04/27/2025
Christmas 2023 I got myself a treat, a cross stitch book called and I was ecstatic when I got it. Because there was literally not a single design in the entire book that I thought I wouldn’t do. So that January 2024 I started. With a cute little piece called “welcome home” with its sweet ghost owner and puppy welcoming me into their home!
Over the past year and some, I’ve worked on these 9 designs. One will be a gift, 3 I’ll match up together to hang as a triptych in my home, near my own front door, and one will join the many skeleton couples my husband and I have collected for each other over 21 years of being together. I’m currently working on my 10th design from the book and I’m bummed I’ve had to set it down for over a week now. Busy paid work comes first. 😅
My aunt taught me to cross stitch when I was only 10yo, and it’s been a pretty regular stitch in my life over the last 34 years. I enjoy the simplicity and its varying degrees of complexity. The math of it isn’t hard, but mistakes can cost you. It’s not forgiving with free form design, but its rigidness provides a certain freedom of thought.
I’ve created my own complex cross stitch designs from photographs and drawings I’ve done. They were not quick projects. Some of these from the book are fairly speedy, but that grave yard willow trees, took me nearly 3mo to complete. It has 8 different greens. That explains that. 🤪
But truly, cross stitch provides me an outlet for creativity without over thinking it. A place to move my hands but let my mind wander.
I’m wondering if I’ll finish the rest of the designs in the next year and some. 🧐
