Easter Treasure Hunt Blog Hop 2018

It's a little late in the day (the weather is gray and I spent the day on the couch, not really feeling like that much day has passed yet), but here is your letter for Jo's fabulous Easter blog hop from me:

W

And of course, I also have a bit of spring related stitching to show: I finally finished my Mill Hill Floral Watering Can. I had been working on it for a while, almost finished it on my trip last week, but somehow one of the bead bags had gone missing and I had to wait until I was at home to replace them - I had the right light green and purple beads left over from other kits, but had to replace the tea rose petit beads with christmas red seed beads. I like my version of though, in fact, I like the whole design a lot - so nice and spring like and bright! It's another fridge magnet kit, so I'll just have to put the magnet on the back now and I'll be done.

And now that you have seen my stitching and noted down the letter, you can hop on the the next blog in line, which is http://kittenstitching.blogspot.co.uk ! 

Zodiac SAL - Pisces

As usual, I am super late for this check in. Again, I vow that next month I will post sooner, but we all know how that is most likely going to work out...

Anyways, here is the March birthstone ornament - Aquamarine. I still need to finish-finish this, and also February's Amethyst AND I am finally working on the December Blue Topaz, so I think a fiinish-a-thon is in order!

I am still very much behing stitching the princess fobs, but I will tell you who this month's princess would have been - noone else than Ariel herself! Who else could be Pisces? I'm not sure she's a really typical Pisces, but 'people watching', 'fantasy-fueled' and 'life through rose-coloured glasses' certainly describe her well.
I do hope I can catch up on these fobs/ornaments a bit...they are all so immensely beautiful and I want to share them all with you!

March IHSW

I swear, one of these days there will be an update and it will be on time!
We spent last weekend with Felix' brother, and since it was gruesomly cold outside, there was quite a bit of quality stitching time when we tried to warm up in the evenings.

On Friday I stitched a little on Pocahontas in the car - I had been stitching on her for my work trip last week, but added another ~400 stitches now. Almost done!

Friday evening and Saturday, I worked on Fire and Ember and made a good dent into this month's page. It helps that this page is very fun and exciting with a lot of dragon mouth, so it's fast stitching!

No stitching on Sunday as we went to the book fair in Leipzig to visit my best friend who was selling her art there (click here for some shameless advertising ;) ) That was a lot of fun as well, so I regret nothing!

March Gifted Gorgeousness

I know I am far behind with almost everything (actually, my crafting is going pretty well, it's just the posting I'm not up to date with), which is mostly due to being distracted, busy, and currently on the last segment of a three legged trip (almost two weeks with one day at home in between - and I only learned on Thursday that I'd by gone for five days starting today). So instead of posting my GG update in time and packing for a three day weekend trip, I spent the evening packing for eight days and not posting. Phew - that's not what I wanted when I was talking about March madness, not at all!

Anyways, I've been working on a few gift projects since the last time that we talked, so here we go.

First, here is a little something I finished in the beginning of February - I thought I had shown you, but looking back, it turns out I haven't! These are the Valentine's Cats I stitched for Jo's Valentine's blog hop this year. They are from Cross Stitch Collection #232, the same series I stitched two adorable birdies from last year.

Next, I finished the headband I had been knitting. This may look unfinished, but is actually how far I went with it - the lady I made it for is a sewer herself and does a bit of crochet as well, and she asked to get it like that so she could play around with different ways of finish-finishing it. She hast yet to show me the end result!

Last but certainly not least, I have finished the third page of 99, which brings me officially past the half way point (51 bottles done, 48 left to go). I've put it away for a bit now, but will pull it out again shortly.

March Madness

After stitching little more than bottles in February, I now have a million plans for March, and so far it is going quite well. If I can get done only half of what I'm oping for, I shall be content. For now, I have two things I want to show you - there are two or three more, but those fit in with GIfted Gorgeousness, which is only a few days away now.

As I said, my main focus this month is to catch up - if not fully, then at least a bit - on Snow White, which was stuck at Dec 24th (of my 'one length of thread a day' regimen).  I've been working on her for a little over a week now, catching up about three weeks worth of stitching in the process. I finished the sleeve-thingy on the left, and also the next shade of yellow in her skirt. Next I will work on her bodice for a bit, before starting onto the next layer of yellow.

I also took a day or two to finally finish my Arke shawl: I only had the last part/pattern of six left to do, and since my yarn was running low, I only did one repeat (of six) before starting on the border. I finished with less than 1g of yarn left. Phew!

February WIPocalypse

And just like that, February is gone as well...we've certainly had a busy month! Grandma was back in the hospital as an emergency Thursday last week, but thankfully everything went well, and we took her home again this Friday. Now she's even bit better than she was before she went in, and hopefully things will start looking better from now on...

Gadgets!  Show us your favorite stitching gadgets! Actually, I don't use any fance gadgets...I think. I have a weird thing about frames/snaps/hoops, though. I use all different kinds, but only ever one for a project - once I have settled on one, I will stick to it, and I'm really not sure what makes me chose one over the other for a project :D Sometimes I will even stitch in hand, although it certainly is not my favourite way to work.

As for my 18 in '18 list - I have only worked on five on them this month, and since I have six that require monthly/daily progress, that means I've fallen further behind on the one I did not work on. Of the five I did work on, I fell further behind on one as well, did okay on three, and really really good on one. So here we go:

1) Fire and Ember SAL
I finished my monthly page just in time - page 18 was another detailed one, but so worth it. I think next month I will almost finish the Dragon's head, and after that things should move a little quicker again.

2) The Puppeteer
I continues to stitch one length of black every day, finishing page 13 and getting about halfway through the almost-solid-black page 14. Just a few days left for a row finish! Don't his horns look awesome, even in the negative?

3) Snow White
Sadly, I didn't work on her at all, so I only mention her to say that I am now about 9 weeks behind my plan...and that getting her back up to date (or at least closer to it) will be one of my main foci in March!

4) 99
This is were I did really good, and also were part two of the question of the month comes in: How did you do with Olympic Stitching, and what goals did you achieve? My goal was to stitch on this every day, and I did even better, working on this piece for every day since the last WIPocalypse checkin. Each day I either stitched one bottle or a section of the shelf, for a total of 48 for bottles on February 28th - that's a plus of 26 bottles since my last checkin, finishing a page on the way! I'll work on this a bit more to finish the last three bottles on the current page (which will also get my past the halfway point), then I'll put it away for just a bit, aiming for the next page finish in April.

16) Ornaments of the Month

 I stitched the back for the February Amathyst ornament, but have yet to finish-finish it.

17) Disney Princess Fobs
 I started the Pocahontas fob/biscornu for February, but didn't get very far. I hope to finish it up in March, as well as the new one. On a very happy side note, this is the first and so far only project I started this year and did not finish yet!

So that's it for now. February was very stressful at times, but I also managed to carve out quite a bit of stitching time. March will be more busy in other parts of my live (work and a mini vacation), but I hope to be less stressed and still make some nice progress on a few projects...we will see!