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 :)

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?

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!

Zodiac SAL - Cancer

Yes, yes, I am VERY last minute again, but mostly, I am proud that I have sat down today to finish this and with it my last goal for the month - I think I'm getting better with deadlines and obligations and estimating how much I can actually get done!

Here's July's ornament - unfinished, as per usual:

 I did catch up on finishing a little with the March ornament, so there's that:

I usually do my finish-finishing on the weekends, and those have been very busy lately. But surely I can find time for one or two more in August..? We'll see!

July IHSW

I know I've been awefully quiet - live has been busy, and will continue to be so for at least another month, so blogging hasn't been that high up on my list recently. Stitching has, because I really need to to counterweight all the business! Last week we celebrated IHSW again, and thanks to a really 'convenient' summer cold, I actually managed to get quite some stitching in, but first, I want to start with something I actually finished before IHSW (and, you know, wanted to make a seperate post about, but life happened, and stuff).

So before I get into my IHSW stitching, I have one finish to share that happened the week before (I wanted to make a seperate post for that...but again, blogging...not very high on the list for now). Remember that little Corgi I showed in my last update? He's all finished now, and so cute! He's my first contribution to a charity stitching project, so he's on his way to be made into a quilt for a little boy, but it was seriously hard to part with him.

When IHSW came around, I got to start it off with a big celebratory happy dance - a finish on Ink Circle's 99! I was so happy to get those last few bottles out, and I'm very pleased with the result. It's awaiting framing now, which should happen within the next couple of days.

And then, even so I really don't need a new start, I just couldn't help myself - I celebrated by getting a little all-beads Mill Hill kit out that had been in my stash for over a year now, and ever since I got it, I couldn't wait to start it! It's Flower Trellis, a kit containing two perforated paper ornaments done and finished with tons of beads. All the beads are attached with half crosses and use the same thread colour, so it stitched up pretty quickly. I've already finished 1/3 of the first ornament, but put it away again for now - this will be a little treat for myself for whenever I need it!

Apart from that little excursion, I used IHSW to focus on Fire and Ember - UnconventionalXStitch was hosting a Stitchathon event from the 20th to the 30th, so I was aiming for a page finish during that time frame (spoiler alert: I made it!). On IHSW, I got the first two colours in, which already amounted for a fair bit of progress:

July Gifted Gorgeousness

And as promised, it's Gifted Gorgeousness time, the wonderful SAL held by our wonderful hostess Jo! This SAL is super easy for me at the moment, as I seem to work on hardly anything that is NOT a gift. Also, I'm not going to annoy you with a hundred pictures from the longest Day SAL yet again, but only show what I've worked on since then :)

As you might have expected, I've been working on 99...I didn't quite make it to a full finish yet, but I only have a little over four bottles left to go, so I should finally get there this week!

I've also pulled out an older WIP, this fluffy cat a friend asked me to knit for her. I recently realised that I hadn't worked on it in over a year, so I decided to settle down and really get her done now. I already finished the head and body and most of her face - I have two ears left to knit, an arm to attach, and the second arm, two legs, and tail left to knit, but it's going well.

Then I had a small new start - a little freebie by Maria Brovko and my contribution to a charity quilt project. I have until mid August to complete this, but the sooner the better :) The little crogy is almost ready for back stitching now.

And last but not least, I've been working a little bit on The Mermaid and added a bit of the next blue. This really needs a lot of more attention...and I hope she will get just that once 99 is done.

Carla's and Leo's Halloween SAL 2018

I know, I know, I've been bad at blogging (but not at stitching this month), and I will be back later today or tomorrow with my Gifted Gorgeousness checkin, but first, I want to tell you about Carla's and mine yearly Halloween SAL that kicks off one month from now - I'm super excited and can't wait to get started, but there is still plenty of time for you to join in!

This is our 4ths year, and after patterns from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery, Cloudsfactory and Satsuma Street in the last three years, we have something really special for you this time. Firstly, we have two artists and a total of seven patterns avaiable:

First, there is Pippa from LuckyStarStitches on Etsy. She has a six Halloween patterns currently avaiable, and they are all really small and fun!

   

   

    

And theeeen my dear friend Ashley aka PinkyThePink joined forces with some of her amazing artists to create our very own pattern for the SAL! We'd been throwing around ideas for a while and there was some seriously creative juices flowing, and I am super pleased with the end result now:

 

So if you want to join us in stitching one or more of these patterns for Halloween this year, please do! We do have a facebook group as well as posting progress on blogs and/or dA, and anyone can join. Our kickoff day is August 15th and while we try to finish by Halloween, we are more than happy to see progress pictures after that as well - finishing up all the stitching has been more of a year long effort for some of us!