Zodiac SAL - Aries

Bussiness aus usual - am am busy as usual - so I just sneak in here on the very last day of the month to present you my Zodiac SAL update. Everything else should follow and be caught up shortly, I do promise!

This month's sign is Aries, which kind of make this an easy month for me as I am an Aries myself and therefore, everything I stitch could be shoehorned in here! Nevertheless, I did still stitch the backside for the April Diamond ornament, it's just the finish-finishing I keep not getting around to.

The princess for the month (even though I didn't get to stitch her fob yet, yet again...) is Belle, which pleases me greatly - she's one of my favourite Disney princesses, and I don't mind being compared to her at all ;) I think it suits her quite well, too - she's quite headstrong and stubborn and certainly an original!

April Gifted Gorgeousness

I'm only a week later than the checkin date and still weeeell within the timeframge to sign up - yay me! I know I am notoriously late for stuff at the moment, but I think overall, I've done good this month. Still, I don't have a lot to report on the Gifted Gorgeousness front. It was my birthday in March, and I got some stuff for that - my best friend gave me this gorgeous yarn bowl, and a friend from work a knitting kit for a little fluffy dog:

For my own work, I have some exciting news that I can somehow shoehorn into GG - well, not that exciting on the grand scheme of things, but exciting for me! I got to do my first model stitching and crochet, and since I technically got those patterns for free, I am including it here.
One was a little stitch for my friend Ashley - she did a pattern with five little parts and asked each of our group to stitch and colour check one of them. She hasn't released the patterns yet, so I'm not going to share here, but it was a lot of fun!

The other one was a girl my best friend met when she was selling her art prints at the Leipzig book fair - she was selling amigurumi and they got talking and my friend mentioned that I do crochet as well, and then I was asked if I was interested in model crocheting and transcribing her hand written patterns. For now, she gave me a pattern she had already cleaned, probably to see if I can actually follow her instrictions - and so I made this adorable little sea horse:

I'm not sure yet if anything else will come of it, but it sure was fun!

The great "Everything else" update...and a favour to ask

Looking at my post list, I realized it's been a while since I posted anything that hasn't been a SAL checkin or bloghop. But there actually has been some stuff going on that does not fit with any of these, so I think it is high time I got up-to-date with everything!

First, since I was on two work trips in March, of course I had to bring some knitting. I picked up my Smooth Berry Sailor that I started...sometime last year I think, but never got much work done on. The two trips saw quite a bit of progress - knitting in rounds was a bit fiddly at first, but got easier once I had a bit more done. I am actually more than half way in now - I think I have about 15g of yarn to go before starting on the border pattern.

Over the long Easter weekend (we get both Good Friday and Easter Monday off), my friend Magical held a Mystery SAL, releasing a new part of the pattern every four hours. She did this before an New Years Eve, and I didn't get to participate then (but I have the patterns saved and hope to get to them soon-ish), but it looked like a lot of fun and I was really hoping to be a part of it this time! Of course I was a little late - I only picked out my colours the morning before the start and did not do any of the given 'pre stitches' in advance - but thanks to the day off, I quickly caught up and finished on Sunday. After that, she also released a pattern for the back, for people you want to finish as a biscornu or two sided ornament, and I stitched that up last weekend. It was a lot of fun and I will try to be part of the next SAL, too. In case you are interested, you can join the group on facebook or get the pattern releases on Magical's blog.

Also on the Easter weekend, I finally got around to frame have Felix frame my Halloween cat! I had the frame sitting around for months, but now it's finally all done and ready to go up on the wall. I just love how this turned out!

Last weekend, we visited Felix' parents, and spent a glorious Saturday out on the balcony in the sun. What I had PLANNED to do was getting a good chunk done of page 20 on Fire and Ember, but as they say, the best laid plans...this one felt through when I realized that I had brought everything to work on the project but the threads. I even had the backup threads (of the colours that need more than one skein), but not my working threads. Oh well, good think I trend to overpack and brought a few different things to work on as well - so, on top of stitching most of the backside of the Spring Mystery, I also worked on Sophie Sheep from Mill Hill. I actually finished all of the cross stitching, so Miss Sophie is now ready for her beads, which will hopefully be added soon.

Lastly, I also finished the Pocahontas biscornu - I stitched up a backside with eight of the little green flowers and finished it off with a wooden button. I am getting better at this!

Soo, lastly, I have a favour to ask you. I'm a bit nervous to just go out and ask for this, but over the years I have seen how amazingly caring and generous the online crafting community is, so I thought I would just give it a try.
As some of you already know, Felix and I are getting married this year - October 6th, to be exact, my grandparents' wedding date. A lot of our friends and family will be there, but I am a little sad that most of my friends I met over the internet - friends all around the world, including many of you - wan't be able to be there. So I wanted to ask you if maybe some of you would like to send us something - something small, hand made, that we can put on the tables at the reception, so I can have you all there in thought and you can all be a part of the celebration? It could be anything - a biscornu, small flatfold, crochet flowers, or whatever else you want to make, and it would mean a lot to me if some of you considered doing that.

The colour scheme of the decoration will be white/cream with greens, and maybe some autumn colours (orange, yellow, brown) for accents, but I don't mind if you send me something in other colours, either. If you want to participate and need our address, please send me an email, and if maybe some of you send their things together to save on postage, please make sure to include everyone's addresses so we can send out thank you-cards after the wedding!

March WIPocalypse

So, March is over - after February seemd to be endless, March went by in a blink, and I just wasn't ready with my monthly goals at the official checkin date, but after a blissfully long Easter weekend I hae a few things to show. Actually, I have a lot of things to show, but let's start with the ones relevant for WIPocalypse!

First, for the question of the month: What newer designers and product creators (fabric or floss dyeing, etc) out there have you discovered and recommend?
Let me use this opportunity for a bit of a shoutout to my friends Ashley and Magical. Ashley aka PinkyThePink has been doing Custom Patterns and patterns from several smaller artists for a while, but since she started doing Hannah Alexanders Mucha-Style Disney princess redesigns, she's really been outsoing herself. She even started doing a few real Mucha's with permission of the Mucha Foundation! I'm stitching her Mucha style Snow White at the moment.
Magical is not really a new designer, she's done quilt designs before and has been doing her own patterns for years. But just a few years ago she started doing a ton of freebies. She's releasing one every Friday, plus the NFSAL on dA and she's running a big weekly SAL this year as well. I have stitched several of her patterns, including the ornaments of the month and some of her Disney princess inspired fobs. Most of them are small and so much fun!

So, for WIPocalypse I am working through my list of 18 in '18. Some of them are coming along well, others...not so much, but overall, I am content. Here is my progress for the month:

1) Fire and Ember SAL

Fire and Ember got his monthly page and finally has a whole muzzle. This page was really really fun and stitched up quickly too!

2) The Puppeteer



I'm stitching one length of black a day on The Puppeteer - in March I fell back by a few days because of all the not-at-home time, but I'm almost caught up. And I had a row finish!

3) Snow White

Snow too is supposed to get one length a day, but I'm quite a bit behind on her. At least I managed the equivalent of 34 days in March, so I didn't fall behind any further - finishing one shade of yellow in her skirt and one of beige in her bodice.

4) 99

I'm aiming for one page finish a month - since I did almost two page in February, I had my finish early in the month and haven't touched it since, but now that it is April, I will get back to my beloved bottles.

10) Arke

Arke was on my list to finish this year, with only a few rows missing, and when I finally picket it up it was a very quick finish too. I really love the colours and I've been wearing this a lot in the cold weather those past few weeks.

16) Ornaments of the Month

I wanted to finish-finish one of these every month. This month, I did good on stitching the back, but not on the finish finishing. But I did stitch one of the additional December ornaments that I had not stitched yet, so together with February, I have three ornaments that need finishing.

17) Disney Princess Fobs

I'm also very much behind on the one-a-month with these...but I did work on Pocahontas and finished the front! I'm adding a much simplet back now and maybe then I can stitch one of the others I'm behind on.