Eternal stash, eh Promise!

Well, I went t a craft fair yesterday and I got a bunch of stuff there! It's not only stitching stuff, but I definitely spent the most on stitching ;-)
Here is a pic of all my new goodies:

Apart from stitching I got two shawls (one is going away as a birthday present), some wool for spinning, a pair of Earrings, handmade soap, honey (actually "espresso in honey" and "cacao in honey", they taste really funny, but extremely good) and some material for bobbin weaving. I heard of bobbin weaving earlier, but I never tried it. A good friend of mine wanted to try it, so we did a workshop and it's really fun, so we decided to get the basic material and give it a try.
As for stitching stuff, I got another yarn box along with a bunch of plastic bobbins, a new scissor, some needle (I actually got them for free because I bought so much stuff), a small kit with monsters and bookmarks which I will sent to my sister. And two kits, yay!
Here they are!
First one is called "Wolf Kiss", I think it's really cute. They had a finished one hanging on the wall at the fair and it was amazing! A friend of meine got this as well =)

Second one is "Twilight Bridge" from the Dimensions Gold Collection. I really wanted to get "Japanese Garden", but I was so drawn to this and after all, the Garden is a rather new design so I think it will be available for some time. I didn't have enough money to get both of them. I don't know why, but I really enjoy kits these days...

As for my stitching, I stitched another column on Eternal Promise during the week (next to working on that ornament and QS Theatre of the Absurd - there will be something to show for YOTA!). 

Here is what I got done, 8000 stitches in so far, it's a total of 442,175 stitches, so there is a loooong way to go. (Actuallay, I think this is my largest project... It's bigger than Wolf Variant and Middle Earth!)

I am half way through page 2 and I am going to continue with this for a while. It would be great to get that page finished. You can see, the trees are starting to appear. It's a terrible amount of confetti, but it looks amazing and it's a nice change compared to the border. 

I also signed up for another SAL called "Gifted Gorgeousness" hosted by Jo. It's about stiching things that were gifted to you or which you plan to gift to other people. I am entering with Middle Earth (which I was raked) and maybe a new start. The first post will be on April 15th, so I have time to work on something =) If you are interested, you can find all the information, as well as the sign-up page here.

Two finishes and an ornament

Yes, the title is correct. I actually finished something. Well, actually, I finished the stitching last year around Christmas, but I didn't take a picture or finish the whole project until last Sunday.

Since my boyfriend enjoy playing pen and paper role play games and has a small obsession for dices (all colors, all sizes, all numbers of sides....) he was in need of a new bag for them. So I thought it would be nice to combine this with his obsession for Starwars and make him a bag! So I spent some time searching on easy for patterns and found some in the end. I picked black cashel linen (28ct) for this project and stitched 2 over 2. I stitched one motif on each side and then just sewed it together into a bag (problem is I hate sewing... can't motivate myself to do so...).
 I am sorry for the bad pictures, the thing needs another ironing after I sewed it.
The first design is this cute Darth Vader holding a cookie. I once saw it on someones blog a long time ago and I always wanted to stitch ist. Since I was working on black, I left out the black stitches und added a white outline (I hadn't thought about this problem until the other side was done...). I got the pattern from dorkstitchs etsy shop.

The other side has this Darth Vader on it. This was the reason why I started on black fabric (it's horrible to stitch on... I first planned on going 1 over 1, but that wasn't possible...) I also got this pattern on easy, the shop/designer is called Kaplio

I will hopefully remember to take better pictures after ironing and before giving this away.

As of my recent stitching, there is not much to show on Eternal Promise yet. I stitched one column, but I guess I will stitch another one before showing it here, so there is something to see. The reason why I got so little on it done is, that I started stitching an ornament and wasn't able to put it down. I bought this Dimensions Gold kit more than a year ago and never found the chance t start it. 

I started the Ornament in the last row, right side in Febuary, stitches a few stitches and then put it down again. But last week(or the week before?) I suddenly felt the urge to stitch on this, so here we go

I think I made fairly good progress. It's completely different from what I usually stitch, it's small, it's on Aida, it uses different numbers of strands and varies between full and half crosses. Maybe that's the reason why I enjoy stitching it so much. I need to stitch the roof and the trees, then there is the sky, but that's all half crosses so it is done in no time. And then - backstitching! I haven't done this is ages :D I am sort of looking forward to it ;-) 

Anyway, I think this will provide me with a finish soon, that's motivating. 

Welcome to the castle of Stitch-a-Lot/Update on Eternal Promise

Well, a big hello to everyone out there! So here we go with a new blog!
After blogging for four years with wordpress, it was time for a change, I decided to change both blog-host and name.
I haven't figured it all out with blogger so far, I don't yet know how all the gadgets work and there will be further changes in layout and so on, so please be patient with me. Blogger is quite different from wordpress, there are many things I can add (which I enjoy!) which I didn't have before. But I am doing my best to make this an enjoyable place for my stitching =)

I decided to change my name as well. When I first started my blog under the name stitchstitchknit, I had no idea of a name to pick. So I chose something to do with stitching and knitting, but  I never really loved that name because it didn't really sound like a name for a person and after all, I want this place to be something personal and I am always happy when I can make contact with fellow stitchers and develop friendships. I'm not really sure if this makes sense, but anyway, I didn't really feel connected. So when I decided to set up a new blog, I decided to change my name as well.
So I will live in the castle of Stitch-a-Lot from now on!
(I love bad puns... I truly can't deny it...)

I hope that some who followed my old blog over the years will find their way here and accompany on my quest to stitch down my giant stash and of corse, I am welcoming everyone who gets here for the first time =) If anyone is interested in my stitching up to this point, feel free to visit my old blog, I'm not planning on deleting it. I will introduce my WIPs in this blog as I pass them in my non-existent rotation, so you don't always have to switch between blogs.

And we can as well start with that! Because I worked on Eternal Promise for the last days and have some 1200 stitches of progress to show!

Eternal Promise is an artwork by Matt Stewart, who is familiar to most for his Lord of the Rings inspired artwork. He was a Haed-artist a few years back, was retired and returned to Haed some time ago. Eternal Promise was recharted then and I am stitching this recharged version, which has a few more stitches and (it is said) has some more detail. Here is how it will hopefully look one day

The design is 525x843 stitches and the large format chart contains 99 pages (!!). It's one of the biggest projects I am working on (but I feel like the Haed charts are all increasing in size...). The chart contains 90 colors and uses the usual DMC cotton.

This is my first time working on 28ct even weave (usually 25ct). I started the project in January 2014 and only stitched one page then. The problem was simple - fabric count to small for my eyes. But I do have a daylight lamp now (which feasts on batteries) and most important - I have better glasses! Right now I can easily stitch for a few hours and I am enjoying it again. I must say, the coverage on 28ct is way better then on 25ct, so maybe I will start another project on 28ct.

As for my recent progress, I stitched the first 1 1/2 columns of page 2. It's mostly the border, it looks amazing, but the flowers are really confetti heavy. But it's worth it. In the lower right corner there are a few stitches of green and in the next column more of the trees will appear

I am really happy about how this is coming out and will definitely continue with this piece for a few more columns!

Apart from this I am working on a small ornament (felt like something really small on which i can see fast progress, lol). But there is not much to show yet, so I will wait a few more days to show my progress.

This post has become longer than I expected, so congratulations if you managed to read it all :D