Happy 2017!

Hi all! Hope everyone is having a good start to the new year. I always feel like January kind of resets my stitching goals, and regardless of how many goals I didn't meet last year, I still plan to make more meet them all this year! (Don't you just love optimism?)

I am still a bit behind in wrapping things up for last year, but I thought I'd show off my new 2017 start. It's Angel of Grace by Lavender and Lace:

I actually fell in love with this pattern about 25 years ago. They used to advertise these patterns in the back of my cross stitch magazines, and they were so gorgeous! But they were all stitched on linen, which I knew nothing about at the time, and the thought of stitching over two was a bit too intimidating. But I promised myself that one day I would try it. And then I forgot about her for a long time. Then along came Flosstube, and a channel called Running Stitch. In her very first video, she's showing off her Angel of Grace, and I thought, "Hey! That's my Angel!" So I thought I should get my butt in gear and start stitching!

So here is my one day's progress on Grace, which was just shy of 500 stitches. I started in the middle:

Of course, my phone cannot capture to true color of the fabric. It doesn't help that this was taken at night. The fabric is Chocolate Belfast from Silkweaver. It did turn out darker than what was shown on The Viewer, but it still works. I wanted a fabric that would really contrast and compliment all that pink and white in her skirt, and a warm chocolaty brown seemed just the thing. In person, there's a rosy pinkness in the fabric that goes perfectly with her color palette. Hopefully one day I can capture that in a photo.

This is my first time stitching on hand dyed fabric, and it's taking some getting used to. The fabric is really soft, nothing like the Wichelt fabric I'm using for Cassiopeia. However, the holes and weave of the fabric are more difficult to see due to the coloring process and shrinkage. Still, I'm really enjoying stitching on her, and plan to do so for about 10 days. Then I'll be going back to some kind of rotation, though I don't have anything set in stone.

Luna will be a focus piece again this year, so you'll probably see a lot of her. I hope to work on all my projects at least once, but I've got a lot of new starts planned this year as well. Hopefully I won't go too overboard, but I'm not promising anything. :)

Happy stitching everyone!