Hope all my stitchy friends are safe and sound from the winter storms and the wildfires. Crazy winter we are having. Everyone is safe and sound here in San Jose, California. Today feels like a spring day with the temperature at 67F. I am enjoying it while I can.
It’s been a great stitchy week and I am looking forward to sharing my progress with you. Still need to kit up my planned starts but otherwise, everything is great.
Starts & Finishes
I had plans to have a couple of starts this week, but I have been so fascinated with finishing Wintertime, that I would spend an hour working on that instead of pulling threads and prepping fabric. LOL! 😝 BUT I do have two finishes to share.
2024 SJ Temperature Library by Kristi’s Corner
It was exciting to finish my second year long temperature stitch. This one especially is close to my heart. I love to read and it really speaks to me. I finally looked up the cloth I stitched this on. I bought from JoAnn’s the Charles Craft 15×18 Sand 14 ct aida. Technically it is too small but I just loved this varigaeted mottel look so much that I used it anyway. Just absolutely love it!
Stitch Quarterly: Wintertime by It’s Sew Emma
January 2nd I did a Winter stitch day and this was one of the projects. After finishing the library, this one just kept calling me and I ended up working on it for an hour every day this week until it was finally finished last night. Who can resist a penguin 🐧, fox 🦊, and a polar bear 🐻❄️. This has been one of my favorite from the Stitch Quarterly series. Fall is in the Air with the fox 🦊 was my next favorite.
This was stitched on 14 ct mint opalscent aida with called for DMC except for the green in the trees which was Classic Colorworks. This was a WIPGO 2024 start. I put on the bingo card another Stitch Quarterly start for this year as well.
WIP Updates
While I did spend an hour every night working on Wintertime, I still had plenty of time to work on my other WIPs. Let’s take a look.
WIPGO Project: Fruit of Plenty by Modern Folk Embroidery
My WIPGO goal for this project is 2500 stitches during January. I started on page 7 of 9 this week and was able to get over 600 stitches done! I am totally stoked about how far I got. I even went ahead and put all the loose threads onto bobbins so I would quit getting tangled in them. Haven’t decided if I like this yet or not. I can’t wait to work on it again this week!
Winter Camper by Bobbie G Designs
This is one of my least favorite stitches. Mostly because it was one of my first projects and I screwed up early on and now I am constantly having to “fix” things as I go. I know when I finally finished it I will be happy #sigh but until then, I dread working on this one.
Shabby Winter Calendar by Cuore e Batticuore
This is another throwback to 2020. While it wasn’t one of my first, it was close. I have slowly been figuring this one out. It was one of my first that I saw on Instagram and then hunted down the pattern because I fell in love with the pattern. I am considering making this a year long stitch this year with doing one day per month. The more I think about it; the more I like the idea … a lot! I started Day 10 this week after working on the border.
I am stitching on 16 ct aida Whimsey by Picture This Plus with the called for DMC.
August Stackables by It’s Sew Emma
I didn’t have much one night, so I pulled out a summer WIP to work on instead. I finished up the honeycomb and started on the bucket.
Seaside Tiny Town by Heart in Hand
I rounded out this week by working on this summer town in hopes of finishing it so I can start the winter town Frosty Tiny Town. The designer requested ideas for tiny towns and both the seaside and frosty tiny towns were mine. So of course I want to hurry and finish Seaside so I can start Frosty.
I just adore the crabs in this town along with the birds included. Take a look at this Pelican with his catch!
I didn’t think I was that close to finishing my beach town. After last night I am not going to be able to put this one away until I finish. I need to finish the boat house and then one more building. So exciting to be so close. Can’t wait to show the finished piece next week.
Afterthoughts
I have a new digital planner and I haven’t figured out my flow working with it yet. The last planner was portrait and this one is landscape. While the days are bigger to work with, I no longer have all my cross stitch goals and planning calendar on one page which has turned out to be more inconvient than I thought it would be. Go figure.
Add to the fact that WINTER ❄️ WIPs are my biggest category of unfinished projects, I am feeling a bit out of control. Lol 😆 Having a winter finish this week helped with feeling more in control so I am taking a deep breath before moving forward.
Okay. I am good now. This is what I am thinking I will be working on this week:
- Kitting Mr. January sooner than later so I can start this week. This is a WIPGO project and I hope to stitch 2000 stitches this month but will be stitching on linen and I am a bit slower with that. But I absolutely love the fabric.
- Kitting 2025 Moon Phases. I am doing this project in Celsius so have begun tracking the temps. This will be a min/max project and there is a lot of border to be done before I can start on January. I printed out the 36 temperature color list (which I think I bought already) as well as the border colors. Now I just got to put it together and get started.
- Work on WIPGO project Fruit of Plenty
- Work on Crescent City Velarius full coverage project
- Work on Snow Village
- Work on Winter Basket #3 project
- Planning to work on Seaside Tiny Town for an hour each night until finished
- After I finish Seaside, I will focus on Winter Basket until finished an hour each night.
- Kitting up Square Dance series and get the needed thread purchased
- Kitting up Frosty Tiny Town in anticipation of finishing Seaside Tiny Town
Whew! There is a lot of kitting to be done. For months, I have been good about doing this ahead of time. With the holidays, it didn’t happen this time. I had January Square Dance and Pop of Winter to start for this month. I am going to hold those starts in reserve to see how the month goes. Maybe they will be starts on the last day of January. I don’t have a lot of Valentine stitches planned for February but have a few more that I didn’t even put on my list for this month. LOL! Here I am looking at February when I haven’t even figured out January. 🐿️
I am good. Hope all of you have had a good start to 2025. Have a great weekend!
Peggy Stockwell in San Jose, California