WIPocalypse April

Welcome to May and this years edition of "WIPocalypse April", lol. As predicted (when I made my entry for the GGSAL on Saturday), I am late again.
Unfortunately, I started to play Skyrim and so I am not getting anything done during the weekend, which includes stitching and blogging. The week once again flew by (still working a lot) and now it's Friday afternoon. But better late then never.

This months topic is about our longest running WIP or UFO. I guess my longest running project is "Aurora Cabin", which is somewhere in my cupboard and it's hovering between UFO and WIP. Most of the time I just forget it exists. My longest running WIP is easier, it's my very first Heaven and Earth Design and it's an ongoing journey since 2011. You know I took a small break from her when I finished the 5th row of pages in December, but now she is back and I am so in love and so motivated!
I went from here:

To here:

That's 3 columns in just one week! I still use printed copies, on which I also mark where I park my threads, so I always print the row I am working on and the next row. So this was my time to print the pages of row 7 and that's the last row of full pages! I am soooo excited about that =) Also, whenever I start a new row and finish the first column, I take a look the original artwork to see which things will appear in that row:

So I am working on her shield now and we are clearly going to find that helmet and also a few of the flowers. In the lower right corner on column 3, there are a few read crosses and those might belong to the flowers! Only one way to find out ;-)

But I actually started the month of April with some work on my supersized "Once upon a Fairytale" and finished page 1, so I went from here:

To here:

I may just be 1 300 stitches, but with all the color changes, things just take longer to stitch and since the result looks great to me, I am fine with it =) By now I decided, that I will stitch the page below next. I want to stitch this shelf by shelf, I think the first shelf is about 180 or 190 stitches high, so it's about 2,5 pages in large format.

I also wanted to do another 1-per-day challenge to get some work done on one of my dimensions projects. I picked "Cliffside Beacon" and went from here:

To here:

My plan was to stitch on this for 30 minutes a day and my big wish (which seemed realistic at the beginning of the month) was to finish the stitching. Unfortunately, I did not stick to my plan. There were a couple of days where I was just to exhausted to stitch on anything, but I still think I did a lot stitching and I really enjoyed it. Since there is a lot of free space in the lower right area, there actually not to much missing, so I will try to work on this in May and maybe I have a chance to finish it this month (and then it will sit in a corner until I get my butt up to do the backstiching, after which this will sit in a corner until I get my butt up to frame it).

I even have a fourth project to show (this is starting to feel like I did get something done after all...), I worked on "The Eternal Promise" by Matt Stewart for a few days and went from here:

To here:

Once again, this is just 2 columns worth 1 600 stitches together, but it's still better then no progress at all and I just felt like it. Actually, I am feeling like working on this again, but I am forcing myself to rotate a bit more to spread my stitchy love as far as possible (there are also my Garden Gate and my The potting Shed, both a great projects for spring). At least I crossed the halfway point on the first row =) 

So this is all my stitching progress for this year, to follow are a few words on my other hobbies. If you would rather read about more stitching, feel free to hopp over to this months link-up to see more updates!

First I want to show you that gorgeous new bird feeding house thing (however you call them in English) I bought!

Isn't it pretty? This was taken a few weeks ago, when our fake cherry was in full bloom (it blooms like a cherry, but it doesn't bear fruit - at least none that I know of and none that you should eat, but the bees love it). Gardening season has begun, I bought a ton of stuff for the garden yesterday (we are not leaving the house to often, even though the shops reopened. So my husband I decided to go to a gardening center once this month and so I just bought all the stuff I need during the next weeks... Maybe a few more flowers towards the end of the month or the beginning of June). The weather is not to nice (well it's supposed to rain today, there are dark grey clouds outside, so I am sitting inside but there is no rain....), but it's supposed to be better on Sunday, so I will work in the Garden on Sunday.

 My reading has also suffered, but I decided to join a readathon in May and hope to get back on track, I have so many lovely books here and want to read them all. Just in case anybody is also into books or just likes to look at huge piles of books - the readathon is called "medievalathon" and you can follow that hashtag on twitter or instagram to see a lot of entries. The basic idea is to increase my nobility rank by reading a lot of books (7 to become Empress) and then there different criteria for the books to earn you different prompts such as outfits, weapons and pets...
So here is my super ambitious TBR for the medievalathon:

I plan on receiving two outfits, one demands a shiny book (I picked my edition of Nevermoor, it has a lot of gold foil detail and an extra shiny hidden cover) and the other for a book with green on the cover ("Die Elbenstifte"). I want to get three "weapons", for a pair of twin daggers I need to start or finish a duology (I want to read Shadow and Flame to finish one), for an axe I need to read a heavy book ("Die Elfen" has over 1000 pages) and to get a shield I need to read something for which I have high expectations ("Das Erbe der Elfen" - the first part of the longer witcher story, part three if you count the short stories as part 1 and 2, or part 4 if you count the first book of short stories, then the novel "Season of storms" and then the second book of short stories... Which is still not totally the right order, but quite close... anyway, I'm reading that witcher-mainstory-book-thing, because it has been on my tbr for years now). As for the pets, I want a chicken, so I need to read a scary book ("Ada - Die vergessenen Kreaturen") and a goat, so need to read something that is high up on my bookshelf (My throne of glass books are on top of my shelves, so I picked the next unread book from the series: "Crown of Midnight").
As you notice, I am including a lot of German books this year. The first three books are by German authors, so it seems natural to read them in German and since the witcher books are translated anyway and I got them for Christmas some years ago, I am reading them in German. The books have been republished last year and the new editions look really good, but then I have the complete series in the "old design", so I guess I will stick with then... But the new ones look really good and I am a bit jealous.
I already started with "Ada" to arm myself with a chicken. My current rank is "Prisoner", but I hope to break free with the help of my mighty chicken soon (the chicken has super-powers, it attacks people with mathematical formulas because it's a mathemachicken).

So this is what goes on here right now, I am now torn about what to do with the rest of the day. Read? Stitch? SKYRIM??

Happy stitching =)

WIPocalypse - March

It looks like March is already over, time has flown by again! I hope all of you are well and well supplied with stitching supplies.
We don't have a total lock-down here in Germany, but everyone is advised to stay home and not physically socialize as much as possible (and you are not allowed to meet with more than one person outside, unless you live with them). Me and my husband are working from home now, since the university is closed (at least until 19th April), so we are home most of the time. Lucky us, we are introverts. I am reading, stitching and working and my husband is playing computer games and working. So far, we and our family and friends are healthy (even one of our friends is being tested for corona, he works in a hospital and one of his patients has been diagnosed with corona after he treated him, but he is not showing any symptoms as of now). My mother seems to be a bit more reasonable now. She feels a bit lonely at home, but she seems to stay at home now.

Anyway, back to topic - Wipocalypse! The original posting date was two days ago, but I did the one-per-day challenge and wanted to finish the challenge, which I did =) But first a short reply to this months question. Did I ever adopt a project from someone else or give a project up for someone?
No :D That just never occurred :D
If you are interested in more updates for this month, feel free to visit this months link-up page here.

So we can start with my progress for this month. First I have my work for the one-per-day challenge. I chose to work om Crossing the Stream by Goldenkite and went from here:

To here:

I stitched page 5 and I am now at 16 817 stitches. Since I reached the width of my Qsnap now, I will move to the second row of pages next. I don't want to damage my parked threads with the Qsnap and page 6 looks pretty boring anyway. Since the olympic games have been moved to 2020, Measi is inserting another one-per-day challenge in July and I think about featuring this one in that again. This project also qualifies for my non-Haed in March ;-)

I really loved this one-per-day thing, so I think about doing another challenge in April for myself (maybe Paddys Luck? Or Cliffside Beacon?).

I worked on two more projects. First up is Danielle by Sara Butcher (Haed). I did not work on my Geishas in March because I felt an urge to take out Danielle with her lovely springish colors. I went from here:

To here:

I did 3 columns, aka 2 400 stitches, and crossed the halfway point on the first row. It really was a joy to stitch on her and I found the bird! I love the contrast between the light yellow and the more intense blue/red/green colors. All the parts that look white on the picture are actually Rainbow 000 and it's soooo sparkly. Love it!

After working on Danielle, I worked on my map of middle earth for the GG Sal, by now I managed to finish the first row of pages (I need to make a post on that). Since I think that I did a great job with that, I thought it ok to part with my plan to rotate through all my projects once and picked up a project on which I already worked this year - SSMC Once upon a Fairytale by Aimee Stewart! I just wanted to work on it and it's soooo much fun! I went from here:

To here:

The lantern took ages to stitch, but it was still a lot of fun and I am so happy with the result =) I did 2 rows, so another 1 300 stitches. Since it is only two more rows to finish page one, I will stitch with this one for a few more days.

I hope you and your loved once stay healthy and (as) happy (as possible right now).
Happy stitching =)

WIPocalypse January

It's the evening of the 26th, so I am on time for this post - yay me! Be sure to check out this months link-up, there is going to be a lot of action in the next days when all the people check in for the month =)

Just like last year, there is a monthly question and just like last year, the first one is about which SALs I am participating this year. And just like last year, it's only this SAL and the GG SAL, where we are working on projects that were a gift or are meant to be a gift. My last post was my entry post for 2020 for that and I already did a great start with my map of middle earth ( 2 500 stitches!).

Since I speant quite a lot of time on Middle Earth, I did not get as much done on my other projects, but I am still happy with what I did.
First I stitches another row on Supersized Maxcolor Once upon a Fairytale, which is a lot of fun, but full of confetti. So last time:

And now:

So during this month I did 2 600 stitches, since the project has nearly 714 000 stitches, I am nearly done...not...

The second project I worked on is one of my non-haeds! You all know I love my haeds and I work on them a lot. But I also own a big bunch of projects by Gecko Rouge, Dimensions and lately Tilton crafts (they released a bunch of great Lord of the Rings charts lately), but for my taste I am not working on them enough. Therefore I will try to work on (at least) one project every month that is not a haed. For this month I chose a design by Gecko Rouge called "Across Winter Lake". The artist is Jo Grundy and she did a lot of lovely winter and nature designs. I started this project in 2018 (I think) and then it disappeared in my cupboard until last week. I remember that the confetti really put me off and I must say that this project is going quite slow. But the part of the chart I am working on is just full of confetti and it definitely gets better.
Any way, a long long time ago, Across Winter Lake started to look like this:

And now I finished page 1 and it looks like this:

I added 2 016 stitches and I am now at 3 888 stitches done. I am currently undecided if I should continue to work across (more trees and confetti) or start to work down (then I would stitch a part of the lake with less confetti). Since I am going to switch projects again, I have a bit of time to decide on this matter (I just hope it won't be another 2 years until I work on it again).

I also did some more work on that Christmas ornament. I was in the middle of writing an extra long paragraph telling you that I did the beading, but hate backstitching and seriously need to get my butt up to do it when i decided that I could just give is a try. And now, I am done with the backstitching! I must say that I am no good when it comes to french knots, so my rabbit look a bit stoned....

So that's actually a tiny finish for this year! Don't get used to it ;-)

I am off to bed (and a nice book) now, so happy stitching to all of you =)

WIPocalypse 2020 - Introduction

Happy new year, I hope you all made a good start for 2020!
We had a lovely celebration with our friends on the 31st. I think we are getting old by now. Back in the days we felt ill at the end of new years even due to to much alcohol and party and now we feel ill at the end of the day due to to much food :D We ate like a ton of raclette and potatoes and muffins. We stayed overnight at our friends house and since we had so many left overs, we had raclette again for "breakfast" (more like brunch) and I think I am done with cheese for a few weeks now ;-)

But for the first WIPocalypse post a short introduction is in order. Well, I am Johanna and by now 28 years old and I live in Germany. I studied mathematics and I am currently doing my phd (which I hope to finish this year). I live with my husband and he is studying computer science (about to start his master thesis now). Apart from stitching I love to read and when I stitch I usually have an audiobook playing (or booktube). I also know how to knit and crotchet, but I enjoy stitching a lot more.
I started blogging in 2011 and joined the WIPocalypse in 2012, I think took part nearly every year and hope the SAL will continue for the next years. Most of my projects (and stash) are from Heaven and Earth Designs, but I also own a bunch of charts and kits from Dimensions and Gecko Rouge. I prefer the bigger designs, but I also own a ton of Mill Hill beaded kits and ornaments. I fear I am really bad at blogging these days, but I update my instagram far more often (feel free to follow me @lady_stitchalot ). I always plan to post here more often and I also plan that for this year, I am just not sure of this will work out ;-)

Well, this is all I have to say about myself now. So what did I do in the last week?
On the non-stitchy side I read a lot, I dug out my Kindle again and have been glued to it since Christmas (I think I read like 5 books since then). Apart from that I had a first try at making my own soap (yesterday), it definitely looks very promising so far, but the soap needs to rest about 4 to 6 weeks until you can use it. I will keep you up to date ;-)

On the stitchy side there is my new year start =) I decided to join the crowd who stitches some version of Aimee Stewarts Once upon a fairy tale! I decided to go for the supersize max colors version, so it's 999x714 stitches and 239 colors, oh my! I decided to go for 25ct lugana because I fear there is going to be a lot of confetti (and I had a suitable piece of fabric in my stash). Here is what this will (hopefully) one day look like:

And here is where I currently am:

I decided to stitch this in rows (I sometimes just need a little change) and so far I stitched 3 rows or 1950 crosses. I am stitching this 1 over 1 as usual. There definitely is a lot of confetti, but I really enjoy it and plan to continue with this project for a few more days.
I also finished the first package of beads on my Mill Hill ornament and plan on finishing this in the nest days (just can't put down my fairytale).

This brings me to the plans for 2020... Ah plans usually don't work out for me. The thing about 2019 that made me most unhappy was that I did not work on all of my projects. So I think this will be my goal for 2020, work on all of them. I will try and rotate my projects more often and therefore I will now have a focus piece for the next months, at least not for the WIPocalypse SAL. I plan on concentrating on my map of middle earth for the GGSAL to finish the first row, after I am done with that I will probably decide for another focus piece for this SAL.

So that's all I have for this time. The link-up for this month is already up, since I am a lot more on time than usual, it's not that crowded yet, but I am sure this will change soon ;-)

Happy stitching =)