WIPocalypse - February

February has been a hard month for me. My hand is getting worse again and it really puts me down, I was making great progress - getting back into sports, stitching, writing, regaining strength - and now there is hardly a day when I am not in pain =/ I have not been in the mood to blog the last days, not even motivated to read blogs... But today I am giving myself a big kick to get this post up, at least it's still February.

As every month, we have a question: What do you listen to while stitching?
That's easy - I listen to audiobooks. I mostly use audible, I think my library has by now like 120 titles, mostly crime and fantasy novels. I sometimes try to watch some Youtube videos (mostly book tube and sometimes floss tube), but it's more like listening to them, so I guess that counts as well ;-)

If you want to take a look at what the other stitchers did for the month or like to know what other people listen to (maybe for some inspiration?), I recommend taking a look at this months link-up here =)

As for my progress, I worked on two projects this month.
The first one is my Supersized Ride of the Yokai by Ruth Thomson - you may remember that I wanted to get some serious stitching done on it this year. I am stitching this from the bottom up and went from here:

To here:

I am now at 12 050 stitches, so on a good way to my 15 000 mark for this year =)
I really loved working on this, but 32ct is quite demanding, but I wanted to stitch an Asian inspired design. I read "Empress of all Season" by Emiko Jean last week - an Asian inspired fantasy novel I got from my Illumicrate subscription box. The story is set in a world where there are humans and yokai, but the yokai have (mostly) been enslaved by the emperor. The main character Mari is one of the few free living yokai and wants to join the competition to become empress - which is forbidden for yokai. It was a truly entertaining story, but what made the book really special for me was that there were chapters from the gods point of view - describing the creation of the yokai and explanation about the gods. Since I am not that well-read when it comes to Asian mythology, I can't tell you how accurate this was, but it inspired me to pick up my Ride of the Yokai.
Also it inspired me to pick up another book called "A thousand beginnings and endings" which contains 15 retellings of Asian folktales by various authors. As it usually is with anthologies there were some stories I didn't enjoy so much, but none of them were really bad and the majority was really great. After each story there was a short notice from the author about the original tale they chose and why (and where the tale is from and so on).
Anyway, what I am saying is that I seem to be really hooked on this Asian stuff right now - that's pretty new for me. I don't own many Asian inspired books (was never particularly interested in it), but I might pick up "Circle of Shadows" soon (from my Fairyloot box), I think it contains magical ninjas, so I guess it will be fun :D

Well, you are here for stitching, right? Well, I promise I won't start rambling with my second project - my Kriemhild as ever month. I went from here:

To here:

Yes - a full shot means we have a page finish - page 36 is done and dusted! I am now at 159 277 stitches, so a bit over 96k to go. We are getting there!

Measi also announced the start of one month challenge for March. The basic idea (of the version I am doing) is to pick one project and work on it daily (put in at least one stitch). I think about joining in, maybe with QS Paddys Luck, another project I wanted to focus on. I will try to do even more and add 100 stitches per day - due to the fact that the section I am currently working on is not so confetti heavy, I think I can do this. Apart from that I have not made up my mind about which projects I want to work on next month, but I will (hopefully) keep you up to date.

Happy stitching =)

Gifted Gorgeousness SAL- February

Hello lovely people, guess who is late? And guess who took pictures for this SAL in time and still managed to be late? Yeah, I don't know, we had friends visiting on Friday and it was my mothers birthday yesterday and now it's somehow Sunday evening.
A total of 13 people already signed up over at Jos place for this month, so there is plenty to see over there.
I have once again only worked on one project, my Map of Middle Earth. As I told you last month, I have been working on this since the SAL started and this month I added not 1 000 stitches, but 2 000! This means that I put in 50 000 stitches over the years for this SAL!
I went from here:

To here:

I have a total of 58 000 stitches done now and I am super happy with that =) I will try and make that 60 000 next month ;-)

Well, this is all I have to share for this month =)
Happy stitching =)