Montag, 27. März 2017

WIPocalypse - March

After being so much in time for the GGSAL, I thought it would be good to be a day late for WIPocalypse :D If youare interested to see what everybody else did, you can take a look over here.

I find this months question very difficult - it's about the stitchy blogs, groups and flosstubes we follow. I follow quite a lot of blogs, but if I start naming them here, I guess I will miss quite a lot of them :D There are so many lovely people out there with so many lovely projects. I read blogs to gather inspiration for new projects, motivation to finish my current projects and sometimes it's nice to watch someone who has a lot of projects on the go, so I don't feel bad for my number of WIPs :D

I enjoy watching flosstube (currently not as much, I seem to be addicted to audiobooks these days...), it's nice to hear what people have to say about their projects, I usually stitch when I watch flosstube  ;-) I especially love the videos where people stitch with some music in the background, it's nice and calming =)

I joined some stitchy groups on facebook - Stitch Maynia, the official Haed stitchers group, the Joan Elliot group and I also joined the Gecko Rouge group (did I mention that I joined the Gold club recently? I did and bought another ton of stash there... I'll live on bread and water for a month or so). Since I am having computer issues I am not spending a lot of time at the computer, so I am not that active right now ;-)

Anyway, here we go with this months progress.
The beginning of the month was a bit chaotic, because I messed up my rotation. But I got back on track!
First I want to share my first finish for 2017 - Sheep in the Meadow by Country Cottage Needleworks!
Oh, they are so cute and working with the Weekse Dyewors was so much fun =)

After this, I picked up Cliffside Beacon from the Dimensions Gold petite, another project I want to finish this year. I started this last summer when I was on holiday and I am working on the sky, which is nearly finished.
Here is my Beacon as of last time:
And here is it now:
When I went to the crafts fair, they had this one finished in display and it looked awesome with all the back stitching and french knot flowers look fantastic =)

Then I got back on track and worked on Kriemhild for a week and managed to finish page 25.
I went from here:
To here and since we have a page finish, I took a full shot =)
My new start for March was "In the Moonlight" by Cindy Grundsten charted by Tolton crafts. It's also one of my GG SAL projects, but I thought you might like to take a look at it. Here is the finished design:
I only worked on it for five days because I was quite busy. But this one stitches up in like no time and therefore I am already 3 500 stitches in!
The pattern is "small" for my standards, just 25 pages (16 full, 9 partial) and 112 500 stitches. The plan for this year is to stitch a bit more than half of the first page, 160 stitches across would mean 12 800 stitches and less than 100 000 to go :D since the background stitches up so fast, this should work =)

After this one, I took out my Supersized Ride of the Yokai by Ruth Thompson. I did not get so much done, I started another page on the bottom row and added 1 280.
I went from here:
To here:
Did I mention that I love the colors on this project? So many lovely green colors! =)

The last Haed I worked on is QS Trapped. I worked on this one for the Haed challenge on Facebook and I managed to finish the challenge on Sunday. So this means another 2 900 stitches on this one.
I went from here:
To here:
Actually, I didn't realize what I was stitching until I took a photograph. She has hands, yay! I'm so happy I am done with the challenge, the last part was really confetti heavy and I was so sick of stitching on her every day... Now I will take a break. The challenge runs for a few more days and then there will (I assume) be some time before the next one starts.

I also worked a bit on the cloudsfactory SAL, but I am so much behind... But working on to many different projects on one day is not for me... But progress is progress, right?

Freitag, 17. März 2017

Tons of STASH

Oh my, it has been ages since I shared my latest stashquisitions with you, so this is a lot! But since the beginning of this year, a lot of things turned up here and I went to a craft fair yesterday (which was exhausting and expensive and a lot of fun!), so I thought I might as well share all the stuff that turned up here and maybe this will remind me of not spending so much money anymore :D

First up are some digital patterns.
I bought another Haed - my first max color design! It's called Birds and Blooms Garden by Aimee Stewart and contains 240 colors, oh my! I love the desing and I saw someone work on it (both the max color and the normal version) and decided that this was a good MC start since the design is not to big (only 725x262 stitches).

Then I went to visit the Golden Kite website and you know - if you buy 3 patterns or more, they give you an additional 30% discount. So I bought 3 patterns on sale!

The first one is called "A morning bouquet"by Alfred Guillou - I seem to have a hang for flowers these days ;-) I love the colors and her face =)

The second one I bought is called "Still life with fruit and champagne" by Helen Searle. I always wanted to do a still life, they are so camling to look at and this one caught my eye. The fruits look so ralistic and I love the shadowing in the twig. The reflection in the champagne glass is amazing and I just love the whole design. This one might actually be on my next GK start list (it will take ages to kit up... and a lot of skeins... it's over 350 000 stitches)
The third one I bought is called "Madeline after prayer" by Daniel Maclise and I just love the detail in this piece!
The next order that turned up here was from Sewandso and it's a bunch of Mill Hill kits. I felt like stitching something spring themed, so I ordered a couple of the Mill Hill eggs that are all beaded (they are so pretty and look like so much fun!)
I could not resist looking at the new collection and there was a Hydrangea kit there and I love Hydrangeas! I think I'll start this one once I am done with the Haed challenge (1000 stitches to go!).It even features a little bee button!
Also from the new collection is this cute little seagull, I had no choice there, it's so adorable =)
This brings us to the last bunch of pictures - my goodies from the craft fair here!
I bought some stitchy stuff there as well.
I got hold of two new Dimensions Gold Petites kits, They are so pretty (they had a couple on display!) and they are smaller so I might be able to finish them :D
This is Beacon at Rocky Point - another lighthouse one. I don't know what it is with me and lighthouses these days... and it has a cute little seagull!
This is Bayside Cottage - I love all those flowers and again, there are seagulls :D
Next up is a Kit from a company called Merejka and the design is called Sunflowers, I never tryed this company, but the finished designs looked great and it was quite cheap and I like the design. It is worked on Aida, but maybe I will exchange this for a linen or an evenweave. But the colors look great =)
The second "new" companyfor me is called Alisa and I bought a small Kit called "Robin" and I think it's adorable =):
I also bought a pattern by a local designer called "Wellenhaar". I think it's very pretty and would look great on handdyed fabric (maybe something that looks like sky).
The last stitchy thing I bought is a Halloween themed Needleminder:
As for the non-stitchy things, I bought two set of jewelry:
I'm sorry, but this is complicated to catch on a picture, these are made of silver and feature garnets:
The second set I bought was just to amazing! They had a lot of jewelry that looks like chocolate and they looked like real chocolate! But I went for the coffee and cake set =)
I also could not resist buying some yarn, but just one! I don't knit so much anymore and have tons of yarn hidden here (not much progress on my socks... gotta get those done! If only I would not love stitching that much...). In real life, it's a nice and dark pink with a fresh green, but it's impossible for me to catch a good picture:
A friend of mine it going to marry this summer and so I picked up this lovely pop up card:
Apart fro that I picked up some smaller things like handymade soap and honey and a little butterfly to decorate my garden, but I did not take pictures of those.

This post was exhausting for me to write and I am sure the load of pictures here is surely exhausting for you to look at :D That's why I rarely do stash posts :D

Anyway, I am back to stitching now!
Happy stitching =)

Mittwoch, 15. März 2017

Gifted Gorgeousness SAL - March

And it's time for the GG SAL again, hosted by our one and only Jo ;-) Take a chance to visit her place and check out what everybody did for this month =)


I am actually on time this month. It's 10:45 pm here on the 15th, haha!
I will make this a short report because I am going to visit a crafts fair tomorrow and need to go to bed soon.

The first Projekt I want to show is my Map of Middle Earth. I added two more columns, so the count went up to 34 000 stitches.
 So I went from here:
To here:
I absoluetely love this one! I want to add at least eight more columns this year, this would put me to 10% complete, lol! =D

The second project I worked on was my Candy Cane Santa, not much, but every stitch counts, right? =)
Last month:
And now:
If I continue to work on this in my current speed, Santa might be done in 2020 :D

My plan was to show some work on my lastest new start called "In the Moonlight", BF totally loves it and it's a "smaller project with only 112 500 stitches (don't laugh, compared to my other projects :D). I wanted to start on Monday, but I had so much work to do, I didn't get to starting it until today and there is not much to see. But I can share a preview and you will see some work on him soon =)
As you can see, I will have some background to start with, but it stitches up nice and quick =)

Happy stitching =)

Dienstag, 7. März 2017

Sheep in the Meadow - FINISHED

So, here we go with my first finish for 2017! =)
This is my Sheep in the Meadow by Country Cottage Needleworks and I totally adore it! I love sheep and think the design is really cute. This was my first pattern by CCN and also my first time stitching with Weeks Dye Works and I enjoyed it. I think the WDW threads are great to stitch with (I am also using them for the Cloudsfactory SAL - on which I am stitching these days and I am about to catch up!) and I can imgine using them for further projects (maybe I will start Death by Cross Stitch after all?).

Anyway, I am taking out Kreimhild tomorrow and for today I will work on Cliffside Beacon a it more (so close to being done with the sky!).

Happy stitching =)