January Wrap Up

Hi all! January was kind of a crazy month for me, and I can't believe it's already over. I had a really good stitchy month though, mostly because I was off for quite a while with the government shutdown. :) I worked on 16 different projects and managed some good progress on a few, so here are a couple I haven't shown so far.

First, I'll share my weekly project from last week. It was Stars by The Drawn Thread, which I'm hoping to finish this year. I think I'll manage it, but it is taking a bit longer than I'd hoped. The good news is, I've reached the bottom of the chart:

The leaves really slowed me down since I stitch most of them one at a time. But the tree is officially done! I still have to stitch in more stars among the branches, but I was too anxious to get to that house this time around. That little house did stitch up rather quickly. Just have the windows and door to finish up, then three more houses, then done! Hopefully that will happen in early March. :)

And of course I worked on Luna, and managed 2 1/2 columns:

I'm hoping to do another 2 1/2 columns this month, even though it's a short month. That way, I can get to page 16 in March. I'm really anxious to get to her wings, so it's spurring me on!

I also worked on Kabuki this month, and met my goal without too much fuss. She looks really wierd right now, but page 6 is now complete:

I'm hoping to pull her out again this summer and at least finish the right side of her face. Then we can see those ruby lips!

Now for my special project. Does anyone remember the Chatelaine I started in 2017? I kept meaning to pull it out last year, but something always came up and I didn't think I could give it the concentration I needed to for all those specialty stitches. So on New Years Eve, I felt determined to get some stitches in for 2018, and I finally pulled her out. It was really daunting at first, but I think that was because I thought it should be difficult, but it actually wasn't too bad. So I kept working on her occasionally in January, and I've made some decent progress:

I added a bunch of petit treasure braid; all those dark green Algerian eyelets; light green diamond eyelets; brown ray stitches; and of course, those pink Jessica stitches in the center, my first ever. I'll say this about Jessica stitches: they aren't difficult if you can see your fabric clearly and have a long enough thread. I also counted my stitches along with the diagram, so I knew exactly where my needle should be with each stitch. And they took me about 20 minutes each.

If you're wondering, this one is called Medieval Cloister Herbularius, and someday will look like this:

My goal this year is to finish off part one and start part two. All I have left for part one is the backstitching around the leaves in the center, and a cross stitch border that outlines part two, so that should be easy. I'd love to finish part two this year, but that might be too ambitious...

Guess it was a long one this time, but I do feel like I made some good progress. Hopefully I can squeeze in a lot of stitching for February too. Wishing you all some great stitching. Until next time!