Oops!

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Whoops! I forgot to add the “bling” to Santa’s cap! The design called for a single strand of green floss to make a pom pom, but I wanted something more 3-dimensional. At first I thought about doing a green pom pom in turkey work, but then I found that I had these teeny little jingle bells I picked up at Hobby Lobby last Christmas, “just in case”. I think it looks adorable!

XXX
Carrie


Stripey Santa is Done!

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My stripey Santa from a Durene Jones design is done! My first thought was to use these wooden snowflake buttons in place of the smaller white stitched snowflakes, but they were much too large. So I will work them into the finishing somehow when I turn this into a pillow or flat fold.

I decided not to stitch the bottom row of white that Santa is stitching on, because the white really doesn’t show up well on this Vintage Blue Whisper fabric from Zweigart. Instead I may use a piece of lace stitched onto the fabric, or come up with some other way to show him off.

XXX
Carrie



Stripey Santa

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I’ve started this new freebie from Durene Jones called Stripey Santa, but I’m not liking the chosen shades of red. It seems like they are too similar instead of creating a distinct “striped” look. I think I am going to leave the lighter color since I already have so much of that done, and rip out the darker and try to find a color in my stash that is even darker yet. Stay tuned!

XXX
Carrie


Forest Wolf

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I started this new project by Durene Jones of a forest scene that is designed to look like a wolf’s profile. It will fit in perfectly to the area where I live! I am enjoying this project because it is whole stitches only with no fractionals or backstitch and it does not contain many colors. There are large areas of one color and the counting is very easy due to my magnetic board chart holder with magnetic rulers that keep my place line by line. I need projects like this when I am in a lot of pain and can’t concentrate well. This one will probably take a long time to finish, as the last couple of weeks my back pain has been acting up something fierce and I have been spending most of my days laying flat on the hard floor to help relieve it. For every 15 minutes spend sitting I am finding I need a good 45 minutes of laying. Now if only I could figure out a way to stitch while laying down! But it is hard enough even being able to watch TV that way, so I think stitching will have to be a rare treat for the time being.

It took about 10 days to get from the top photo to the bottom one.

After

My brain fog is bad and I can’t recall which magazine I got this out of, although I am almost certain it is one of the British ones. I will have to look it up and post once I figure it out.

XXX
Carrie



A New Pattern

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I’m so excited about this new chart I just purchased from Durene Jones’ Etsy store. Etsy had given me a coupon for $5.00 off my next purchase, because it had been a while since I had shopped there. I knew the coupon was a gimmick; the odds of finding something for exactly $5.00 are pretty slim, so it is a way for them to get you to come back and spend some money. Well, I am a huge fan of Durene’s and decided to peruse her store. Many of the patterns in her shop I already own, because I subscribe to the British magazines and they are featured there first. But when I saw this pattern I knew I had to stitch it, and it was not a pattern that had been released elsewhere before. The pattern cost $5.61 and so with my $5 discount code I got a real bargain! I am not going to start on this right away; I have decided in the new year to focus on some smalls to decorate my home during holidays throughout the year.

This will probably be a summertime pattern, especially since it features a lot of white on a khaki background, just like her gingerbread houses did.

I think the two projects will look wonderful by each other!

You can purchase the Merry Christmas chart through Durene’s Etsy shop here, and the gingerbread houses chart here.

XXX
Carrie


Home Sweet Home

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The most recent issue of World of Cross Stitching to land in my mailbox came with this adorable free cover kit that included its own plastic hoop! The hoop is used both during stitching and for displaying the finished piece. I don’t stitch too many of the cover kits from this magazine because I always have other things on the go, but this one really jumped out at me. I’m not surprised, since it was designed by Durene Jones. I just love her designs!

After the summer I have been having, I told my husband I needed to get away and relax, even if just for a short time. So we headed up to our cabin and I spent two days doing pretty much nothing. There is no electricity or running water, but there is plenty of peace and quiet and it’s possible to sit out in the sun – something I don’t dare try to do at home because the bugs are so bad. We do have solar panels at the cabin, and I have a daylight lamp that allows me to cross stitch inside. I got a bit of work done on this project, although my hands were paying dearly after about 30 minutes of stitching. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that when I see my doctor in October he will either let me go back on my arthritis medication, or he will have an alternative to try. My liver enzymes are trending down now, but at the moment it’s just too risky to go back on methotrexate. It has now been 6 weeks since I have taken it, and the past week or so my hand pain has been in full force, even when not doing anything.

I had opened this kit and sorted the threads before we left home, and it’s a good thing I did… there was no needle in the kit! If I had just taken the kit and magazine with me without looking at it first, I would not have known this and would not have been able to work on it. I then read something in another magazine that mentioned that they are doing away with the needles in these kits because so many stitchers have a large collection of them already, and by omitting the needle they can save money to make the gifts more substantial. They definitely did that with this kit, as they have never given out embroidery hoops that I can recall, at least not since I started subscribing in 2012.

So, lesson learned… from now on I will open any cover kit I get before I attempt to stitch it, to be sure I have everything I need!

XXX
Carrie


Finished at Last!

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Hot off the scroll frame! I am so happy to be done with this project at last, and before October! That gives me a good two months to track down the correct kind of pom pom trim and to put the entire thing together.

This project was featured in Cross Stitch Gold magazine, issue 141 (British numbering system, or issue 63 in the US). It was designed by Durene Jones.

XXX
Carrie