How many pieces can you finish before you die?

I think anyone with a craft obsession has a hard time not buying "more stuff" for that craft. The thrill of looking at new kits, the possibilities, the excitement when you finish a piece, all keep feeding that desire for more. I don't know if I'm there yet, but I sometimes wonder if all the kits and charts I've accumulated will exceed my life expectancy! With this in mind, here's a few new charts I just recently purchased.

I've added to my Charley Harper kits (notice I included my giraffe chart). I buy these when I find them since they are hard to come by.


I don't have any Halloween or fall pieces, so I found a couple that I liked. Neither one should take very long to make (it's just finding the time between all the other charts that are in progress).



And here are some Christmas charts. It's unbelieveable that I have never completed a Christmas piece either. I'm hoping to finish one of these by this Christmas.

Another start...The Red Thread

I've been seeing this piece in quite a few cross stitch blogs and I've found a Stitch-A-Long (SAL) group that's doing it as well. It's quite charming and so I thought I'd give it a go. It's stitch on linen (which is quite different from aida cloth) so it gives it a nicer feel and sharper look. It's a series of 12 pictures (one for every month) that are tied together by a red thread that weaves through all of them and the quote at the bottom says,

"An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break." - Chinese Proverb

The Red Thread series is a Bent Creek design.


And the back.

And here's a picture of the rest of the charts that make up this piece.


I'll keep looking, but I can't find a good picture of the entire piece (you can stitch them individually as shown, or as one continuous piece). If I find one, I'll post it.

UPDATE - I found a picture...yeah!

A quick stitch

When you buy UK craft magazines, they almost always have a free gift included. The cross stitch magazines usually have a free cross stitch kit. Here's a sample of the kits I have received. When I want to do a quick stitch, I pull one of them out and do it.

This doesn't even include other gifts like scissor holders, thread cutters, thread holders, diaries, calendars, magnifiers, etc. It's always fun to see what's included. If you look closely, you will see that I have numbered the kits. They correspond to the magazine they came with because the chart you need is in that issue.

Here's one of the kits I did after finishing Crew's sampler.

It's a little card, about 3" x 3". No picture of the back of this one. The one I took was way too blurry to actually save.

I've started another large project (which I'll talk about in another post) and to give myself a break from it, I opened another one of the free kits to work on.

And here's the back.

Sandy's birthday, continued

Well, I finally put together Sandy's present for her birthday on the 15th. She's such a great woman that I not only like, I also admire her strength and spirit. So, this is what's inside.

The cross stitch'd S is sitting on top. (I forgot to take a picture of the back and I'm too lazy right now to do it.) Then, underneath the tissue paper is...

...the rest of her presents. There's a Re-ment box, a miniature hutch to display the re-ment, a couple of Envirosaxs, a paperweight with crystals rolling around inside (I put this together myself. I plan on doing some more and now know I need to add more crystals!), a spool of red/white baker's twine, a little Winnie-the-Pooh charm in the blue capsule and a couple of prizes from Kinder eggs in the yellow and orange capsules. Her main presents are the pink case (explained below) and a nest egg necklace with a hot pink egg that's inside the button box (both of which I got on etsy). Also, underneath all of this is some butterfly transfers (also from etsy) and a miniature princess castle that when you put it in water, it grows.

This is a watchmaker's kit. It's what they use to hold all their findings for watch repairs. Sandy makes necklaces and braclets and I thought this would be a cute case to store some of her stuff. I covered the lid and the insides with some really pretty scrapbook paper. I got this idea from either Country Living or Country Home magazines (I can't find the reference).

And here's how I finished off the box that her presents are in. I just put some cute cocktail umbrellas thru the box lid.

It makes a great 3-d effect on the box.

And here's what it looks like from the inside. I clipped the umbrella stands down to about 2". I wouldn't recommend this for a kid's present.

I didn't win a ribbon...

We went to the fair yesterday to see if I'd won anything. Nope, not this year. The lighthouses were grouped with everything that had a lighthouse theme, so I don't know if the judging was based on that general category, or by needlework. I always thought it was the needlework until I saw it displayed with this group. Oh well, I'll try again next year. I told my husband that I should have gone with my initial response (the giraffes) and not what everyone in the family voted for! It's still fun to enter but it's more fun to win a ribbon!

Here's part of the grouping it was with. Hardly anyone had ribbons in this group so that's what makes me believe it was based on just the category of "lighthouses."

WIP - Multiplication Sampler

This is a sampler from the Historical Sampler Company. It's quite large, 54 cm x 45 cm. For the longest time I could not find this pattern in the U.S. so I drew up a pattern on my own. Everything was going well until I realized I did not calculate my fabric correctly (after 30 years, this is the first time this has ever happened.). I blame it on karma. I was trying to duplicate something that I should have just bit the bullet and paid for it in the first place (even though I could only find it at U.K. online stores). I was probably 3/4's of the way through when I realized my mistake. I have no picture of it because I couldn't bear to look at it. It was trashed. I then did the right thing, and just over a year ago I purchased the entire kit. I still could only find it in the U.K., but I spent the money (because I wanted it so bad!). Well, here's how far I've gotten in this past year just because I've had to stop and do other projects. I want to have it finished by next summer because I'd like to enter it in our local county fair next year.

And here's the back.

WIP - Paddington Bear

Here's another WIP that I've pulled out of the closet to document. By documenting all these pieces, I'm hoping it will motivate me to finish them. Again, I'm left with only backstitching to finish. I don't know why I pick pieces that have so much backstitching!

This is a series that places Paddington Bear in different cities (London, Sidney, NY, etc.). Of course, being an anglophile, I chose London.

Here's a close up on the front (it's blurry, I'm trying to get better at taking photos!).




And here's the back.