Little Sheep Virtues...

I hope everyone in the U.S. had a terrific Thanksgiving.  Good times were had here, with family gathering and me experimenting a bit with lasagna and making persimmon pudding for the first time ever.  Recipes for those will come soon, hopefully.

In the last week, a Little Sheep Virtues (by Little House Needleworks) cross stitch project was completed, and I finished it and a companion piece into small pillows.

...and came up with a small display:

Holiday (any holiday) decorating around here is fairly simple, but it makes me happy to find easy ways to display some of my handwork.

Except for the Little Sheep Virtues pillows, I believe all the above patterns came from old Cross Stitch Magazines that came into my possession a few years ago.  Those turned out to be a treasure trove of cross stitching goodness.  Wait a minute... now that I think about it, I believe those "quilt" pattern ornaments may have come from a homemaking magazine - Good Housekeeping or Better Homes and Gardens, perhaps.  I don't know if those magazines exist today, but it's been decades since either (or both?) of those publications printed things like cross stitch patterns and other crafts.  Do any of you in your 60's and older remember making craft projects from those magazines?

I can't believe today begins the countdown to Christmas!  It's only just in the last few days it's finally turned cold here, and that we've finally gotten hard frosts - several days in a row since Thanksgiving.  About a month late for these parts. Or, at least, that's the way I remember it.  But the tree is up and decorated, and I'm committed to being in the Christmas spirit!

  

Cross stitch...

My colorful Dahlia blanket continues to grow and one of these days (or weeks) I look forward to showing it in its finished state. Until then, even though it's growing, a picture of it today would look pretty much like a picture of it a couple of weeks ago, so I'll not bother with progress pictures.

Thinking a little crafting variety might be nice, I went through some embroidery supplies and cross stitch projects recently, and I decided it was time to put some effort into finishing a small stitch I began before moving in 2021 - honestly, I think I started this during the early covid days of 2020:

There is another (finished) companion stitch on the other half of this fabric, so I look forward to soon sewing them both into small pillows. 

While I had my flosses out, it occurred to me that some might be interested in how I store these threads.  My system is nothing novel, but I like it because it's easy to keep neat.

I like to wind DMC floss skeins that I'm using onto cardboard bobbins.  Once finished with a project, the bobbins go into a divided plastic storage box:

I have another (empty) box like this waiting in the wings.  By the looks of the picture above, it appears I'm soon going to need to employ it.

I file the colors by number so they are simple to find.  I know some stitchers don't like using bobbins like this because they create folds in the floss (especially floss wound closer to the bobbin), but I've never found that to be problematic. I find that the floss tends to straighten out while stitching, and it doesn't affect how the floss looks in a stitched project.  And being able to find any color I want at a glance makes this an ideal storage solution for me.

That said, until I actually begin to use a skein of floss, I store it with other unused skeins with their bands on them, in zip lock bags, like this:

Again, I store them according to their numbers.  The flosses stay neat in these bags, and the numbers are always visible.  I don't have to handle the floss until I locate the right color.  Then I just reach my fingers in and retrieve the single skein I need.  All the other skeins stay in place.

And these bags are stored in a small-ish plastic tote:

You can't see the hand-dyed flosses, but I have a few on rings underneath the bagged flosses in this same box.  It's more floss than I need to own, but keeping it all in this one tote makes it feel like a manageable and respectable amount.   

While I had everything out, I also decided to pull flosses for another project that I'll try to work on this winter:

I doubt I'll finish it in time to display it this December, but I'll enjoy stitching on it in the upcoming weeks.

The flosses above are hand-dyed yarns like I mentioned above.  I don't have a large collection of these embroidery flosses, but they are interesting for their subtle variegation.  And fun to use on hand-dyed cross stitching cloth.

And that is a glimpse into my embroidery storage and prep. Hopefully, something will show up finished here soon!

A little finish...

I almost can't believe I started and finished the little cross stitch below since I was last in here.  I just haven't had much stick-to-it-iveness when it comes to crafting lately.  Having another of this Little Sheep Virtues series (Faith) I'm torn between starting it or working on something else.  I am finding that I'm enjoying focusing on one small project at a time these days, but I've been feeling the pull again to get back to my longer-term cross stitch piece.  We'll see come next Sunday, I guess, what I end up doing.

Let's play a little eye-spy game, why don't we...  Can you spot the mistake?  Actually, there are two mistakes, but the first one I made (in the snowflake) I was able to disguise pretty well, but if you see it, kudos to you.  I know where it is and I can't even see it.

The other mistake I didn't see until I had downloaded the pictures of this I had taken.   This was my first time working on linen and boy, was it a bear for me. I ripped out and started over many sections. The mistake that is screaming at me as I look at the picture was something stitched early on when it was harder for me to see when I was "off".  I ripped out and started over many sections and I'm sure this little project took me nearly twice as long as if I was using, say, aida cloth.

So many people talk about how they fell in love with linen once they started stitching on it, but other than its looks, I have grown no real love for it.  Yet.  I have a smoother piece of linen that I'm going to give a go.  Though, somehow, it looks even more challenging to me than this fabric did - even though they're both the same thread count - 30.  The above is just coarser and the spaces between the threads are larger. 

I so wanted to like linen. 

At the moment, I'm feeling no confidence that I'll grow in like with it, but I'm not going to give up yet.