Recent finishes and blogiversary!

I never got around to posting these last weekend, but here are the two other things I finished during my stay-at-home vacation last week.



This is the finished version of the ornament that I posted a progress photo of back at the beginning of the month. I have no idea what I'm going to do to finish it (I'm leaning towards a little pillow ornament) so it goes into the ever-growing "to be finished" basket.



And this is the beaded ornament kit that I picked up during my vacation. I have the mandolin one now too and will probably get the whole set. (They are similar designs to the Fifteen Year Christmas Ornaments, but hopefully they won't take me that long to finish!).

And finally... yesterday was my fourth anniversary of starting this blog! I had some stitching stuff posted to my personal blog before, but I split it off to be its own thing four years ago. It's been a lot of fun going back through and writing up all my old projects and it's been very valuable in keeping track of current projects, so I'm really glad I started it!

Hardanger holly ornament finished!

My 9-day stay-at-home vacation got off to a good start - I actually finished another project! Granted, there wasn't a whole lot left to do and it stitched up fast, but I'm still happy that I've finished another thing in my pile. I've stitched a little more on the other Christmas ornament from the post below and I've started on a Mill Hill bead ornament I picked up at my LNS.

Of course, now that the JCS Halloween issue is here, I have plenty more small projects I want to start... :)

Latest stitching

As I mentioned in the previous post, I've been stitching on some Christmas ornaments to try to take my mind of the incredible heat we've been suffering through here in central Texas for the past two months (actually, it started getting hotter than average back in April).

First up is a progress image of the Blue Ribbon Designs ornament that I started a week or so ago:



As you can see, the fabric is a loose weave, so you're seeing the light coming through the window behind it. I haven't gotten too far on it because I decided to finally start this little hardanger ornament that I bought in kit form sometime in the past year or so:



I got pretty far on it so I should be able to finish it this week. This is a "no cut" hardanger design that I picked up from Nordic Needle. I experimented with hardanger for the first time a few years ago, but I still need to get some really good scissors for cut work. So when I saw a kit that didn't require cutting, I snapped it up!