WIPocalypse August (and July...)

 Ah it has been a while, I was in absolutely no mood to blog in July, so this is my update for July and August and I am even late for August. I am still buried in work, but I decided to get my butt up and write a bit here. Despite all my work I got a lot of stitching done. A good deal has been done in the second half of July, where I had two weeks off from work (and I really needed them). Since the beginning of July I am using Pattern keeper and I am really happy with it. I tried a different PDF reader some years ago and was very unhappy, so I continued to use paper charts. But int he beginning of July I finally decided to dig out my extra-old tablet and give Pattern Keeper a try. After I reset my tablet (it kept crushing when I tried to access my dropbox where I stash my digital patterns), things went rather well and in August I did not only purchase the full version of Pattern Keeper, but also a new tablet (one that has a battery that lasts longer then 3 hours and doesn't take 6 to reload...) and now I am only using the app. So far I imported patterns from Haed, Tilton and Goldenkite and it seems to work well. Unfortunately my Gecko Rouge patterns are all printed charts, so I need to look into that and see if I can get digital copies (at least for the charts that are still available) - especially since Gecko Rouge doesn't have overlapping pages and it's quite annoying to switch between pages.... Anyway, enough rambling, prepare for pictures!

The first thing I want to show is my now framed Cliffside Beacon from the Dimensions Gold petites collection. I am really not that good at framing, but it could be worse:

In July I did another one-per-day challenge, I did not manage to work on my Sloth (Gecko Rouge) every day, but I still got a lot done. I went from here:

To here

And I am at 7 743 out of 23 986 stitches now, so nearly 1/3 done now and added 4 350 stitches!

In early July I picked up Garden Gate by Dona Gelsinger (I had my nails done in lavender [dmc 26 to be precise] then and the color just reminded me of the hydrangeas in this piece...) and I stitched two columns on it. I went from here:

To here:

The second project I worked on Das Rheingold by Kinuko Craft - a project that I started some ages ago and did not work on for ages. But I love the design and hope it won't take another 3 years for me to pick it up again. I went form here:

To here:

I got 4 842 stitches done in July and I am more then happy with that =) I hope to get the first row done soon and that my mojo to work in this is back for good =)

Next I did some work on my Wolf Variant by Bente Schlick. I didn't work on it for a long while, I don't know why because it stitches up in no time and I love the purple colors. I went from here:

To here:

As you can see, a lot has changed. When I started this, I didn't zig-zag my edges (to avoid gridlines) and it has bothered me for a while now with this project. In the beginning I wanted to stitch 100 stitches across and then down (jut for a little change) and then I didn't want to start zig-zaging in the middle of the column, because I am weird. But not I just decided to add another column and now I have a proper zig-zag edge there. On top of that, I also filled in the gap and now I have a nice 110x250  stitches block done. That's quite a bit, but the design is huge and so there is still no sign of the wolf. The whole design has 409 500 stitches, so the 5 800 (!!) stitches didn't really move the percentage on Pattern Keeper ;-) but I thing the progress is more then visible.

After that I decided to work on Kriemhild again, I went from here:

To here:

I am now a bit more then halfway through page 42 and I plan to finish that page in September (and make a start on page 43). I did less then 10 000 stitches on her this year and want to focus on her a bit more. By the way, I did not only encounter the first flowers (very pretty), but I also found her helmet. I have been stitching on it for a while, but it was only in the full shot that I could recognize it (the typical haed-effect). 

Now this brings me to my current WIP, Supersized Ride of the Yokai by Ruth Thompson. Once again I must say how much I love Pattern Keeper, it just makes my stitching more organized and there are less ninja stitches now. Since I am working on 32ct here, organized stitching and starting/ending threads is important to me here. I went from here:

To here:

Since I no longer need to stick to my pages, I decided to stitch 50 stitches high and the current block is 333, so exactly 1/3, across. I already did a good deal on the next row and plan to finish this block before I switch to something else.

This brings me to future plans! I have 5 more Haeds on which I last worked in 2019, so I am on a good way there. Among those are Yule Angel and Noble Spirit, which are typical winter motifs for me, so I guess I will work on them in November/ December. QS Trapped and Whispers are a bit gloomy, so they really fit in autumn and then there is Starlight, which also fits the gloomy time of the year. Then I have 6 more other projects, which did not get any love this year (one is my Christmas Eve, she will come out for Christmas as usual and one was only used to show a friend how to stitch, so it's not really started). After all, I am very confident that I can get some love into all my projects this year. In September I definitely plan to pick up QS Trapped, I might  do some sort of one-per-day challenge on it (maybe not for a whole month, but 2 or 3 weeks also add up). I plan to do a bit of work on Kriemhild and then I will see what I pick up next.

I also have a new start coming! I decided to join the Pandemic by Longdog samplers stitchers! You maybe know that the pattern was available for free at the end of June, I then ordered some fabric (40ct Newcastle Linen by Zweigart in creme) and a couple of threads for teststitching. I decided to try the threads from a German company called Vaupel&Heilenbeck, they have hand dyed cotton and silk. Since the thread is expensive, I wanted to be sure with my choice.

The colors are really hard to catch, in real live they are really vivid. The smaller skeins are silk and the two bigger skeins are cotton.

In the first row you can see the two cotton colors, the others are silk. I am stitching over 2, so it is like 20ct. The cotton thread is a bit thicker and has a slightly better coverage. I was really torn between the red cotton (no 1, row 1) and the re silk (no 2, row 2). The cotton was a bit fresher, the colors reminded me of berries and it has a bit more variation, so in the end I went for that (I did a bit more test stitching with smaller designs from the pattern, but I did not take a picture of that). Testing the threads already was a lot of fun, so I guess this won't be my last time working with these threads. The silk was a bit easier to work with , it's very smooth and shiny. But the red silk varies a bit into brown (very good for autumn) and I decided that a pandemic a tragic enough, so I wanted to stitch the design with happier colors =) The whole process of ordering the threads took ages, but today I got an email that the rest of my threads finally shipped and they will arrive soon =)

Last but not least, if you want to see more updated for August, just take a look at this months (ah well last months) link-up page, where you can find all other entries and information regarding the SAL.

Happy stitching =)

WIPocalypse April

And April is already gone - how did that happen? There must be something wrong, I feel like I hardly got any stitching done as well! But then I also had some trouble with my right hand and could not stitch for a few days at all and had to stitch with my left hand only - so my rotation got messed up because I didn't feel like switching projects after putting only a couple of hundrer stitches in. But my hand is better now and I hope to improve this month.

So here is my WIPocalypse update for April. The wonderful SAL is hosted by Measi and you can find the link-up post here.
As for this months question: What projects are in your UFO pile? Ah, that's complicated. I don't have any UFOs in the sense of "I don't want to stitch that any more". I have  few projects that get less love and I sort of have t push myself a bit to work on them. Actually, I worked on three such projects this month.
The first one is my oldet WIP - a kit by Dimensions Gold called "Paris Market" - I started this in Summer 2010, I fear :D I usually fortget about this project, I don't know why... The green in the tree seems to take forever, so I always try to put in a few tree stitches and I think that works. But the flowers are really nice to stitch. Anyway, last time you saw this - at the beginning of June 2016!

And now:

I think I did quite well for only three days on this ;-)

The same "problem" occurs with my Aurora Cabin by Dimensions Gold, the last time you saw this was in May 2016! Back then, it looked like this:

And now, I finished the full stitches on the big tree and got started on the background. So pretty, why don't I work on this more often? After all, the background is only half stitches and stitches up nice and quick... By the way, this is my second oldest WIP, started at then end of 2010 I think.

The third one is one of my older Haeds, I don't know what it is, but I never seem to find my mojo to work on this... I love the design and I think the way it comes out is nice, but I just forget about this. Anywy, I went from here:

To here, I added 2 columns, 1600 stitches:

We are getting somewhere, big plan is to finish page 6 this year (and halfway through).
Well, so much for the pile of shame...

Apart from that, I worked on Starlight by David Hoffrichter. At that time my hand hurt, so it took me more than a week to stitch 2 columns (1600 stitches as well). This put me past the halfwaypoint on the first row!
I went from here:

To here:

I really love the way the colors here stitch up, so nice and calming =)

I also stiitched a few days on Kreimhilds Revenge, I added 2 1/2 columns (1925 stitches) to it. But it's only sky...
Before:

After;

The last thing I worked on was the Cloudsfactory SAL - I am still terribly behind... And we had drama... I was stitching my way through Joan of Arc from the March block on Monday and then I noticed that half the horse was wrong... I somewhere missed my count... So I frogged this on Tuesdays and didn't feel like restitching it since then...maybe at the weekend. This is my current progress:

So I added Marie Curie and Cleopatra and we have a start on Joan of Arc (which seems to be a smaller design).

Anyway, that's my progress for April. I sort of got enabled by all the lovely new starts for Maynia and since I have a bunch of smaller designs here, I am givin in to some smaller new starts this month. I already started another birdie of my BFs mother, which is nearly done!
Apart from that, I put Danielle on the frame. I don't think I'll stick with the change once a week thing, I just change when I feel like it.

Happy stitching =)

WIPocalypse - October

Oh my, whenever WIPocalypse is close to the GGSAL, I tend to be late for it :D But here we go!

I have a few updates to show.

First up is my Rheingold by Kinuko Craft, I managed to finish page 5 and made a start on page 6 (yay me, the love for it is not gone!!). So I went from here:

To here:

Then I had a new start (again!), but I am determint to finish it this year ;-) It's "Gwen" from Nora Corbetts Bewitching Pixies. I am doing this 2 over 2 on 28ct Jobelan in Toffee Popsicle (which I always want to call Topsicle... what a silly world...) and the skin is 1 over 1. Unfortunately, it's hard to catch the color correctly, it's way more orange in real life:

As I said, I think this has a good chance of being a finish this year. I have two colors left in the dress, the beading (to which I am looking forward) and the background to stitch.

The last one I worked on is Kriemhild, she is back on the frame since last week. I am going for a row finish. I went from here:

To here:

I have 4000 stitches left on row 3 and I am doing my best to get them done this month (got to move on with my goals). Since a lot of it is sky, so that stitches up quickly.

Ok, then for this months question: What online stitching communities do you enjoy?
Well, obviously I am in blogland, both as a blogger and a blogreader, then I am active on Facebook (mostly the new official haed group and Stitch mania) and I watch flosstube (but not doing it myself).

I think all of those have advantages. With Facebook it's so easy to stay up to date, you go on there, take a quick look or post a quick update, but I am not investing as much time on it. I am not writing long texts or long comments or talk about my life that much (it's so tempting to hit the like button and scroll on...), I don't blog so often, but when I do, I sit down and think about what to write and I take my time to make a post and it's the same time with reading blogs. I am sometimes quite behind on reading all the posts, but I usually take my time to read what people say.
I started watching flosstube a year or so ago, it's nice to be able to put a face to the name and listen to peoples voice. And I can stitch while watching it! :D I sometimes thought about trying my own flosstube, but I can't really imagine filming myself and anotehr weird thing I think about is that I am not a native speaker. I read a lot in english, I watch movies in english and writing in english is fine, but speaking is another thing. I mean, I am sure that I am mispronouncing quite a few things, I have a nice German accent and sometimes I just don't know the word I am looking for :D So I am staying in blogland :D

Ok, that's it for this months update. If you want, you can pay a visit to Measi and see who else did an update =)

Happy stitching =)

Das Rheingold - Page 5 AND a start on page 6

Just a quick update here, I managed to finish page 5 on Rheingold - yay me! And even better: I made a start on page 6!
You all know that I have been struggling with Rheingold for a while now, I am just not getting into it and I am pushing myself to take this out once a year and give it a try. I still love the design and I think the way it stitches up is great. So I am very happy that at the end of page 5 I just felt like putting in a few more stitches. It's only a partial column with 560 stitches, but I think it goes in the right direction. Maybe there will be a chance that I can finish the row by the end of 2017 (like 9600 stitches to go).
So here is where we are now:

I am off to start my first Nora Corbett now - one of the bewitching pixies called "Gwen". After all, the temperatures in Germany are dropping and it starts to feel like autumn around here ;-) So it's time to stitch something halloweenish ;-)

Happy stitching =)

WIPocalypse September

I'm a bit late for my WIPocalypse post, but better late than never, right? You can see the other entries here.

So here is what I did this month!

I did some more work on my Sheep in the Meadow (until I ran out of the green Weeks Dyeworks - I don't know how that happened, maybe it was not meant for stitching with two threads), so we went from here:

To here:

I think it's really cute and pretty and I love working with the Weeks, the violet is so beautiful. I can't wait to stitch the house, which is mainly in violet =) I guess this one will be finished in 2016 =)


Next up is Rheingold by Kinuko Craft Arts (Haed), which I picked up again a few days ago. I haven't worked on this for nearly one year and have done some 500 stitches so far
Last time:

And now:

I am sort of forcing myself to work on this, I somehow really don't enjoy it. But I will finish page 5, about 2000 stitches to go.

The last one I worked on is another new start. I took one of my Dimensions Gold Petits on holiday with me and this is how far I got:

and here is the full design:

I already "found" the first two corners of the designs, stitching one of the corners on such a design (where you start in the middle) feels like reaching a mini goal :D  I am stitching this in hand and it is a nice change from my frame and so much fun to stitch. It will surely be a nice reminder of my holiday.
 I spent a lovely week by the north sea. One day we went to the island Juist, which was truly beautiful. Here is a picture I took by the beach there:

I guess my next holiday by the sea will be on Juist, it's so beautiful there, the beach is lovely, the nature is amazing and it's so quiet there (no cars!). I can imagine spending one or two weeks there =)

Here is another picture (from the mainland) I took on holiday and want to share. We went to the lighthouse in Campen, it is the highest lighthouse on the mainland in Germany. So we climbed 320 steps to the top and enjoyed a beautiful view:

As you can see, the weather was amazing :D

But now back to WIPocalypse. Measi wants to know about a story about a finished project.

I decided to pick one of my first finishes:
I got my first Haed in 2011 (Kreimhilds Revenge), I think I started in March, and signed up for the 2012 Haed Freebee SAL after watching people work on the 2011 SAL ( didn't dare joining then). I picked QS Bookend Kitties by Kayomi Harai:

The design is 143x143, so it was a good size to finish in one year (you know, back in the days you could choose one of 6 charts and depending on how much you finished of the chart by the end of the year, you got some of the other charts as a reward. I think you had to finish the chart to get all 6, so I finished this on the 30th October 2012:

It is always nice to finish a Haed and I was really proud of myself. I also joined the 2013 SAL and I also finished the chart, but it took me way longer (until the end of 2015...) to finish it, so looking back, this was a fast finish for me :D The sad thing is that I do actually have a frame for this one but I somehow didn't get around to frame this (along with my Theatre of the Absurd QS). One of my goals for this year is to actually frame them both :D We will see if this actually happens :D


Ok, I think that's everything I have for today. I hope to share another update on Rheingold soon and since another skein of Weeks Dyeworks arrived, I hope to pick up Sheep in the Meadow again soon.

Happy stitching =)

WIPocalypse - July

So, it's the end of July already. July was a very busy and exhausting month, I had a lot of work to do at university because the semester is endig now and exams are drawing nearer and I have a lot of people asking questions and so on. Along with that, it was my boyfriends birthday last week and we decided to celebrate it with some friends yesterday. So we spent a whole week planning and preparing and I feel like we can spent another week cleaning the place :D But we had a lot of fun last night, everybody was happy and the food was great. I am still very tired, so maybe this post will be a short one ;-)
Since I started with the Haed Challenge 3 with my Map of Middle Earth, I don't have that much progress to show and the same will maybe go for next month.

First up is Danielle. Last time, very close to finishing page 2:

And now, 2 1/2 pages done:

Absolutely lovey, I love all those colors and I'ma bit sorry that you can't see the sparkles on the pictures!

Apart from that I worked on my Supersized Ride of the Yokia. Last time:

And now, I did another partial page and started to work on the 3 pages above, so stitches are now 40 stitches high and 189 across:

I want to get to some of the detail, so I started stitching the 3 pages above and will try and focus on them next. You can already see the legs of one of the ghostlike animal (?). By now, I am a great fan of the 32ct fabric, I'm looking forward to picking this up again =)

This month has two topics - one is about challenges for the olympic games and one is a half-year goal report. I'm not doing any challenges for the olympics (not really watching them a lot and since I am doing the Haed Challenge, I don't want any more and just stitch what I feel like) and I didn't really set fixed goal for 2016. So I am doing a half year progress report and compare to my thoughts from the beginning of the year (like I said "I'd like to put more work into that") and so on:

First up is Kreimhilds Revenge by H D Johnson. At the beginning of 2016 I had 20 pages done:

There is an actual goal for her - finish row 3 (or more). I did 2 additional pages, 1 full page and a partial (just some 10 or 15 columns) left to do - next time she comes to the frame that row will be done! Especially since there is only sky with way less confetti there =)

Rheingold by Kinuko Craft - didn't touch it so far, maybe I will still get my butt up to finish the page I started:

Yule Angel by Anne Stokes - didn't touch it - still 7200 stitches left to finish the first row. Gotta do that!

Starlight by David Hoffrichter - didn't touch it. It's absolutely on the list of things to go on my frame next - don't have any anticipations or plans for this one, but I really want to get some stitches into it, it's so pretty!

Eternal Promise by Matt Stewart - nope, no progress (did I stitch at all this year??) - plan is to finish the page I started - that should still be possible:

Wolf Variant by Bente Schlick - oh, I worked on it! Still 4000 stitches to go to finish the 100x160 block I started, but I stitched!
Before:

And now:

Now that I look at it, I really want to pick it up again, it stitches up so nicely =)

QS Paddys Luck by Joanna Bromley - I worked on it! I wanted to finish the first page and did that, yay me :D I even made a start on page 2 and I put it on my frame tonight (just felt like it):
Before:

And now:

Danielle by Sara Butcher, I wanted to stitch page 2 or more and I did both, I am 2 1/2 pages in (see above). But here is her at the beginning of the year:

Supersized Iris Keeper by J Wall - big plan is to stitch all of row 1 this year. I'm on a good way (I think).  Here is where we started:

And now - half way through page 3 and I crossed the halfway mark of the page - so much fun to stitch!

Supersized Ride of the Yokai by Ruth Thompson - a new start for 2016 - I worked on it quite a lot :D You can see my progress above. No real goals for that. I said that it would be great to reach the halfwaypoint of my first row, but since I decided not only to stitch the last row of pages but also the above, this is not going to happen. But I am happy with my progress so far and I think I can put in another few xs and will be happy by the end of the year =)

QS Trapped by Melanie Delon - another new start. I wanted to stitch something I bought in 2013 (you know that - by see things, you love them, you buy them and then you don't start them :D gotta do something about that!). The dark colors are giving me trouble, but it's quite pretty: 1 1/2 pages in so far:

Apart from that I picked up my Dimensions projects
Paris Market went from here:

To here:

From an UFO to a WIP :D Love it!
And I even picked up Aurora Cabin for a few crosses, from here:

To here:

I guess I still forgot about a couple of things, but this is most of my progress so far.

Happy stitching =)