September Gifted Gorgeousness

It's been a while since I posted last, and a lot has happend - a vacation to Ireland (pictures incoming...eventually), a few lazy days at home, lots of crafting and a few check ins I need to catch up on...everything will be talked about eventually, but since I have an upcoming trip to Italy on Sunday, some might happen after that. For now, though, I have a Gifted Gorgeousness to log into, and that's what I'll do!

First thing to mention is a Needle Minder Exchange, hosted by the lovely Ingrid from Mii Stitch! The idea was to send a needle minder, small stitched item and a skein of DMC to a randomly drawn receipent, and also receive the same. I received my parcel from the wonderful Lorynn way ahead of time: A gorgeous little mandala, a cute turtle, and not one but two skeins of DMC Colour Variations! In her letter she wrote that she's going to stitch the mandala again so she can tell everyone it has a twin in Germany, isn't that awesome? She herself is located in Florida, so I really hope she's alright...

Of course I also sent something out, and since my recipient has posted it already, I can now also share with you - it has been hard not to because for some reason I am really proud of it! I bought this lovely little koi needleminder from Jody at Unconventional XStitch (you might have seen the red one I've been using on Snowwhite) and that finally gave my a reason to stitch the fishy frame pattern Magical shared a while ago. I went nuts with some Hand Dyeds I had in Store - Jodyri's Winter Solice and Fiberlicious Rose Petals, both of which are insanely pretty - and also substituted the french knot for some tiny beads Carla sent me a while back. Initially, I only planned to stitch the frame, adding the phrase came natural and now it will look nice with the needle minder removed too :)

I also had to knew starts that I can't show (the usual, because they are gifts for people how might look at my blog), but I also had a new start that I can share, and I took this one with my on vacation. Some of you might have seen it before - it's Inkcircles's 99, with 99 different bottles of beer. Felix' dad is turning 60 next year, and this is going to be  our gift for him. I did not quite meet my goal of stitching one bottle everyday of the vacation, but I did get close!

So that's my GG progress for now...I'll be back with more stitching and other stuff soon!

August WIPocalypse

I'm a little late for this check-in, but I think it still counts :) The question of the month is How do you get yourself out of a stitching drought?, and I've read some really good answers and pointers on other people's blogs so far. For me, depending on the situation, one of three methods seems to work: If I want to stitch, but feel like everything is just frustrating me, I like to change my 'mode' of stitching - I go from OaaT to rotation or from everything at once to just one, whatever feels right. I cut a few deadlines, maybe have a new start, et voilá, stitching is fun again!
Then again, sometimes I really don't want to stitch. I have some other hobbies, some crafty, some not, and they all seem to operate in phases. So if I'm in a 'phase' were I just want to play a ton of video games instead of stitching, it's best to just go with it - it's never lasted longer than a week or so before I wanted to include at least a little stitching in my free time again.
And then there are times when life gets just too busy for anything...in these times I usually cling to every bit of stitching time I can get, so it helps to take a small project with me at all times, so I can make use even of small breaks.

Now for my most recent progress. I had a busy week - first, we went to Felix' parents on Sunday to weeks ago. From there, I went to Cologne on Monday to visit the gamescom, a video game convention. I saw a lot of interesting and fun games there and also met quite a few people I hadn't seen in a long time, and a few I'd only talked to online so far as well! For this week, I took my Halloween Cat SAL with me, but I was so busy that aside from a little stitching on the train there and back, I didn't make any progress.

Saturday morning, I went back to Felix' parents, and spent the day recovering from a fun but exhausting week, stitching on Fire and Ember. I finished my current page some time Sunday. There was quite a bit of confetti - I feel like I have used every shade of orange, red and yellow there is - but so worth it in the end, isn't that dragon eye impressive? I can't wait to get started on the other half.

Sunday morning, we drove back home, which took us quite a bit longer than expected because there was so much traffic! I made good use of the time finishing part 5 of the Arke-CAL, though. This has become quite big, and I'm a bit worried I won't have enough yarn to finish the last part. I'll see how things work out when I get there.

So that's it for this week - just a little bit of busy times ahead before things finally calm down a bit. I can't wait!

The Alphabet Club - Y

I went to such efforts to catch up with this, and then I almost miss my first month back on track! Shame on me. But then, 'Y' is a difficult letter in German. I did some research and found that there even has been a partition to abolish it since there are no native German words starting with it, and almost every instance of the letter appearing in out language has an alternate version without it. (for example, 'Bavarian' can bei 'Bayrisch' or 'Bairisch', there's 'Yoghurt' and 'Joghurt', and so on). So I don't have a word to share this month, but I hope this info bit serves as a substitute!

Looking through my stitching, I wasn't any more successful, either...so, let me repeat this picture of my last yarn purchase. Sorry. Maybe I'll find something better for the last month, although my hopes are not too high!

Weekend stitching

Although my weekend was a bit more busy than I like it again (which seems to be normal these days), I have learned to stitch when I can and I could! So, I have a little progress to show.

I did a bit more on the Puppeteer - my usual length a day and than a few more since I am still working on catching up - and I had another page finish. Just one more pafe to go in the first row now!

I also got to work on Fire and Ember again, and made quite some progress this time! I think there are just about 300 or 400 stitches left on this page, so I should have no problem finishing it next weekend.

I've also done about half of the next part of Arke, so I should be able to show that next time around.

The princess and the pineapple

As mentioned in my last post, I'm going for babysteps now instead of doing everything at once, and as expected, it's working great for the moment :) First, I picked up Snowwhite to finish my stitches for this week, and to make it count I also did the stitches for next week while I was at it - finishing my first colour and a good bit of the next one (although you might not see the difference as Ashley has been doing some amazing colour blending on these patterns).

 Week 3

Week 4

I also did the first part of a new CAL - the 'Ananastuch', or 'Pineapple Shawl' - you'll see why it has that name once there is a little more! I know I still need to finish my Arke CAL, but this one works a little differently - you crochet one part, post a picture, and then you are sent the next one, and in order to participate the first part has to be done before August 31st. So I did it now, and will continue once the Arke is one.

So that's my progress of the week - After another trip to the hospital with grandpa yesterday (don't worry, he's okay - but I'm going to have a heart attack one of these days) I'm now hopefully going to have a little weekend with lots of stitching, and I'll see you around soon.

August Gifted Gorgeousness

So August is halfway gone now, too...time is moving so quickly when your busy! No now desasters here, my grandpa is feeling a little better everyday, although he's still hurting. Work is really busy because we will be off next week and there are quite a few things to finish yet. But as always, I'm getting there.

For Gifted Gorgeousness this month, I can only show you a few shoe-horns...I did finish a small for an exchange last weekend, but since you can never be sure sho might stumble upon your blog, and I don't want to spoil any surprises, I will only post that once it's safe at the recipient!

I finished part 5 of the Steochalong (technically it's pay what you want, which I still have to do). Part 6 has been released, and there are actually 20 options to chose from, plus instructions to make your own, and people are posting new versions of patterns every day! I have yet to decide what I want to do with mine, so I'll put it aside for a while until I can make up my mind.

Another freebie is the Arke CAL - I have finished part 4, and a few rows ago I had to start on my second ball of yarn. I hope I will have enough to finish the last two parts! It's also gotten quite big now, I can just so hold it with my arms stretched out.

Non GG-wise, I finished another week of work on Snowwhite - still using that first colour:

And then yesterday was the start of Carla and mine annual Halloween SAL - we're doing Halloween patterns by Satsuma Street, and I have chosen the cat. We are having our own facebook group and more participants than ever this year, so hopefully it will be a lot of fun!

Unfortunately, this also marks the point of  'just too much going on' for me. Working on everything at once and to a thousand deadlines was fun for a while, now it just started to feel overwhelming, so I'm going to revert my usual modus operandi (or at least it should be my usual, it just seems to work best) for a bit: Pick one project, pick one goal, work on it til it's done, rinse and repeat. I'll keep the daily stitching on the Puppeteer, though. So there might be a few smaller posts coming up, or maybe not, we'll see :)

The Teneous Shoe-Horn: Loved Ones

Jo, who's famous for her blog hop and link parties, is hosting a summer shoe-horn link up with the subject being 'loved ones' and how they tie in with our crafting and stitching. Now for everyone who has been following my blog for a while it won't come as much of a surprise that I wan't to talk about my grandma - she's the one who got my into crafting in the first place, and one of my biggest supporters up until today.

My grandparenty and me always had a special relationship. When my dad moved out when I was two, and Mum was still training to be a prosecutor and later working as one, I spend I lot of time at their house - even before, but from then on, I basically lived there, with my mum only picking me up in the evenings, and when I started school, I stayed with them all week and only went to my mum in the weekend. My grandpa built me a room to move into, and they basically raised me for most of my childhood. I lived with them until I moved in together with Felix not quite three years ago.

When I was five or six, my grandma taught me how to crochet. I had a plastic dinosaur doll I adored, we would always do roleplays involving him and several other dinosaurs and other animals, and my first projects were a scarf and then a sweater for him. When we did some basic embroidery in school in grade two or three and I really liked it, she baught my supplies and books and my very first counted cross stitch project still hangs framed at their place.

I made a lot of things for her, depending on what craft was my main focus at the time - like these turles, the pattern of which was my very first Etsy purchase.

And when my love for cross stitch re-emerged after several years without stitching, it was with a design to celebrate my grand parents diamond wedding anniversary.

This is a kit from Vervaco, and the very first kit I bought online. I had been searching for something for the occasion specifically, and when found it stumbled upon a few online shops and then I started to discover this whole world of stitching treasures out there, and the rest is history! Of course the next kit I stitched was also for her, since she loves turtles - this was the first project I ever posted pictures of online I think. So I can honestly say, without my grandma, I wouldn't be here (on the blogosphere, although of course I also would not have been born in the first place).

She used to be a crafter too, although she never stitched and hardly sewed (her mum was a seamstress, and she was very hard on her daughters when they were trying to sew, which led to both of them dropping it quickly), but she did a lot of crochet and knitting both for me and my mum when we were younger. Nowadays, she can't do it anymore, she had some troubles with her hands and although she's doing better and probably could handle a little crochet again, she says she hasn't got the time. I'm starting to doubt she'll ever make something again. So I have taking over, supplying her with shawls and wrist warmers and pot holders and whatever else she needs and wants...I can hardly ever say no to her, as you have probably seen when following my blog for a bit :) And I surely hope that I will continue to craft for her for a long, long time.

Here are some more examples of what I have made for her over the last few years: