Stitching A-Long...

This week I began a new project that should see me through the rest of the calendar year.  Linen & Threads hosts an annual Mystery Sampler Stitch-A-Long, and while I think it might have been sometime in March when I first became aware that they hosted these annual SALs,  I just recently decided to jump in on the one for this year. 

It was about mid-April when I made that decision, and with COVID-19 affecting things, it took over 3 weeks for materials to arrive.  Once fabric and floss arrived early this week, I pretty quickly sat myself down and started on it.  And this weekend, four month's behind schedule, I finished January's part of the pattern:

When completed, the whole design will measure just under 10 inches square.  
Somewhere around half the size of the original that is stitched 2 over 2.

I'm stitching this with DMC floss (815 colorway) 1 over 1, on 25-ct Lugana in Antique White.  It's a bit of a stretch for these eyes of mine, but with a bright light I'm able to do it!  I'm also finding that a sharp needle is easier to use with this fabric than a less sharp petite needle I'd been using and growing very fond of on other recent projects.  When I cross stitched in the 80's I, personally didn't know about any other cross stitch fabric than Aida, and had no clue that there were a variety of needles to stitch with.  Always something new to learn!

I'm hoping ,with some intense periods of stitching for a few weeks, I can get caught up and maybe by early-mid June I'll be on track to be ready and waiting for each new reveal over the last six months of 2020.  I'm thinking of this as something of a commemorative piece to represent our year of COVID, so if this takes me until there's a vaccine to finish it (and it could), I guess that will be fitting, too.

And lastly, I completely forgot last week that I had finished another small Christmas stitch:

This will go into my collection of smalls that will one day be sewn into little pillows.  That's my thought at the moment, anyway...