Friday 31 August 2018

August WIPocalypse

One SAL is still missing to make my monthly duties complete, and that's the super awesome WIPocalypse :D I have to tell you, as fun as traveling around and meeting friends was, it feels good to be home and get stuff done again.

So to start this off, the question of the month is Which is more satisfying to you and why – the process of stitching a piece, or the finish? 
This one is kind of heart...I think I enjoy every part of the progress. I enjoy the planning, that feeling of putting the first stitches into a blank fabric, and I really love the feeling of getting something done...but you can't do something as time consuming as stitching, putting dozens, sometimes hundreds of hours into a project, if you're only after the finish. Sometimes I don't enjoy the last 5-10% of a project as much, since around that point I start to yearn for a finish and new start, but in general, I enjoy all of it almost equally - if anything, it depends on the project, and whether I'm stitching it just for the fun of it or with a specific goal/deadline in mind.


1) Fire and Ember SAL





I finished page 24, so only three more pages left to go! I think this one will need a good wash and iron before framing...you can really see some marks from the frame now, and the fabric isn't that clean anymore either after two years of constant handling.

2) The Puppeteer



Row finish, woo! Three rows/21 pages of black done on this lovely guy. With all my traveling, I'm a fair bit behind on my daily stitching on this one, but that was to be expected. I should be caught up again soon.

5) The Mermaid



Same picture as for the Gifted Gorgeousness since I didn't get to touch it for the second half of the month...but that should change soon. I didn't quite reach my goal - no Marlitt has been added to the border - but my goal for September is to finish that and then stitch the small rock to the left.

8) Viajante

I actually added a few rows to this, even since my start-of-August update, but it's kind of boring to show it again and again since it just doesn't look a lot different and I only get frustrated because the colours won't photograph properly! But I'm on it and hope to make some more progress during fall.

16) Ornaments of the Month





I just showed you this, but here it is again - the August ornament. One more month (and a few left out ornaments) left to go, and with more free weekends, I hope there will be some more finish-finishing again soon, as well.

August was a slower month, but I knew that would happen, and I'm still content with my progress...still, I'm looking forward to cooler days and lots of lengthy crafty sessions - as much as the wedding preperations will let me ;)


Zodiac SAL - Leo

So, as per usual on the last day of the month, I give you the penultimate Zodiac SAL! Next month (I think as soon as tomorrow?) Jo will post her last entry for the SAL and hopefully disclose what she's been planning next. I can't wait! For me, stitching of the ornaments won't be finished, however, since I still have a bit of finish-finishing to do, and also a few ornaments left to stitch from months that had more than one. Oh well.

Anyway, here's August's ornament - Peridot. I really like these greens and I hope I'll find some beads that go nicely with it!


Thursday 30 August 2018

August Gifted Gorgeousness

 I am terribly behind with everything because I was traveling a lot (that first weekend outdoors was followed by my bachelorette party in Berlin, a weekend in Cologne with Felix, followed by a week at the GamesCom and a weekend at Felix' parents to celebrate Felix' 30th and FIL's 60th birthday), but I did get a little bit of stitching done and I'm going to tell you about it - one thing after another.

First, we have Gifted Gorgeousness, and I had a few gift finishes and some more progress before that! Felix helped my frame 99, which was our gift for his father's 60th birthday, and we gave it to him last weekend:  


Next, we have Peanut the Cat, who was finally fully assembled and ready for me to take him to my bachelorette party where he was supposed to be united with his new mum - but sadly, she caught some stomach bug before that, and so he had to come back home with me for now.


That trip to Berlin also saw the creation of a new pair of crocodile stitch crochet wrist warmers - one was made on the train ride there, one on the train ride back - that will be send to my friend Jody in Australia soon. I'm making a second pair out of the same ball of yarn and if I have enough left over, I'll try and add a fancy edge around to upper edge too.



Last but not least, I continued working on The Mermaid and finished all of the sky by the GG date. I haven't touched her since (because, you know, TWs aren't the best companions for travel stitching), but I'm itching to get back to her :)


Wednesday 8 August 2018

Outdoor Crafting Weekend

Last weekend, Felix, his best friend and I held our yearly summer party - three days spent outside, sleeping in tents or cars or under the sky, living mostly off solar power, grilled meat, and iced tea, with all kinds of friends and family stopping buy for a longer or shorter amount of time. It was a lot of fun, but I was sooo beat afterwards!

It also gave me a nice excuse to sit and craft while talking, so I made some pretty good progress on a couple pieces!

I finished all the parts for Peanut, the fluffy cat. I'm working on putting him together this week.






I started the next page of Fire and Ember, and actually finished the first two colours:


And I picked up some long neglected knitting: Viajante got about 20 more rows in.


Quite a good start for a busy month, eh?

Thursday 2 August 2018

July WIPocalypse

Late, but not too late, I've come tp bring you my July WIPocalypse update.  It's been so hot here for the last couple of days (or has it been weeks already?) that sometimes I feel like melting . really too hot to do all the things I'm doing, but thankfully, stitching is still fun!

The question of the month is Half-year recap: How are you doing with your goals so far this year? I've already talked about this quite a bit last month, after I had done the Longest Day SAL. The good new is that I touched all my 18 in '18 WIPs except for three - I haven't started on Endangered Young 'Uns, but maybe I'll get to that later this year, Viajante is scheduled for some love this month (although I highly doubt it will be done by winter!) and I still need to go looking for some of the missing parts of BB8. The Baby Blanket I worked on a little bit earlier this year, but don't think it was anough to warrant new pictures.

Now for not just touching projects, but my actual goals... so far, I only reached 2 (finished 99 and Arke) and I've been doing fairly well keeping up with three more (Fire and Ember, The Puppeteer and the Birthstone Ornaments). Snow White and the Princess Fobs have sadly fallen by the wayside with very slim chances of getting back on track. The other eleven still have chances to reach their respective goals - not all of them, but certainly two or three, depending on what I decide to focus on, I think. I'll probably try to get a few things done instead of making progress on everything.

Now, what's the progress for this month?


1) Fire and Ember SAL






I finished a page of Fire and Ember during the Stitchathon - just four pages left to go now!

2) The Puppeteer


I'm reasonably caught up with this one...plus/minus a few days at any given time, but that's okay. I'm working towards a row finish here!

4) 99




99 has been finished this month! I really wanted to show it to you framed, and I already have all the supplies to do it (or have Felix do it), but once again, we have been a little too busy. Soon, though!

5) The Mermaid




The Mermaid has become my focus piece after 99 was finished and I've been working on it every single day since then. I ran into some trouble with the border (as in: I realized it uses some rayon thread I hadn't ordered yet...) so I started to work on the sky instead, and I just LOVE it. All those grey-ish blends are so soothing, and it's going much faster and smoother than I thought! Now I ran into a big patch of half stitches, so it's grown even more in the last two days than this picture show. On the left you can also see a start I have made on the Anchor  Marlitt that has since arrived. I hope that for August I can finish the sky and a good bit of the rayon stitching too.

16) Ornaments of the Month





As seen in the Zodiac SAL update, I finished the back for July and finish-finished the March ornament. I think there are just two more months to go now, and then I will have time to catch up on the ornaments I've left out so far!