Catching up on my (Xmas) stitching !

Hi everyone !

Things are getting back to normal here for me after I had to look after all my family's five dogs for a week : ) The week was really exhausting for me and I struggled to find any energy or time to stitch , even though I had such a longing for it .

But now I can finally catch up on my stitching ! I'm in a crazy mental place right now where almost all I can think about is my stitching and my Christmas gifts that I plan to stitch ! Sadly I will not be able to show you everything I'll stitch ; at least not until after Christmas in case a few of my family members happen to read this blog . However , there should still be plenty of stitching going on that I CAN show you , especially if I can execute at least half of the projects I am planning . . . ha ha !

My first finished Christmas gift stitching is this piece . . .

. . . for my grandma ! It says GRANDMA in Swedish , and I plan to attach it to a towel : ) The ABC is from Cross Stitch Crazy magazine issue 159 and they are designed by Lucie Heaton . These letters were really fun to stitch , and easy to experiment with colour-combos . I'm hoping to stitch more of these . I have soo many ABCs to choose from , but I have decided to pick easy designs for gifts , with a limited amount of colours and not too fussy with a lot of thread changes . I find the starting and finishing of lots of threads always slows me down .

I have also stitched a little on my Christmas Fairy by Joan Elliott . . .

. . . but I am eagerly awaiting some threads which has slowed me down a bit on this one .

In the past I have bought quite a few of the Enjoy Cross Stitch magazines since they always include threads and other stitching goodies . Like this issue for example :

 

It's from Spring 2013 , and it included all these lovely goodies :

 

It caught my eye again a few days ago and I decided to stitch some of the designs they suggested (designed by Lesley Teare) using the free threads .

The first one is this sweet little chart I finished .

 

I'm going to turn it into an ornament and send it to my aunt who celebrates her 60th birthday . I have been dragging my feet on the finishing and making up part of this little project , since it is my least favorite part of stitching , but you can imagine what it will look like once I get this done . . . sooon.

Since it looked so good , I decided to stitch another design using the freebie threads and that turned into this little finish :

 

I changed the original 'Home Sweet Home' phrase to the Swedish equivalent , and I think it turned out rather well : ) This will probably be turned into another ornament - some other day - to be put in someone's Xmas stocking : )

 

So , that's all the stitching for this time !

 

Happy Stitching everyone !

 

Annie