Stash enhancement! :D

Well, here we go, my stash post as announced at the beginning of the month :D

I somehow missed showing quite a lot of stuff I got over the last months, so I will try and catch uo. I hope I don't forget about anything ;-)

First up is the Haed kit for Ride of the Yokai. I have already shown you all the floss:

But I also got a few goddies with the package.
I got a free needle threader with the kit:

It's hard to capture the colors here, the threader is really lovely. It's a beautiful amber colored glass bead with with little glass dots in different colors (I really don't know how to describe it :D). I don't use threaders when working with just one strand but I have a few projects calling for 2 strands or more, so this will come in handy.
I also ordered a Laying tool, which is said to be quite helpful when working with more than one thread. The idea is to flatten your stitches to archive neater stitches and a better coverage. I tried railroading a few time (it has the same effect), but I never got used to it and so I skipped it after some time. I will therefore give the laying tool a try.

I think it's a really pretty thing. It actually matches my needle threader ;-) I don't know exactly what it's made of :D I don't think it's wood, maybe some sort of plastic or resin? I really don't know but it's nice. Below the bead some silver wire is wound around the tool and some beads are attached to the wire. The big glass bead is placed between two smaller beads. I really love all those details, this was truly manufactured with a lot of love for detail ;-) If I remember correctly, this thing was only half price because I ordered it along with the kit.
Las but not least I decided to get a frog sword:

The color is somewhere between lavender and antique pink and it sparkles. It's quite heavy, I'm again not entirely sure what this is made of. It's quite cool to the touch, it could be glass (but quite thick glass).
The tip is really sharp and cuts threads in no time. I had a tool like this before, I found it looking through my mothers things, but my version is really ugly (it's made of plastic and the color is a really pale yellow and the color looks quite off since the tool is approximately 30 years old).

Ok that's it for my kit.
And now some kits! The story behind this is that I ordered some fabric online, but the fabric was damaged (which I noticed a few days before I wanted to start Ride of the Yokai), so I drove to the shop where I got the fabric and exchanged it for some new fabric. And to make it worth the afford of driving 80 km to the shop and 80 back home, I took a look around and found a few things:
My wonderful boyfriend suggested Christmas stockings. He says he really like them, but my problem is that most of the stocking you can get in Germany are quite boring and not really nice. So I went looking for stocking kits and found two:

This one is called "Candy cane Santa Stocking" from the Dimensions Gold Collection and is meant for my boyfriend. He wanted a "classic Santa" and I like his choice. I guess I'm going to start this soon so there is a chance to finish it before Christmas :D
And I also picked a second one called "Snowman and friends Stocking":

I think all the animals are really cute. The white might be a bit boring to stitch, but it will be fine. I somehow feel like adding some sparkle or some beads to it (candy cane santa little sequins).
Next up are some Mill Hill kits. I never got the hang of them when I saw them online, but when I was in the store and could take a closer look, I was amazed. I never beaded anything, but I think it's not to hard. These are also small designs, so I will have a finish now and then and I hope to have a few ornaments for Christmas 2016 :-)
First is the Drum from the Holiday Harmony collection:

Then the is "Noel Heart" from the Charmed Mittens collection - my favorite among the kits I got! I love the whole Charmed Mittens collection and I fear I will get some more.

Then there are "Santas Boots" from the Santas Closet collection - look at the little Christmas tree charms!!

And I got "Snowman Stocking". No collection is mentioned on the package, but it's quite old (1997 it says). I think the little snowman is adorable:

I fear I already ordered a few more from sewandso (they have some lovely beaded Santas). All the kits include some perforated paper, needles for stitching and beading, the threads and a ton of beads (I heard it's more than enough beads, most people seem to have a lot of leftovers).  I'm really excited to start one of these.

And now here is the part most of you have been waiting for - charts!
I got a few more supersized patterns. As an exclusive to the Supersize group on facebook Michele offered "Moon Child" by Annie Stegg - a breathtaking design (Michele said she was working on it long before it was released and I was waiting for it all the time :D )

Then there is Universal Lighthouse by Bill Plank. I seem to have a weakness for designs consisting of a lot of blue or violet or so :D I fell in love with it the instant I saw it and I knew I wanted this with all it's detail:

I think I mentioned some time ago that I requested another Storykeep to be supersized - SK Wineshelf by Aimee Stewart. Well, I finally got it some ages after it's release. It came out exactly the way I wanted it (and very close to the size I estimated, I thought it to be about 340 stitches wide and it ended up 343 stitches wide), all the details are there. It's going to be amazing!

To make up for this I also got some smaller charts.
Here is QS Good Witch by Hannah Lynn. She was calling to me and looks like a lot of fun to stitch. I always love to watch when people do the black outline first and color the design afterwards and I would love to try it (would be quite different from my usual parking technique):

I also got QS Spirit of Winter Robin by Ciro Marchetti. I thinks it's a cute little Ornament:

And now for the regular charts:
Michele offered a few free charts, one of them was "Grizz" by Dave Bartholet. I really love his designs, there are so many I would love to buy and stitch! I swear I bought "Back glance" once, but I can't find the pdf, lol. Maybe it's hidden in some weird folder on my pc :D

Some of you may have noticed that I love the designs by Leonid Afremov. I got all his charts from Love Thy Thread before they closed and I also got some of the charts that were now released by Haed. I added two more to my collection:
Memories of First love (I think I saw someone stitch this, it was gorgeous!)

Farewell to Anger - absolutely beautiful. I am very tempted to start this and "farewell to anger" is a good goal for 2016 ;-)

I think those were all the goodies I got lately (I hope I didn't forget about any...). I will update my stash page in the next days (haven't done that for ages, so there is work to do) and I will be back with a page finish on Ride of the Yokai soon! =)

Happy new year - a page finish and a new start =)

I hope you all made a good start for 2016 and the new year will hold a lot of stitching time and health for you and your loved ones.

I also did my annual new start on the first of January. I only did some 400 something stitches yesterday, but I will stitch some more today. The big problem is that so many people are having a new start for January 1st, I can hardly get away from facebook because there are so many lovely pictures by other stitchers showing up and so many lovely designs I never noticed before. My wishlist is very likely to grow now :D I got a few new charts in the last sale and plan on doing a stash enhancement post because I am quite behind with showing you my new additions (there is charts and fabric and kits...).

But now I want to show you my last page finish for 2015. I worked on Kreimhilds Revenge and managed to put the last stitches into page 20 on the 31st:

I am sorry, the colors are a bid off because the Christmas tree is standing in front of the window and is blocking the daylight ;-)
You can see that I reached my actual Kriemi and she got some hair. I think that brown thing on the bottom of the page is a part of her dress. I am looking forward to work on page 21 soon =) Michele said there would be another Haed challenge starting on January 15th and I think I might pic Kriemi for that.

And now here is my new start. It's Supersized Ride of the Yokai by Ruth Thompson:

The design is really huge. It's 999x730 stitches, so nealry 730 000 stitches in total! Considering the fact that I did around 90 000 stitches in 2015 on all my projects together, it would take me still more than 8 years to finish this if I worked on nothing else.... I was a bit stunned about this because this one will take really really long to stitch. But for me stitching is about working on the design and not so much about finishing things (as you may have noticed....).
Here is my tiny start on it, a bit more than 400 stitches:

The colors are really lovely. This was also my first Kit from Haed. It was quite expensive and the shipping and taxes really hurt, but I really wanted a kit. I also got a Laying tool and a frog sword (pics to follow), so this was very expensive and I basically spent my Christmas money on this. But I am happy with the kit ;-)

Here is all the floss I got with the kit, it's a real big bunch of floss. I'm not sure if I would order another kit, they are really nice and I want to support Michele by buying from her, but shipping here was about 50$ and then I payed about 60$ for taxes (ok taxes would be fewer if I only ordered a kit without the frog sword and the laying tool and I could maybe save some shipping costs if I ordered without the presentation box... I'll think about it... I mean kits are really good if you got for a supersize because they need so much floss and I always want to be sure to get floss from the same dye lot).
Anyway, I am super happy with my kit and can definitely recommend it. Just check how much taxes you have to pay in the end (in Germany you have to pay an extra tax if you buy outside the EU for to much money, that was an extra 20$ gone because I didn't know that...)

I guess I will go back to stitching now and be back with another post soon. I have not made up my mind about goals for 2016 yet. I am not sure if I will set goals for myself or not yet ;-)

Final WIPocalypse and GG SAL update for 2015

Well, it looks like December is already over so I thought I would do a final update on all my WIPs. Since I was so busy around Christmas I didn't manage to blog for the Gifted Gorgeousness SAL so here also an update on Middle Earth.

I hope all of you enjoyed a wonderful Christmas time with you family and friends. My Christmas consisted of a lot of eating and visiting family and friends and I got a few nice things as well =).


I guess this will be my last post for 2015, so here is a big update on what I accomplished this year =)

First up are my WIPs I started before 2015:

Kreimhilds Revenge by Howard David Johnson:
At the beginning of 2015:

I am currently working on this one. I stitched 3 1/2 pages so far and I guess I'll finish page 20 before the year is over ;-)

Next up is Das Rheingold by Kinuko Craft.
At the beginning of 2015:

I stitched only half a page on this, I'm not really happy with my progress but I somehow lost my mojo on this one =/ Maybe 2016 will be better.

Yule Angel by Anne Stokes.
At the beginning of 2015:

I managed to stitch two pages this year, on the pictures it looks like way more progress and I am really happy with my progress =)

Eternal Promise by Matt Stewart.
At the beginning of 2015:

I stitched one and a half page on this:

Starlight by David Hoffrichter:

I stitched one page this year. I hope to make more progress on it in 2016 since I really love working on this design:

The Map of Middle Earth Large (Retired)

I worked on this during the Gifted Gorgeousness SAL and did 10000 stitches ob this one. I plan to continue with this as a part of the SAL (which will hopefully be hosted in 2016) and hope to do at least 12000 stitches on it.

And I also made some progress on my non-Haeds, both are from the Dimensions Gold Collection:
Paris Market got a tiny bit of love:

 

I really hope it will grow somewhat in 2016 ;-)

I just noticed that I didn't work on Aurora Cabin at all? Well, I should change that :D
It still looks like this:

I could have sworn I worked on this,e specially since I really love this designs!

And here are my new start for 2015:
First up is Wolf Variant by Bente Schlick, which was my Jan-1st start. I stitched 1 1/3 pages on it:

QS Paddys Luck, I started this after handing in my master thesis and did 3000 stitches:

Danielle by Sarah Butcher, my big new start after handing in my master thesis :D the first page is done:

Supersized Iris Storykeeper by Josephine Wall - my first supersized pattern! I'm really happy with it, I stitched nearly two pages:

And I also started another non- haed by Dimensions called Wolf Kiss:

And last but not least, I had a finish this year! =) QS Theatre of the Absurd by Ciro Marchetti is done!
Before:

And now, in all it's glory:

So I guess those were all my stitches from this year, if I didn't miscalculate I did nearly 90,000 stitches this year which makes me more than happy =)

I hope to see all of you happy and healthy in 2016! =)

YOTA - I have a finish!!!

Well, it's finally done! I managed to finish my QS Theatre of the Absurd! I am about two years late with this since is was the 2013 SAL piece from Haed, but it's better to finish late than not finishing at all.
I am very happy that I managed to get that finish this year and I hope that I can make some progress on my Dimensions projects which I love (but I am addicted to Haed) but I haven't made much progress on them.

But here is my finished QS Theatre of the Absurd by Ciro Marchetti:

I hope there will be a YOTA SAL for 2016 since it really helped me to get my butt up and finish something =)

WIPocalypse - November edition

It looks like the end of November is already here (how did that happen??) and so it's time for another WIPocalypse! It's the second to last WIPocalypse of 2015 already and Christmas is nearly here. The Christmas markets around here opened last week and we already visited a few (we had a lot of delicious food and drinks and bought some things to decorate our home for Christmas).
We had some snow here in the last days and it already feels like Christmas =)
And like every year, I am still hoping for a white Christmas (I only remember this happen once...)

But now for WIPocalypse!

First I want to answer this months questions which is:
Which designer has inspired you to stitch the greatest number of designs and why do you think that is?

Okay, it's obviously Haed. I have a ton of charts and most of my WIPs are Haed lol.
I really love their charts. They are very detailed and I just love those moments where you fight a ton of confetti and you only feel like stitching a giant colorful bubble and then you step back and it looks amazing.
I love that Haeds don't have backstitching or speciality stitches so they are easy to work. Haed has a lot of artists and designs I like and I love that they carry a wide range of designs (I mean you can find everything from landscapes and animals to fantasy and the style varies from anime like to realistic). I am also very happy with their costumer service, whenever I had a problem with a chart I got a friendly and helpful reply in no time.

Apart from Haed I like the Dimensions Kits. Sometimes I just feel like stitching something with backstitching and french knots and half stitches and something on a lower count (with Aida I even stitch in hand). I like their designs, especially from the Gold Collection. So I have a couple of their kits in my stash and stitch them then and again.

Ok and now for my updates. The last WIPocalypse I did was the September edition, so here are some more updates:

First up are the updates on the two pieces I worked on for the Haed challenges on facebook.
I worked on Das Rheingold by Kinuko Craft:
Last time:

And now, 1600 stitches added:

I will try and finish the page I started during December but my mojo to work on this is not really back yet..
I also did some work on Iris. Last time:

I added 1200 stitches during the challenge and I am very close to finishing page 2:

And I did some work on Eternal Promise. Here is how it looked last time:

And now, about 2000 stitches added:

I am currently working on QS Theatre of the Absurd. It is so close to a finish (about 300 stitches) so I will try and finish it today (I planned on doing so yesterday but then we spent so much time on a Christmas market so I was to tired to stitch...). I know I should try and finish the page I started on Rheingold but I really feel like working on Yule Angel since it's a Christmas design.... So maybe I will work on that for a few days ;-)

So I hope all enjoy the weekend and spent some time with your stitching and I will be back in a few days with a finish on QS Theatre of the Absurd! =)