january in september

   I am definitely late to the party, but last night I finished up January Cottage from Country Cottage Needleworks.  I clearly can't count, so I had to make some adjustments.  Since I'm going to stitch all 12 cottages on the same piece of fabric, I hope it won't be too obvious that January is a bit off.

Pattern: Country Cottage Needleworks, January Cottage
Fabric: stitched over 2 on 35 count linen from Wichelt - lambswool
Floss: DMC and Crescent Colors - Pebble Beach 

   My cottage is one row too high, but of course I didn't notice this until I had stitched the entire cottage and half of my snowman.  Instead of frogging the entire thing, I only stitched one of the chimneys, so the second one wouldn't be too close to the J and I added an extra row of white below the cottage.  Hopefully once I start stitching the February Cottage, the borders should line up.  However, looking at the rest of the months, my January Cottage will still be a bit too high up on the designs.  I'm hoping it won't be too noticeable.   

  Meanwhile, February's Cottage is kit-ed up and ready to go after I make more progress on the Mystery Sampler.  

branching out

   I recently got the bug to branch out past cross stitch kits (mainly from Dimensions) and fell down the rabbit hole with the Lizzy*Kate Very Scary Mystery Sampler. Being new to working "kit-less" I stocked up on DMC floss and picked up some linen from my local big box craft store. I can safely say that I will never go back to working on aida. I'm not too happy with the linen used for this piece, but working with linen nonetheless has solved my cross stitch issues I encountered while using aida.  

   Here is my first installment, sans beads and embellishments.

Pattern: Lizzy*Kate, Very Scary Mystery Sampler, Part 1

Fabric: stitched over 2 on 28 count Charles Craft Irish Linen - tea dyed

Floss: all DMC using conversions provided by pattern

  I love this first piece of the sampler! Lots of variety and color changes to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, the linen is practically transparent. So, I've had to develop some interesting stitching techniques to keep threads on the backside from showing through. It's getting a bit more tricky on part 2 of the sampler.  

Look for an update soon!