Rose Lights progress

I have been working industriously on Rose Lights for almost two weeks now, and am happy with the progress I've made:

All but one of the threads have been used, and I think they all look really good on the French Country linen.

I have made a small change in the black border to make it more symmetrical, since I realized when I got to the right side that a couple of the "sideways S" shapes had an extra stitch in them (circled in red):

It was the same on all four sides, but the longer I looked at it, the more it bothered me. It would have been more work trying to frog the two extra stitches, so I ended up adding a stitch to the rest and am much happier now.

Last night I spent about four and a half hours at the emergency vet (which is actually on the shorter side for a visit there) with my sweet Callie, who will be 17 this year:

It looks like she has a UTI, but there is also a concern about renal failure. I'll be following up with my usual vet in a couple of days; I'm hoping for the best but trying to prepare myself for bad news. While I waited last night I started a Mill Hill kit, Halloween, as it's always best to keep my hands and mind occupied in those situations:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

A SAL finish--yay!

I am very happy to say that Histoires de Moutons en Hiver is done!

More importantly, the rest of that last alphabet finally showed up in the final part--phew!! I really had so much fun with this design, but it also feels good to have it finished and to move on after having it on the go for two months. As soon as it was done last Wednesday, I took it off the Qsnaps and loaded up the fabric for Chatelaine's Rose Lights; here's my small start at the end of the first day:

And my progress as of last night:

After stitching all that black and off-white (two shades of it) in the border, it felt good to move on to some colors yesterday. I'm really happy with the fabric color so far, as I think it looks good both with the off-white and the black, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest of the colors look on it.

I did get a bit more done on You Were Hatched before I started Rose Lights:

I do want to continue to make progress on this, but right now I'm in the grips of "new start-itis" on Rose Lights and it's hard for me to switch my focus away from that. But if I need a break from that I can work on this one, or maybe I'll make myself take one day each week to work on it--I still have plenty of time to decide (for now!).

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Ending in sight

I am ready for the 14th and final part of Jardin Prive's Histoires de Moutons en Hiver--still hoping that the rest of that last alphabet is included!

This has been a really enjoyable stitch along, perfect for adding all kinds of little buttons (and jingle bells!) and a couple of black sheep, but I'm looking forward to having it finished later this week. Once it's off the Qsnaps, I'll be able to start Chatelaine's Rose Lights.

Once part 13 was done last week, I went back to work on Purrfect Christmas Santa and now he's finished:

The kitty is supposed to have a white tail, but the 18ct perforated paper I used only comes in white (the kit came with 14ct brown), so I gave him an orange tail instead. I recently stocked up on the 18ct paper, because I don't know if the perforated PVC that's replacing the paper is going to be offered in 18ct, though I sure hope it is. Here's a size comparison between two Santas of the same stitch count, one on 14ct and one on 18ct:

Once Santa was done, I started a new stitch along that I just saw last week, which is Tiny Modernist's Poison Garden:

There are six parts, releasing on the 15th of each month; the first part took me three days to stitch, so this should be really easy to keep up with. Here's part 1, before and after back stitching:

I'm using Dark Cobblestone Belfast, which is a great color; I wanted to order some more, but 123Stitch no longer has it on their site, so I don't know if it's been discontinued. I need to do a bit of searching to see if I can find some elsewhere, because it is a really nice, darker neutral color to have on hand.

That took me up until yesterday evening, then I needed something to work on while I watched the Bears lose (😭), so I made a small start on You Were Hatched on black Belfast:

I'm glad I picked a small Wentzler design, because between the confetti, the blends and the back stitching, I'm pretty sure trying to stitch a big one while also trying to get Rose Lights done (or mostly done) wouldn't have been a good idea!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

V, W, X, Y and Z...

...better be filling in the space below the wreath and red house in the Jardin Prive SAL, or I'm going to be feeling very twitchy!

My OCD is already acting up because I stitched a partial alphabet, but my hope is that it will be completed in the next part of the SAL. 🤞🏻 There are only two parts left, which I'm looking forward to seeing, and I'm glad that I was able to catch up fairly quickly after joining late because it has been a really "happy" stitch. This should be finished by next weekend, and while I'll be a bit sad to be done with such a fun design, I'm also looking forward to putting winter stitching behind me and start thinking spring.

I spent this past weekend watching football (Go Bears!! 💙🧡) and working on Purrfect Christmas Santa:

I should be pretty close to finishing this by the time the next SAL part drops, so that'll be another Christmas/winter piece done. 

I thought I wouldn't be stitching Wentzler's "You Were Hatched" after all, as I didn't get an acceptance email for the retreat next October, but then I found out that for some reason the email had been bounced back to the organizer. It's all good now, I've already paid the fee and have added it to my list of things to look forward to. I'm waiting to use the Qsnaps from the SAL piece for Rose Lights for the Chatelaine retreat, so if Santa gets finished soon, I might start "You Were Hatched" in the meantime.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone's 2026 is off to a good start, and brings all (or at least, mostly) good things to you and your families, including lots of stitching time!

I don't set out really specific stitchy goals for the year, because that seems like a lot of pressure and it sucks the joy from it for me, but I do have a few projects that I'd like to work on (aside from my goal of stitching one page of HAED Fairytale). I'm signed up for Queen City Stitch Retreat's Chatelaine weekend again this July, so I'd like to start Rose Lights soon so I can have a (slim?) chance to finish it before then:

I have also put my name into the lottery for their retreat in October, which is centered around Teresa Wentzler's designs. While I have a lot of her patterns, I've never actually stitched one--most of them are pretty big, with a lot of blended threads and confetti, so they seem like they would take a long time to finish. If I get accepted, I've decided I'll stitch You Were Hatched, which is a nice, small design:

Another project I've been mulling for a while is to stitch Jim Shore's 2025 set of holiday gnomes all together in a row on a piece of fabric, then chart "Gnome for the Holidays" to stitch below them:

The final project I have in mind right now is Amy Bruecken's Lucky 13:

I enjoyed her Warm Wooly Welcomes so much, and I know I would have just as much fun with this project. 

For now, my goal is to get back on track with Jardin Prive's Histoires de Moutons en Hiver, which had to be put aside while I stitched a Heart in Hand model. I finished part 10 yesterday:

And started part 11:

Part 12 is released on Wednesday, so I should be caught up by then, and then there are just two more parts. Once this is done, I'll probably put Rose Lights in the Qsnaps and see how that goes for a while.

Finally, I can share that one of the Heart in Hand models I stitched last October has been released; it is Cecilia's annual Collector's Heart:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week (and year!)!

Ready for the New Year

I received the chart I chose for the HAED 2026 SAL a couple of days ago, which is called Fairytale:

The reason I joined the SAL was because if I could complete one page of the chart, I would receive Aimee Stewart's Sanctuary of Stitching, and I figured one page was definitely doable. Then, when I got the email with the chart, the organizers announced that everyone who participated in the SAL would get that chart, page finish or not. Here's the design, which I've already downloaded:

How fun is that?! Now I'm torn about starting Fairytale, since my main motivation has been removed. But I do already have it kitted, so at some point I'll probably pull it out and at least try working on my first HAED.

Last week I finished Tiny Modernist's Winter Forest Ornaments SAL, which was a very enjoyable stitch:

I think it would be fun to stitch one or more ornaments solo and finish them as ornaments, though who knows when I would actually get around to that!

Part 10 of the Jardin Prive sheep SAL was released last Wednesday, but I barely made a start on it before I received a Heart in Hand model, so I'll need to stitch two parts to catch up by the time the model is done, hopefully later this week.

I did finish The Christmas Beetle by Hands on Design on Christmas Day:

I changed the top border from brown to purple because of the fabric I used, and I used a metallic thread for the Smyrna crosses, but otherwise it's stitched as charted. Now I need to figure out a design to stitch for the back of the ornament, stitch it and then get it fully finished.

I also made a bit more progress on Purrfect Christmas Santa, on Christmas Day once the beetle was done:

I had thought I might finish this before the new year, but then the model came in so it's not going to happen.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week, and wishing you all the best in 2026! 🍾🥂🎉

Christmas stitching

It struck me this morning that it's kind of strange that I'm currently working on three Christmas/holiday pieces, because I'm not normally very big into Christmas stitching. However, I am enjoying all three projects, and I think two of them will be done before or shortly after Christmas--then maybe I can have them fully finished before next Christmas!

Yesterday I received the final part of the Tiny Modernist Winter Forest Ornaments SAL; this is up to part 4:

This is my progress on part 5:

There is going to be an adorable little hedgehog in the final ornament. 🦔 I'm hoping to finish this up either by tonight or tomorrow, depending on how my day goes.

Last week also saw the release of part 9 of Jardin Prive's Sheep in Winter SAL; there are five parts remaining, so this one will go into January:

I had a couple of days at the end of last week where the SALs were both up to date and I used them to work on The Christmas Beetle by Hands on Design. I'm using Seraphim Fabric's Aurora on opal Belfast for this one, and so far I'm really happy with the way it looks:

If I finish the ornament SAL and the beetle I'll have 35 finishes for the year, unless I can sneak in one more little one...

Hope those that celebrate it have a wonderful Christmas! 🎅🏻🦌🎄

Keeping up so far

I'm current with both of the SALs that I'm working on and they're keeping me pretty busy. The Tiny Modernist piece had releases last Tuesday and Saturday and I was able to finish each part by the second day after it dropped:

Part 4 comes out this Wednesday and the last part will come out on Sunday, so this should be done before Christmas. I'm doing it on 36ct linen so it will be fairly small, and I'm thinking it might be a good one to try to do an easel finish on (though not right away).

Wednesday is also the day part 9 of the Jardin Prive SAL gets released, so it might be a little tough to get it done before the following Wednesday since I'll be trying to finish the other design in the same period, but it might be doable depending on the size of the next installment. I stitched part 8 last week, and I "knitted" hats for the sheep in colors of some sports teams that I follow:

I spent several hours dog-sitting for a friend on Saturday, so I took a Mill Hill kit along because it's easy to work on even without my normal stitchy setup; this is my start on Jim Shore's Purrfect Christmas Santa:

I'm doing this one on 18ct perforated paper, because I really like the smaller finish on that size.

I did spend a little more time on HOD's Christmas Beetle after I finished the TM SAL yesterday; this is being stitched on Seraphim Fabric's Aurora opal Belfast:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Yet another SAL? Absolutely!

That's right, I signed up for another SAL at this past weekend's Jingle Ball, this one by Tiny Modernist. It's called Winter Forest Ornaments and it only has five small parts, the last of which comes out on December 21st (one part every four days, so part 2 tomorrow). I started part 1 yesterday and almost finished it, so this should be very easy to keep up with:

I thought this darker fabric (I think it's PTP Crystal Dusk Edinburgh) would look good with the colors, but I think the opalescence is a bit too much. However, it's not like I'm going to do anything with the finished piece, so I'm just going to go ahead and stitch the whole thing--maybe by the time it's all filled in I will like it better!

I did buy The Christmas Beetle by Hands on Design and stitched a bit of it on Saturday:

I think it's a beautiful design and I'll be working on it in between SAL parts from Tiny Modernist and Jardin Prive. I did manage to catch up with the Jardin Prive SAL before part 7 dropped; this is up to part 6:

This part included a couple of bars of Jingle Bells, though it didn't include the words. I charted those myself because I wanted to use little jingle bells as an embellishment but thought they seemed kind of random if you didn't know what the music was!

This is up to part 7 completed, the halfway point:

There was also a bonus ornament included with the SAL, which I finished this past Saturday:

I think the whole design cost around $15, which seems like a lot of value for a good, multi-part SAL these days.

I have to say that I don't think I would attend the Jingle Ball again unless there is a pattern or a class that I really wanted, and I didn't want to wait a year or more to get it. The most interactive parts are probably the stitching lounge, with "tables" of stitchers, and WIP speed dating (you spend 6 minutes with a random stitcher, then either decide to stay with that person or go to a new one), neither of which I even wanted to try (it didn't help that I got sick last Friday, and felt even worse on Saturday) as that's just not my thing. I did enjoy watching several of the meet-&-greets with the designers, and they all offered a freebie chart in their shops (except for Teresa Kogut), so between that, being able to get the Christmas Beetle chart right away and the Stand Up for Santa class with Cathy Habermann I feel like it was worth the $15 entry fee. I also bought a chart from Jeannette Douglas that I've had my eye on for a while; she did a set of 12 Christmas Dots designs this year, but at $6 each I couldn't quite make myself order them (123Stitch has them for $5.39 each, which would still be almost $65), but she had a special offer for the pdf of the entire set for $49, so I bought it:

I want to stitch them all together, so maybe I'll try to do a couple each month, as that's how they were released this year. I will say that printing out 13 color pages sucked my color ink cartridge down pretty fast, so maybe not quite as good a deal as I thought... 🤣

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Almost caught up

I had a low-key Thanksgiving here at home with my husband and son, which was very comforting. My mom passed away on the 27th last year, so Thursday was the final "first" that I had to get through. It wasn't as bad as some others have been, like Mother's Day or her birthday, and my hope is that going forward I can shake off a lot of the depression that has bogged me down at times this past year.

I spent the long weekend eating, watching football (go Bears!) and hockey (go Wild!) and stitching until my hands got tired--in other words, it was a really good weekend. I am about halfway done with part 6 of the Jardin Prive SAL, so I should get it finished today, in plenty of time for the release of part 7 on Wednesday. Here are the five completed parts:

And here's where I left it last night:

I'm stitching it on Zweigart Lavender Edinburgh, and I am making changes and additions as I go. I've added a few colors, including a gold metallic and white, gray and black Wisper, and I'm adding some JABCO buttons. Here are a few more photos:

I loved the snowman's heart-shaped hat, and it was the perfect spot for a little red heart button. ❤️

I'll be attending my first Jingle Ball this weekend, mostly because Cathy Habermann teased her Christmas Beetle chart a few days ago and I knew I didn't want to wait a year for its general release. It looks like a companion to her Ladybug Picnic and Botanical Bee, and I always love a good series!

And as long as I was "attending" this virtual retreat, I also signed up for Cathy's Stand Up for Santa finishing class:

I really liked this design when she shared it a while back, but it wasn't enough by itself to make me sign up for the Ball, but between the two designs I couldn't resist anymore. I obviously won't have the Santa stitched in time to actually participate in the finishing class, but Cathy's written instructions are so good that I know I'll be glad I added them to my "finishing" binder. I'm also curious about the Ball, so I'll try it out this year and see if it's something I would want to do again.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!