Category Archives: Cross Stitchery

Little Stitches

It is always great to think that your children are following in your footsteps. For years, I have tried to get my daughter interested in needlearts. I have tried to teach her cross stitch and there was one disasterous event that involved crochet. But alas, she has never taken to any of it. Her creativity lies with pen and paper. She is an excellent artist.

I thought all was lost – I would never pass my love of cross stitch on to either of my children. Until this past weekend. My son (who is 6 years old and a boy’s boy – very rough and tumble) showed interest in cross stitching. He kept asking for me to teach him, so we went to the craft store and I let him pick out his own thread colors and hoop so he could do his own project.

He wanted to stitch a Christmas Tree, so I lightly drew one onto Aida cloth and he used that as a guide. It took him some time to get the hang of it, but he ended up doing very well. It wasn’t actually “cross stitch” – it was more of a running stitch, but he did a good job and I was so proud!

I know he probably won’t love it as much as I do, but I can hope!

My First TUSAL

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Being in the YOTA spirit, I joined Daffycat’s TUSAL 2015 challenge. TUSAL stands for Totally Useless Stitch A Long. TUSAL is a blog game where members post a photo of their ORT jars on the New Moon of every month.

What is an ORT you say? In the stitching world, ORT stands for Old Ratty Threads. These are the little pieces of thread that a stitcher cuts away at the end of the thread piece. The word “ort” does appear in the dictionary: a bit of something left over; usually concerning food. Well, the only ORTs in my house are of the thread variety – never food.

Since I already save my ORTs in a little bag by my stitchin’ spot on the couch, I thought this would be fun to show them off to everyone out there on The Interwebs.

Here are the rules from Daffycat’s post:

1. Comment on Daffycat’s TUSAL 2015 post.

2. Get a glass jar or other clear container and save your thread clippings. You can include fabric trimmings, thread bands, empty spools or any other stitching cast-offs they gather. You may continue filling this jar throughout the year OR you may empty the jar and start over each month ~ no firm rules here!

3. On (or about) each New Moon take a picture of the ORTs in your jar and post it to your blog. This is a blog game so YES, you MUST have a blog to be included.

4. Yes, you can use your current ORT jar or jars. This is no contest…the stitcher with the most ORTs doesn’t win!

5. Post a picture each New Moon, even if there has been no “progress” to show. We are aiming for “once a month” here…no whippings for being late, early, or absent!

6. When you have posted the picture of your ORTs visit Daffycat’s blog and comment on her ORT report for that month’s TUSAL.

Here is Daffycat’s blog if you would like to peruse her page on the TUSAL 2015 challenge:

http://itsdaffycat.blogspot.com/
The challenge follows the Lunar Cycle. The first New Moon date for 2015 was yersterday, January 20th! So, without further ado…

The New Moon dates for 2015 are:
January 20
February 18
March 20
April 18
May 18
June 16
July 16
August 14
September 13
October 13
November 11
December 11

I will post a picture of my ORT jar on or around each of these dates to show my ORT progress.

See you on the next New Moon!

YOTA 2015

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YOTA: Year Of The Acronym

In my many hours spent searching The Interwebs for like-minded cross stitchers, I stumbled upon a blog called Pull The Other Thread. On this blog, she has a wonderful yearly UFO SAL, which she lovingly named “YOTA.”

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Here are the guidelines for the SAL directly from the PTOT YOTA post:

“Once a month – the first Saturday – will be YOTA post day. If you want to join in just post before and after pictures of any UFO projects you are working on. I will work on one UFO at a time and if I finish one I will move onto another.

I will work on it whenever I get a chance in any one month but anyone who wishes to join can do as much as they feel they want to on their projects.

If you have some UFO’s which are not stitching but knitting, quilting etc. and want to join in with those then feel free.”

To read more about YOTA visit: http://pulltheotherthread.blogspot.com/p/yota-year-of-acronyms.html
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Since I joined in the middle of the month, I missed the January YOTA post day, but for the rest of the year I will post my progress the first Saturday of every month.

For my YOTA 2015 projects, I picked two WIPs that have been languishing about for some time now.

Here is the first one that I want to finish. The pattern is “Home Sweet Home” by La-D-Da designs. I started this about 2 years ago and worked on it for a few weeks and then moved on to something else.

Here is my progress as of today. (Please forgive the crease lines.)

The second WIP designated for the YOTA will be The Legend of the Dogwood Tree. In preparation of this post, I was digging around in a box of cross stitch stuff looking for a wedding sampler that I started a few years ago and came across this pattern. I had completely forgotten about it.

I didn’t have time to search for the actual project before this post, but I don’t think I am very far into it. If I remember correctly, it is maybe 20% completed. I will dig around some more and post a picture of it at a later date.

THE PLAN: My Plan is to work on the Home Sweet Home (HSH) project until the end of June. The goal is to finish the stitching by the end of June, but if that doesn’t occur, I will just switch to stitching on The Legend of the Dogwood Tree (TLOTDT) on the first of July and put away the other. With that being said, I can’t guarantee what is acutally going to happen. Sometimes, The Plan goes awry. I may get tired of stitching on HSH and want to change gears during March. Who knows? Definitely not me!

But it certainly makes my OCD mind feel better to have The Plan in place. If The Plan goes off course, I will just readjust and continue on.

Happy Stitching!