July Flower of the Month Check In

Welcome to the latest check in for the Flower of the Month SAL.  I can't believe I forgot to post this earlier!  Once again, I've been a very bad hostess and don't have any progress of my own to show this month.  (That new kitten has been keeping me busy!)  It's been so wonderful seeing all of your progress on July, and August is one of my favorite patterns, so this next month will be fun as well. 

Remember, if you are not currently a member of the SAL and want to join us, it's never too late to join!  The rules and official sign ups can be found on this page.  

Important Notes For Current SAL Participants: 
To earn an extra prize entry for this month, you must submit a check in (even if it's showing only progress and not a finish).  Your check in can be about the July pattern specifically, or any other month you are working on/have finished. 

If you have done a blog post showing your progress, please use the linking widget below to add a direct link to your check in post.  If you are a member of our Facebook group, you can also check in via that page.  You do not have to check in at both places, but you are welcome to if you wish. 

If anyone has any questions, please let me know.  I will leave the link widget open for a week (until August 13th), so please check in by that date.

June Check In for 2015 Flower of the Month SAL

Welcome to the latest check in for the Flower of the Month SAL.  Once again, I've been a very bad hostess and don't have any progress of my own to show this month.  Due to some health issues, I kind of fell off the bandwagon this month, but hopefully all of you made good progress in June!

Remember, if you are not currently a member of the SAL and want to join us, it's never too late to join!  The rules and official sign ups can be found on this page.  

Important Notes For Current SAL Participants: 
To earn an extra prize entry for this month, you must submit a check in (even if it's showing only progress and not a finish).  Your check in can be about the June pattern specifically, or any other month you are working on/have finished. 

If you have done a blog post showing your progress, please use the linking widget below to add a direct link to your check in post.  If you are a member of our Facebook group, you can also check in via that page.  You do not have to check in at both places, but you are welcome to if you wish. 

If anyone has any questions, please let me know.  I will leave the link widget open for a week (until July 14th), so please check in by that date.

May Check In for 2015 Flower of the Month SAL

Welcome to the latest check in for the Flower of the Month SAL.  Once again, I've been a very bad hostess and don't have any progress of my own to show this month.  I had a major stitching project in May, and I also ran out of fabric, but I hope to make progress on my Jan, Feb, and Mar projects, as well as start April, May, and now June soon! 

So let's share the progress we all made in May, since I don't have any to share with you at the moment. 

Remember, if you are not currently a member of the SAL and want to join us, it's never too late to join!  The rules and official sign ups can be found on this page.  

Important Notes For Current SAL Participants: 
To earn an extra prize entry for this month, you must submit a check in (even if it's showing only progress and not a finish).  Your check in can be about the May pattern specifically, or any other month you are working on/have finished. 

If you have done a blog post showing your progress, please use the linking widget below to add a direct link to your check in post.  If you are a member of our Facebook group, you can also check in via that page.  You do not have to check in at both places, but you are welcome to if you wish. 

If you're still participating via email, please send me an email to brownieschair (AT) hotmail (DOT) com with your progress details/pictures and I will post them here for you.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know.  I will leave the link widget open through next week (June 12th), so please check in by that date.

April Check In for 2015 Flower of the Month SAL

This is several days late, sorry about that.  I had a rough week last week with some personal issues going on and then this week I've been stuck with a cold/allergies that are generally making me tired and grumpy.  So I regret to say that's made me a very bad hostess for this month.  In fact, I don't even have pictures of my progress, since I put my project somewhere while cleaning and organizing on the weekend and can't find it yet.  *sigh*

I'm so looking forward to seeing all the lovely progress everyone made during April, since I am going to have to live vicariously through you all this month. 

If you are not currently a member of the SAL and want to join us, remember it's never too late to join!  The rules and official sign ups can be found on this page.  

Important Notes For Current SAL Participants: 
To earn an extra prize entry for this month, you must submit a check in (even if it's showing only progress and not a finish).  Your check in can be about the April pattern, or any other month you are working on/have finished. 

If you have done a blog post showing your progress, please use the linking widget below to add a direct link to your check in post.  

If you're still participating but using a different way to check in, please send me an email to brownieschair (AT) hotmail (DOT) com with your progress details/pictures and I will post them here for you.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know.  I will leave the link widget open through next week (May 12th) since I'm a little late this month, so please check in by that date.

Free Pattern Friday: May Lily of the Valley

It feels like I'm always saying this, but I can't believe how fast April has flown by.  Mostly becasuse projects that are due at the end of the month aren't done yet I guess.  But since it's the 3rd Friday in April,  it's time for May's Flower of the Month series by EMS that are part of the 2015 SAL I'm hosting.  If you want to come join us there's still time to sign up, all the signup info can be found here.

May's flower as designed by Ellen Maurer-Stroh is Lily of the Valley, which will be our first white flower.  According to Google, this flower was chosen as the May birth flower because that is usually the only month it blooms in.  This flower has been used in bridal bouquets dating all the way back to medieval times, which has contributed to it's traditional meaning of chastity, purity, humility, and sweetness. 

So now you can have a sweet time stitching this free cross stitch pattern, and go download the PDF from the EMS Designs website if you haven't already. 

Happy stitching!





If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts.

March Check In for 2015 Flower of the Month SAL

Nothing like waiting until the last day to get this up, huh?  Sorry for the delay, we're still having internet sourcing troubles at home, so blogging in general has been more of a challenge lately.

But the good news is after my total falling off the bandwagon last month, I do have progress!  I got a bit more done on January:

Started a few outlines of violets on February:

And even got a couple petals started for March:

That means I'm caught up (at least until next month) with all my starts.  Yay!  Now to work towards some finishes...

So how did you all do?  I know from our Facebook group many of you are doing much, much better than me.  But hey, progress is progress, so I'm happy what I got done this month.  Post your progress whatever it is and share via the linkup below. 

If you are not currently a member of the SAL and want to join us, remember it's never too late to join!  The rules and official sign ups can be found on this page.  

Important Notes For Current SAL Participants: 
To earn an extra prize entry for this month, you must submit a check in (even if it's showing only progress and not a finish).  Your check in can be about the March pattern, or any other month you are working on/have finished. 

If you have done a blog post showing your progress, please use the linking widget below to add a direct link to your check in post.  

If you're participating but using a different way to check in, please send me an email to brownieschair (AT) hotmail (DOT) com with your progress details/pictures and I will post them here for you.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know.  I will leave the link widget open through the end of next week (April 10th) since I'm a little late this month, so please check in by that date.

February Check In for 2015 Flower of the Month SAL

Hello Flower Stitch-A-Long participants! I can't believe how fast February went by.  I know the month is only shorter by a few days, but whoo!  There's just a couple days left, so it's time to submit your progress for February.  How did you all do so far?

My progress is... well... nonexistent this month.  Bad, bad hostess!  I just had too many deadline projects that popped up in the meantime.  So I haven't made any more progress on January, and haven't had a change to stitch February either.  But apparently hope springs eternal, because I did spend a couple hours kitting up March's pattern last Saturday. 

So how did you all do?  Obviously no one can be worse than me this month, so post your progress whatever it is! 

If you are not currently a member of the SAL and want to join us, remember it's never too late to join us.  The rules and official sign ups can be found on this page.  

Important Notes For Current SAL Participants: 
To earn an extra prize entry for this month, you must submit a check in (even if it's showing progress and not a finish).  Your check in can be about the February pattern, or any other month you are working on/have finished. 

If you have done a blog post showing your progress, please use the linking widget below to add a direct link to your check in post.  

If you have chosen to post your progress in the Facebook group, please leave a link here on this post as well.  That just makes it easier for me to gather info and not miss/double count anyone.

If you're participating but using a different way to check in, please send me an email to brownieschair (AT) hotmail (DOT) com with your progress details/pictures and I will post them here for you.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know.  I will leave the link widget open through the end of next week (March 7th) so please check in by that date.

Free Pattern Friday: March Daffodils

Today's free cross stitch pattern is another installment in the Flower of the Month series by EMS that are part of the 2015 SAL I'm hosting.  If you want to come join us, all the signup info can be found here.

As February is drawing to a close, it's time to get ready for March, so I'm posting the March pattern of the SAL now so you can prepare if needed.  If you're participating in the SAL, don't forget to show us your progress at the end of this month!

I'm rather partial to March, since it is my birthday month.  And March's flower is one of my favorite flowers, the daffodil.  Actually some people say March's flower is the Jonquil, which look like daffodils to me.  Anyone know the difference?  I like to say "daffodil" better than "jonquil" anyway, so I'm just going to say it's officially the daffodil.  :)

According to Google, the daffodil is also called the "Lent Lily" or the narcissus, which I guess is the official botanical name.  The daffodil stands for rebirth, renewal, and chivalry, and is considered a 10th anniversary flower.  Presenting a gift of a bunch of daffodils is said to bring happiness, while a single daffodil can signify misfortune.

And now the I've bored you with all sorts of daffodil lore, you can head over to the EMS Designs website to download March's free cross stitch pattern, and join our SAL if you're interested.  Look for April's pattern to be posted in a couple weeks.

Happy stitching!


If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts.

January Check In for 2015 Flower of the Month SAL

Hello Flower Stitch-A-Long participants! It's the end of January, so I guess it's time to put up a check in post for everyone.

We've been having some great photos posted over in the Facebook group over the last few days, so I know some of you are making good progress, and perhaps even finished the January Carnations pattern for this month. 

As for my progress... well....

... you can see there's not much going on.  I started this as my first day for the Crazy January Challenge, and haven't had a chance to pick it back up again yet.  So the 7 or so stitches I put in that day remain the only ones I have so far.  This is the first time I've worked on 18 count aida in awhile, and I was surprised at how much I missed the smaller count.  Hmm, something to think about for future projects.

BUT! I am still going to start February's design sometime early next month, as well as trying to bang out some more progress on this one in the meantime.  How about you?  What progress have you made this month?  Are you continuing on, or focusing on finishing the current WIP before moving on to the next month?

If you are currently a member of the SAL and want to join us, remember it's never too late to join us.  The rules and official sign ups can be found on this page.  

Important Notes For Current SAL Participants: 
To earn an extra prize entry for this month, you must submit a check in (even if it's showing progress and not a finish like mine is).

If you have done a blog post showing your progress, please use the linking widget below to add a direct link to your check in post.  

If you have chosen to post your progress in the Facebook group, please leave a link here on this post as well.  That just makes it easier for me to gather info and not miss/double count anyone.

If you're participating but using a different way to check in, please send me an email to brownieschair (AT) hotmail (DOT) com with your progress details/pictures and I will post them here for you.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know.  I will leave the link widget open through the end of next week (Feb 7th) so please check in by that date.

Now, who's ready to start February?  :)

January 2015 Smalls SAL

Well, it's the last Wednesday in January (can you believe it, where did the time go?), so that means it's time for January's check-in post for Stitching Lotus' 2015 Smalls SAL. 

January has been kind of crazy, since I've been trying to work on a new project every day this month for the Crazy January Challenge I joined on Facebook.  However, with that in mind, I did actually have not only one, but two small finishes. 

Both of these are pieces for World of Charity Stitching, and since they are 43 x 43 stitches, I think I'll count them as a small project.  Here is Leopard Print Mitten

and Giraffe Print Mitten, in case anyone hasn't seen both of these already. 

Hmmm, just realized that these check in posts might get a little repetitive for those who read this blog frequently.  Sorry about that!

I got notice yesterday that both squares have been successfully received, so they'll be made up into a quilt for a deserving senior someday soon. 

Next month will probably either no finishes, or tons of Mill Hills, since I'm currently on a deadline for a gift deadline in March and have about 6 of them going on right now. 

If you'd like to participate with us in this SAL, check out the sign up post here. 

Progress Update: Day 8-11 of Crazy Challenge (Long and Picture Heavy again, sorry!)

Sorry, this is going to be another picture heavy post for those who are on slow connections.  This whole not having internet at the house thing really puts a cramp in my updating abilities over the weekend, and I wasn't able to post my update from Thursday last Friday before I left the office.

So here's what's been going on in my stitching life lately.  Luckily I'm happy to report that I have still kept up totally with the challenge, even if it hasn't been a lot of stitching.

As I mentioned in my last post, my plan for January 8th, last Thursday, was to work on a WIP project.  I pulled out my Tree Frog Trio kit from Dimensions for this day, since it is also one of my Turtle Trot pieces for this year.  I started it back in July or August last year, and it's kind of fallen into the UFO pile.  So here's where I started on Thursday:

And here's where it ended up:

Not a lot of progress, but I'm starting to see some.  I started with that frog on the left because it is the one that has (gasp!) blended threads, which I've never done before, so I figured out with the difficult thing first.  If I can finish this one by Christmas, it will go to a friend who loves frogs and is back in California for a Christmas present.

January 9th was Friday, so I decided to pull out something a little less complicated since my brain was shot from the work week in general.  I decided to pull out this perfume bottle design that I'm doing for World of Charity Stitching.

I got a good block of color for the first stripe on the bottle done, which is more progress than I've been able to do on anything lately.  This was a freebie pattern I found off a french blog, and it's going to have a very pretty purple/pink old fashioned atomizer bottle with a couple of yellow flowers by it when it's done. 

I spent most of the morning of January 10th on Saturday unpacking boxes.  We've been in the new apartment since Thanksgiving, but I've kind of been putting off really unpacking most of my things other than the basic essentials of what I need all the time, so I figured it was time to work on that.  Then Saturday evening I had a sort-of-date, so I ended up getting back to the house and working on my stitching kind of late. Since it was late, I decided I needed another brain dead project, so I pulled out this Yin Yang Horse pattern.

The nice thing about this is that it's all one color, only black required.  This is another piece for WOCS, and it was charted by me based on an online clip art gallery I saw.  I actually got a good chunk of this done (for me anyway), but had to quit a little earlier than expected because I had a "helper" glue himself to my lap and keep trying to steal the thread as I pulled it through fabric:

 (Brownie you are so not being helpful right there)

Yesterday was the 11th, and due to the fact that I'm running out of Q-snaps to hold my projects, I decided to start a project that already had been put on the frame, although I hadn't started it yet.  This is a Gingerbread House Facebook SAL designed by Shannon Wasilieff that she hosted in her group last year.  My intention was to start it before Christmas last year, but presents pushed it out of the way and I was never able to get a start.  So I pulled on one of my Christmas Q-snap huggies and gave it a go.

I may have gotten a little farther than this, but I was distracted by watching our DVR recordings of Agent Carter and Galavant and I totally messed up the spacing.  I had to frog a bit, and then decided to re-grid my pattern, rather than re-grid the fabric or frog everything I had done to make it match.  The joys of stitching, huh?

And in addition to my new starts, I am also hard at work on trying to finish my Giraffe Print Mitten for WOCS.  I've made some good progress on that, I figure I'm about 1/3 way done by now.  Hopefully it won't take much longer. 

Well, that's how things are right now.  I'm hoping to do more daily updates this week (instead of these huge block of updates), so stay tuned for those!

2015 Stitching Goals: More and More SALs

Well, I had the epiphany today that it's actually getting pretty close to 2015 now, so I better finish up my 2015 goals series of posts.  So rather than do an introduction post for all of these, I'm going to put them all in one post (so I can actually focus on stitching things for them, haha).

So in addition to the 2015 Flower of the Month SAL I'm hosting, the Crazy January Challenge, and BAP Attack's Turtle Trot, here's what I have planned for the new year.

Daffycat has plans to continue her Totally Useless SAL (TUSAL) into the new year.  I've already emptied my ort jar in anticipation of starting that one.   She hasn't posted (as of this writing) the new info for 2015 yet, but this is the link to her 2014 post explaining this SAL. 

Heather from Stitching Lotus is doing her Smalls SAL again this year.  I think this will be kind of like the MMMM I did in October and November, so I'm excited for this one.  I know I will be able to work on smalls for every month of this year, it will just be a question of finishing them or not...

Measi is hosting WIPocalypse again this year.  This is a very low key SAL that is essentially all about sharing your stitching goals and progress for the year.  It will go along very nicely with Turtle Trot this year I expect.

Mel from Epic Stitching is hosting her Stitch from Stash challenge again.  This year, it will be divided into two parts.  The idea is to spend $25 (or your equivalent currency) or less on stitching stash supplies per month.   When I first heard about this back in May, I was kind of like "who is crazy enough to sign up for something like that?".  And then I spent all summer stashing wayyyyy too much, so I signed up so that I could try to keep control of it next year.  With the cut in pay that came from moving out here to Mississippi, my budget is much, much tighter than it used to be, so I will have to think careful about each and every stitchy purchase I make from now on. 

And last but not least is the D.E.S.I.G.N. of the Month, which stands for Designer Everybody Should Instantly Get to Notice. This is a series of posts that will be done by participants throughout the year showing off a current WIP from a different designer each month, with a series of reoccurring questions answered about said design/designer each month.  The idea is to introduce everyone to new designers we may not have run into/tried on our own that we think others should try (or stay away from I suppose).  I'm super excited about this one; I'm already brainstorm ideas on what to feature. 

Phew!  That's a lot.  Think I bit off more than I can chew?  Maybe so, guess we'll just have to see.

2015 Stitching Goals: Turtle Trot 2015

Well, after seeing all these posts this year labelled "turtle trot" I of course had to find out what they are.  Which leads me to yet another 2015 stitching goals post.

Turtle Trot is a year long SAL hosted by Claudette of BAP Attack.  The idea is that you pick 10 projects (or so) to work on throughout the year, and to post before/after progress pics each month so that everyone can help cheer on your progress.  The rules can be found on the 2015 signups page if you want to join me in signing up to participate. 

I believe we post progress on the 10th of each month, so I will have another post about this coming up in a couple weeks that will have actual pictures.  But since many of my TT pieces I haven't started yet, this post will be pretty boring.

As of right now, I have chosen these for my Turtle Trot 2015 projects:

1. Halloween Quaker
2. Tree Frog Trio
3. Gift of Christmas
4. Britannia Pillow
5. Gingerbread Houses SAL
6. Purple Paisley
7. Polka Dot Bouquet
8. Merry and Bright Banner
9. Reindeer Square
10. Polar Bear Square

So, with that, come back to see progress pics and my "official" starting post on the 10th!

Free Pattern Friday: January Carnations

Hope everyone had a great Christmas yesterday.  Today's free cross stitch pattern is being posted in anticipation of the start of the 2015 Flower of the Month SAL I'm hosting next year.  For anyone who is interested in joining, all the rules and details can be found here. 

January's pattern is for some lovely pink carnations.  I've started kitting this one up already, and love all the shades of pink and green in it.  Unfortunately I can't seem to find any 20 count fabric locally (I had planned to make magnets out of these) so I am going to have to rethink my plans for these patterns.  Hmmm...

Head over to the EMS Designs website to download January's free cross stitch pattern, and join our SAL if you're interested.  Look for February's pattern to be posted in a couple weeks.

Happy stitching!


If you ever come across one of my posts that contains a chart that breaks copyright law, please email me and let me know right away. In picking and posting my free cross stitch pattern posts, I make every effort to ensure the designs I share are legitimately free charts.

2015 Flower of the Month SAL

A couple weeks ago I had posted about the possibility of forming a SAL in the new year to stitch up the Flower of the Month mini charts done by EMS Designs.  I did get a few "maybes" in response to that post, so I'm going for it and forming a SAL.  Hopefully it won't just be a SAL of one... :)

So this is my own personal official sign up post for my participation in the SAL.  My goal right now is to start each new chart for each new month, although with all the other WIPs I'm planning for the Crazy January Challenge, I know I might not finish them within the month.  But progress is progress!

If you'd like to join the SAL, I have put up an official rules and sign up post in my header, or you can find the link here.  Oh, and there will be prizes for participants too. 

Hope to see some of my stitchy friends there!

Mini Mega Month Madness (2.0) SAL Progress: Week 4

Well, nothing like getting in by the skin of your teeth.  Today is the last day to check in for week 4 of MMMM hosted by Justine's Cross Stitch Blog for November.  Luckily I have some progress to report, even though this week has been CRAZY! We finally got moved into our new own actual place though, which was nice, but definitely cut into stitching time.

So I have the complete finish on Victorian Tree to show you:

And I finished beading Tropical Kitty and finishing into an ornament:

Just have to back it and it will be done.  I also finished Teton Santa's beading, but forgot to take a picture and since I am on a borrowed Wi-Fi connection at the moment (no internet at the new house for a couple weeks) I won't be able to upload this at the moment.

I still have 3 ornaments to finish beading (nuts!) which I was hoping to have done by the end of this month, but I should be able to get them done by Christmas at least!

Anyone interested in forming a SAL?

I came across a pattern of the month project in my search for freebie patterns, and for some reason, I thought they would make a fun SAL for the new year, one where everybody actually works on the same/similar projects.  So I am posting it here in the hopes I might get someone to join me. 

It's the flower of the month series put out by EMS Cross Stitch Designs a few years ago.  There are 12 square flower designs, one representing each month.  Here's what all 12 will look like when finished:

The charts are fairly simple (no fractional stitches), and they are free, so you would just have to source your fabric and floss.

I was thinking starting one each month throughout 2015.  We can check in with our progress and cheer each other on throughout the year.  Finishing, of course, in 2015 is optional (since that seems to be a problem for me lately, LOL :)

So anyway, would anyone be interested in joining me in my little stitching adventure?  If I can get at least one buddy to stitch along with, then I think I'll give it a go. 

Mini Mega Month Madness (2.0) SAL Progress: Week 3

So, it's a little early for a normal MMMM update, but since this week looks like it might be really busy, I figured I would do an update today anyway, and maybe a supplemental one later in the week if I can wrangle it.

I'm still busy on those Christmas gifts, so today's update is from the western beading front.  I did start on beading Teton Santa, and have got about halfway done on the amber beads:

This is definitely going faster than Victorian Tree so far, although I think that might partly be because the petite seed beads are supposed to have full crosses and regular seed beads only have half crosses, and so far, I've only done regular beads.

Then since a certain person wasn't home during the weekend, I took the oppertunity to switch out Teton Santa for Be Merry in my WIP list of the day, so I could get started on that.  Here's the progress so far:

That's actually only one kind of bead left, can you believe it?  Of course, that one bead takes up all those spaces in the lettering, so it will probably take awhile.

So now, it's back to beading!  I still have to finish these two, Provencal Rooster, Tropical Kitty, and Hot Stuff before Christmas.  My goal is to get them stitched by the end of the month at least, so I can focus on finishing them up into ornaments in December.  Which, we're moving again (at least only across town this time) so things will be crazy for the first part of December anyway.

Mini Mega Month Madness (2.0) SAL Progress: Week 2

MMMM is a SAL created by Pull The Other Thread and taken over hosting for November by Justine's Cross Stitch. 

So this week, the big news is....

I have a finish!!!!!

Victorian Tree is done, done, done.  Okay, well, I need to do the actual finishing up into an ornament still (backing it and adding a string) but other than that, the stitching is all done.

The coloring is a little weird in the photo (the light was wonky yesterday) but you get the general idea.

My first time beading any project, and I think it went okay.  I don't think I'll be winning any technique prizes any time soon, but there you go.  So now I'm off to work on Teton Santa, which will be the next beading project.  Hopefully that one will bead up a lot quicker, since there won't be so many random placement of assorted beads (they're more colorblocked).

I should also mention this is my first finish of the year.  Yikes.... : /

Mini Mega Month Madness (2.0) SAL Progress: Week 1

Well, you may be wondering if MMMM concluded at the end of October, why you're seeing another post for it.  The original SAL hosted by Pull The Other Thread did conclude at the end of October, but Justine of Justine's Cross Stitch blog has taken over hosting for November.  So that gives me another chance to finish up those minis I worked on all last month!  Which is good, because they're all Christmas presents anyway...

So here's my latest progress.  I didn't really get much done this week, mostly because I joined a book club last minute a few days before the meeting, so I was attempting to read the 500 page book before that happened Thursday night (I didn't make it, by the way, in case anyone was wondering.  But I tried. :)

All the main stitching on Teton Santa has been done:

And all I have left for stitches on Victorian Tree is to finish filling in the red background.  Sheesh, I never knew background could be so tedious!

So after that's done, it's onto beading, beading, beading (and a little backstitch) for my 6 Mill Hill projects.