Swedish crafts and Santas:)

Hi Everyone !

 

First of all I want to thank you for all your lovely comments on my last post! All your advice and suggestions are greatly appreciated and and I am very pleased that you all took the time to comment ! ! I am going to do what you all suggested and try to add the facial backstitch to my Swedish Santa's face , although I haven't been brave enough yet to do it . . . As for the sky issue I will come back to it later in this post : )

 

Speaking of my Swedish Santa , it occured to me that it would be nice to share my old Swedish crafty leaflet with you since you all love crafts : )

 

So this crafty leaflet is from 2003 and was published in a Swedish Women's magazine . It is full of Christmas ideas and Christmas gifts . There are crochet patterns to make these Christmas pot holders . . .

 

 

. . . and I actually thinking of making some of these since I love to have various pot holders for each season . I also like to give away pot holders as gifts , but I have made so many for everyone in my family that I fear they are a bit sick of pot holders . . . ha ha !

 

There are also other Christmas cross stitching projects (except for my Santa) like these aida band charts :

 

 

Although they are sweet they are not my cup of tea - the charts feel too old-fashioned to me .

 

However , the leaflet also included these two cross stitched mini tapestries which I really like !

 

I love the red and white Christmas designs ; they feel very much like old-fashioned Swedish Christmas , but in a GOOD way : ) ) I also like the fact that you only stitch with one colour since colour changes takes a lot of time . There is a problem though , and that is that the charts are very small . . .

I've added my hand to the charts so that you can see the dimensions.

 . . .and yet again they have no clear gridlines . And to add gridlines myself would be difficult ; the squares are small and I would risk not seeing the symbols if I try to add further lines to the chart . ( In fact , the problem is the same with the chart for my Santa picture . )
Still , I wanted to stitch these - and maybe turn them into cushions? - so yesterday I found a suitable red thread colour (the leaflet only said 'red' thread) and made a start on one of the charts .

 

I really could have done with those gridlines though , since it did not take long before I had to start frogging . . . and frogging and frogging . . ! The progress I have made so far included at least three times of frogging which must be a record for me . Still , I am not giving up , and thankfully , the more I'll stitch on it the easier it'll be to keep track of where I am on the chart .

 

I also have to show you the progress on my Santa from this leaflet : ) To remind you - and myself - this is what this 10-year-old UFO looked like when I picked it up again a week ago :

 

And this is what it looks like now :

I love having this blog to record my own progress ; it is really inspiring to see your own progress like this ! I'm chugging along with the sky - one row up and one row down etc - and it is still slow-going but I am almost getting used to it now : ) And all those dark tree siluettes - that I found so difficult ten years ago - are now done ! Now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that my mojo will stay with this project so I can get it finished soon , at long last !

Oh , and I almost forgot to show you the ornament that I finished for the Christmas Ornie SAL ( and you can read more about it there too ) :

Nice to have a finish every now and then , isn't it ? !

Happy Stitching ,

Annie