little red stitches...

I am so completely immersed in the loveliness of hand stitching.

Here is the last cross-stitch that I finished from a pattern found in my new favourite book:




I also have an idea that I will stitch some lovely snowflakes and sew them into ornaments for Christmas trees. YES...I do know that Christmas only ended 3 weeks ago. If you are going to look at my blog (and I am so happy that you are!), you should know that I make Christmas things year round. I like to give hand made gifts whenever possible, and my husband and I both have a relatively large number of family members and friends that we exchange gifts with. I may also participate in a Christmas craft show again this year (which reminds me...I don't think that I ever did write a wrap-up post). I digress....wouldn't these look sweet stitched into an ornament (maybe with some ric rac tucked into the seams?)?




The pictures are all a bit dismal...and will likely be until April. What can I say? It's dark when I leave the house in the morning, dark when I get home and grey for all of the hours in between! I'm a Canadian after all...

You can't see it in these pics, but there is a pretty iridescent filament blended in with the white floss.





I'm not the only one who has been busy hand stitching. Alicia at Posie Gets Cozy is inspiring me to try stitching with waste canvas. Waste canvas allows you to have the nice even grid of aida cloth (which is the fabric used for the snowflakes shown above), but the flexibility to stitch on whatever piece of fabric passes your fancy. You just baste the waste canvas to the non-aida cloth fabric, stitch away, and then the waste canvas pulls away when you are done. All that will remain are lovely (hopefully even) stitches on the fabric. No grid looking aida cloth to mess with the aesthetic of your work. Check out the links in Alicia's post. I suspect that she explains it much better than I am.

Oh the possibilities!!! I don't actually own any waste canvas, so for now I will have to dream about the possible projects. I do however, have some lovely mushroom coloured linen. No doubt more photos of cross stitches will follow...