. They were a big hit.

Art challenges: I started creating 2 different art challenge memes, one to design an aggressively festive holiday sweater and the other a Christmas monster. It had prompts like, "if your eyes are blue, your sweater has lights. If your eyes are brown, your sweater has bells." I didn't finish either of them though.

Outside of those things, the only things I've been able to work on were my Mondays with Lynne which is a whole other conversation and an art workshop I'd signed up for a month in advance. The only reason I managed to drag myself to the art workshop was I didn't want to lose my space for future ones and my mother was also signed up. It was a lot of fun. We made fairy houses from glass bowls and things from the beach. I am glad I went, even exhausted.

[badly_knitted]

You have been SO BUSY! Plus the chicken-wrangling. Kudos for getting so much done, and all your projects sound fascinating! Well done!

[spiralicious]

Thanks! I just need to find more sleep now, lol.

[badly_knitted]

Good luck with that!

[spiralicious]

Thanks!

[jeweledeyes]

I've been working on these socks for my mom since the end of April, finally got them done and blocked! Her birthday is in a couple weeks so I'm giving them to her then.

[badly_knitted]

Yay! I'm sure your mum will be delighted!