Progress Update: Day 28 & 29 of the Crazy January Challenge

I'm back to the two day update post today, since I forgot to take pictures of the Day 28 project, and so I didn't have anything to post yesterday.  So I managed to take some pictures last night, but the lighting turned out kind of funny, so they will look a little wonky. 

Day 28 was Wednesday, which are always my very busy, very long days, so I purposely chose something smaller.  Plus, at this point, I pretty much had the rest of my challenge all planned out.  So Wednesday was a kit by Mill Hill called Lucky Day. 

This one only has 2 colors of stitching, as the gold thread it comes with is purely for attaching beads.  If you couldn't tell, it will be a four leaf clover when I get done.  The dark green thread I started with didn't show up too well on the green paper so far.  This will be a gift for a friend who loves all things Irish. 

Yesterday was Thursday, which mean it wasn't quite as long as Wednesday, but still busy, so I chose another small project to do, a Mill Hill kit called Kitty's Stocking:

Got the top of the stocking finished.  I'm really excited about this one, since I did the Tropical Kitty kit last year and loved it.  I have one other kitty Mill Hill in my stash to do eventually too.  The one thing I'm nervous about is this one has a lot of back stitching details in addition to the beading, so I hope I can get it done in time for my upcoming gift deadline. 

And since I didn't feel like working on Kitty when I got home yesterday, I pulled Perfume Bottle out again and worked on that while we watched the new TNT series The Librarians (which is kind of kooky, but I really liked, by the way). 

The bottle itself is now completely outlined, and you might be able to see the bit of gray at the top where I started on the sprayer.  I just have the metal and ball part of that to finish, the rest of the stripes to fill in, and a couple flowers at the bottom to finish.  Hopefully I'll be able to complete it this weekend and have something new to show you.  

So now we're heading into Saturday and my weekends-without-internet, so I will be back on Monday with the updates on my last two projects for the challenge.  It's kind of bittersweet.  I loved doing all these new starts, but it is a little tiring on some days, and I am itching to go back to some of the things I've started. 

Until Monday stitching friends!

Free Pattern Friday: Pirate Snowman

Today is the last Friday in January, so it's time to post another free cross stitch pattern.  I'm going back to snowman this week, since for reasons I explained earlier in the month, I always associate snowmen with January.

Today's pattern isn't just any snowman, no.  Today's pattern is for this super cute pirate snowman, complete with pet pirate on shoulder.  I love how he even has a peg leg.

You can get the chart and key from the blog Aliolka Designs, which happens to be in Russian, but it's worth it to pick up this free cross stitch pattern.

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 D.E.S.I.G.N. - Shannon Wasilieff Designs

Just in the nick of time, I'm squeaking by at the end of this month with my DESIGN post for January.  For those of you who don't know what that is, DESIGN is a monthly feature hosted by Leonore Winterer of the blog Needle, Pen & Sword.  The acronym stands for Designer Everybody Should Instantly Get to Notice, and each month, different participants post a series of questions about a favorite/new needlework designer they've been working on.

What designer do you want to talk about this month?

So who to feature for January?  Well, that was a bit of a challenge for me, because due to the Crazy January event, I don't have a lot of consistent progress on much of anything right now.  But after some contemplation, I decided to feature Shannon Wasilieff.  She's the designer of the Gingerbread Houses SAL from Facebook last year that I'm working on as part of my Turtle Trot projects for this year. 

Have you stitched a project by this designer before?

Yes, this is my first project by Shannon, but I don't think it will be the last. I actually found out about the SAL and Shannon's designs through a post she made on the CrossStitchForum.com website.  I had never seen any of her stuff before, but I do love her designs.

Would you buy/stitch a design by this designer again? Why/Why not?

Yes, I think I will. Her designs are so very cute, and they don't have a lot of fractionals (which always make me crazy).   In fact, I have a copy of 3 of her charts that were featured in World of Cross Stitching magazine, so I will probably do one of those next.  However, if I wasn't already doing a gingerbread house themed piece with the SAL pattern, I definitely would make this Gingerbread House Street design of hers my next project. 

What made you choose this particular design/designer?

As I mentioned, I found Shannon through the cross stitch forum I participate in, and that led me to her Facebook group, which lead me to the SAL. And I pretty much can't resist anything Gingerbread House themed. Hmmm... not sure why that is though.

Did you notice anything that distinguished this designer from others?

This is going to sound weird, but Shannon has a very "blocky" sense of shading. Not sure how else to describe it, but the way she creates the effect of shading by layering colors is very unique from what I've stitched before, and I like it. I like that it's not always just the next color down (DMC 605 to 604 or something like that) but she actually uses different and coordinating colors to make her shading stand out. Of course, she uses a lot of single stitches too, which drives me crazy a bit since I'm a bit of a neat back freak. But I can deal with the frustration of that because the outcome is so worth it.

So thank you Shannon for making so many wonderful designs!  You can follow Shannon on her blog or through her Facebook group.  She's got lots of designs coming up in the British cross stitch magazines soon, but you can also find her great patterns in her Etsy store too. 

Until next month!

Progress Update: Day 27 of the Crazy Challenge

Only a few more days to go of the January Crazy Challenge.  Wah.  It's kind of bittersweet.  While in some ways, a new project every day has been rather chaotic, I do like the excitement that comes with constantly starting something new. 

Yesterday's start was the companion piece to the Day 26.  I looked up the patterns and found out they are a series of 6 blocks called Christmas Cuties by Maria Diaz, although each pattern individually is not named.  Here's my start on the reindeer, which is the only one other than the polar bear I will be stitching. 

Got a good start on his head, and the little bell around his neck.  And although the polar bear I started the day before is also super cute, I'm rather partial to this reindeer of the two designs.  Looking forward to finishing him, as he is one of the pieces I've chosen for Turtle Trot this year. 

And of course because I have an impending deadline, I also made some headway on Perfume Bottle.  Are you getting sick of progress updates on this yet?  :)

Today's planned start is another Mill Hill kit, the first of the last two I have to start and finish before March. 

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. 

How do you do that?

Quick question for any of my fellow bloggers that know:

I've seen several blogs that have progress bars for their WIPs in the sidebars.  Does anyone know how to make one of those?  Is there an app, or a website you can use to generate the code, or do you have to code it yourself?

Just curious, thanks!

Progress Update: Day 26 of the Crazy January Challenge

So, moving right along with the Crazy January Challenge, here's what I was able to get done yesterday.  This is a project I am calling Polar Bear Square, since I don't really know the original name of it.  It's a pattern from an old Christmas issue Enjoy Cross Stitch magazine, which I believe means it was originally published in either Cross Stitch Crazy or World of Cross Stitching, probably also several years ago. 

I do remember that the designer is Maria Diaz, and this is part of a set of 6 matching designs (polar bear, reindeer, snowman, angel, penguin and Santa I believe).  It will be fairly small, about 4 x 4 I think when finished, and 100% coverage with no fractionals or backstitch. 

Since there is no backstitching in this whole project, the outline of the characters is done entirely in black stitches.  So I decided to start with the black outlines first, and then fill in as I go.  So yesterday had the beginning's of the polar bear's head.  This is one of my Turtle Trot pieces, but it will probably go to the back of the rotation for now, since I have several projects with screaming deadlines approaching.

I didn't get much more done, mostly because at the moment I am trying to finish up two squares for World of Charity Stitching, the Perfume Bottle and Rainbow Mandala squares.  Here's the stitching I did on the mandala over the weekend:

Last night luckily was a nice relaxing night, so I was able to get quite a chunk of Perfume Bottle done while I was watching some of our DVRed programs. 

It's finally actually starting to look like something.  Now I just have 3 purple stripes to finish (one big and two small) and to fill in some of the shading, then do the sprayer and the two yellow flowers at the bottom of the bottle.  I can handle that, right?  Unfortunately, tonight through Thursday are going to be CRAZY so I don't know how much more progress I will be making with this one until Friday.  *sigh*

Well, at least I already know what today's new start will be.  It's going to be Reindeer Square, one of the companions to this piece.  Out of the six, the polar bear and reindeer were the two I really liked, so I will only be stitching those for now. 

Until tomorrow!

Progress Update: Day 24 & 25 of the Crazy January Challenge

First of all, to all the new readers who have joined me over the past weekend, welcome!

It's back to work on Monday, which means in my break times I now have internet access once again, so it's time for my January Challenge updates from this weekend.  So here's my two starts for the past couple days. 

First of all, I went through my stash of projects I had sat aside for this challenge and had a organizing moment (or two).  Because of some things that have come up over the course of the month, although I am keeping up with the challenge of working on something different every day I am not fully sticking to my original list.  So knowing there were only 8 days left in January at that point, I had to pick/choose what projects were the most important for me.  So I now have the rest of the month planned out.  My WIP projects have been put aside in favor for projects with closer deadlines, and I'm hoping I do get to pick them up again sometime in Februrary.  This is not to say I won't have new starts any longer in February, but I'm going to try and focus on finishing some of these things that have looming deadlines.  Best laid stitching plans and all that...

Anyway, Saturday I started a square I'm doing for Love Quilts.  It's called Silly Ladybug, and will be a (very) big ladybug with heart shaped spots.  I got half of one heart done.  Hoo boy, this is the one I'm worried about getting bored with because it has very large blocks of the same color.

My second piece for the weekend was also a Love Quilts project.  I call this one Singing Owl.  I just got a bit of purple between her eyes done, since I was focusing on the A-Team Mythbusters special we had DVRed from Saturday night.

We had company over both Saturday and Sunday night, so needless to say, the amount of stitching I got done either day wasn't very spectacular.  

I also made a bit of progress on Perfume Bottle and Rainbow Mandala, but sadly forgot to take pictures, so those will have to wait until tomorrow to post.  I really need to knuckle down and finish those, because they are due very soon.

Until tomorrow!

Stitch from Stash January 2015

It's time for my first 2015-A Stitch From Stash Check In!

Month: January
Spent: $32.30
 Earned: $8.00

So here's a breakdown of what happened this month.  I started out totally determined to not buy any more patterns and save my stash budget exclusively for items that I ran out of (threads/beads/fabric/etc).  

Unfortunately I did succumb to buying more stash despite my best intentions not to at least for the first month (hangs head in shame).  A friend and I split up several of the Brooke's Books overstock sale lots.  So luckily by only taking some of the charts, I managed to keep my spending lower.  So that's something, right?  Here's what I ended up with:

Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy from Little Women - $6.80
Alice Dress Up - $1.70
Spirit of America - $1.70
Sugar Plum Fairy - $1.70
Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, Future - $5.10
Crystal Critters - $1.70
Spooky Critters I  - $1.70
Sweet Treat Angels of Peppermint, Gingerbread, Plum Pudding - $5.10
Spirits of Love, Hope, Peace, Joy - $6.80

Total: $32.30

Hey, I said the spending was lower, not that I didn't go over budget...

*sigh* so yes, I am technically over budget by $7.30 this month.  Not a good way to start off the year.  I'm a newbie at this whole, "not stashing" thing, and I couldn't resist the sale.  But I am determined to do better next month!

However, thanks to the two finishes I did this month for World of Charity Stitching (free patterns, yay!) I can count both Leopard Print Mitten and Giraffe Print Mitten towards my budget this month.  Both are 43 x 43 stitches, so they fall into the second earning category, which means I get an extra $8 to spend for finishing those.  So with this very generous bonus option (thank you Mel!) I actually didn't do too bad.

Here's the final tally:

Starting balance: $0
January budget: $25
Finish bonuses: $8   
Total:  $33 to spend in January
- Total stash purchases: $32.30

Ending balance: $0.70

Phew!  I just barely squeaked by.  So with renewed determination to do better next month, here's to February.  I know I will have some purchases, since I need to pick up 3 Mill Hill kits for presents, and I need to get some more threads for projects that I thought I had, but can't find anywhere.  Ugh.

So until next month!

Grow Your Blog 2015

Today is the day for Grow Your Blog 2015, a lovely event hosted by Vickie over at 2 Bags Full.  This is sort of a virtual blogging networking session, so if you're one of my current readers and you've never heard of this before, head over to Vickie's main post to meet some great new blogs to follow!

For those of you who are new, welcome to my blog!  My name is Alyssa I've actually been blogging for a really long time, just not here.  :)  I started my book review blog The Shady Glade over 8 years ago in 2006.  That blog focuses on mostly book related posts for children's, middle grade, and teen/young adult books. 

In February of 2014, I really got back into cross stitching, which although it's a habit I've always had, it kind of comes and goes.  Well, this time I really got back into it, mostly due to the discovery of the online stitching community.  By September, the idea of creating my own stitching focused blog was starting to circulate, and thus Brownie's Chair was born. 

I use this blog to help keep track of my progress for many of my WIP (works in progress) and I also participate in several SALs (stitch a longs) that have updates posted here.  In 2015, I am hosting one of my own SALs for a Flower of the Month set of freebie designs, so if you think you might like to join that, you can find details about that in my header.  I also do "Freebie Friday" posts, where I share links to freebie cross stitch designs that I have found in my travels around the internet. 

For current followers, thank you so much for visiting and your continued support, and to any new followers, welcome and enjoy the ride!

Progress Update: Day 23 of the Crazy January Challenge

Moving right along with the updates today, here's the progress I made yesterday on Friday.  It was another Mill Hill day, this time with Autumn Circle:

Got the veins of one of the leaves done (I think there's 4 main leaves in the circle).  I've been doing these Mill Hill kits a lot during the week, because they are easy to grab and take to work with me, which some days is the only stitching time I have (on my lunch break).  But I only have 1 left in my "have to stitch soon" pile now, so I need to figure out some other quick projects to take with me for the rest of the week. 

I also made quite a bit of progress on Perfume Bottle.  It's actually starting to look a little like a bottle now.  You can start to see a bit of the stripes forming. 

I always work with projects with large blocks of color like this that they won't look "blended" enough in the finished project, but I think this one might turn out okay.  Sorry for the not-so-great pictures on both of these, it was storming when I took them and the lighting was less than stellar. 

I'm going to have to sit down this weekend and go through the remaining projects I have kitted up and ready to go.  Because of a few projects that have interjected themselves into my original list, I have more projects in my "to start" box than I have days left in January.  But I can't really spill into February starting things every day too much because I have several things due in March that I will need to use February to work on.  Is it silly to just do like an extra week of starts into February?  

Progress Update: Day 22 of the Crazy January Challenge

Well, so far I'm keeping up well with the solo day progress reports.  Although I know that since the weekends I don't have internet, I will still have an awfully long update on Monday. 

Yesterday was Day 22, and as expected I did go with a Mill Hill start.  This is Mum Bouquet:

This is another one of the kits I mentioned like yesterday that weren't originally on my Crazy list, but got bumped there when we found out the dates for our trip.  The goal is to finish it in time to give for a present when we go, then I don't have to pay shipping later.  I got most of the stems done yesterday, which is pretty much all that will be there for that dark green color.  There will be a LOT of beading on this one, since most of the petals are made up of bead loops. 

I'm going to try and schedule my progress post for today's project later tonight before I go internet-less for the weekend, so that's one last update I have to lump into Monday's post.  Wish me luck!

Free Pattern Friday: February Violets

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.

With just over a week until January is over (yikes! how time flies...) it's time to post the link to the next flower featured for February in the SAL.  So you can start planning now if you're going to start it next month.  :)  For everyone who is still working on January (like me) don't forget to do your progress posts at the end of the month!

February's flower is violets, so there's lots of pretty purples to go with the green leaves this month.  In addition to being February's birth flower, according to Google violets signify faithfulness and humility, and are also the state flower for Illinois, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.

Head over to the EMS Designs website to download February's free cross stitch pattern, and join our SAL if you're interested.  Look for March'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.

Progress Update: Day 21 of the Crazy January Challenge

Yay, my first solo progress update!  This is how I expected to do these updates when I signed up for the challenge, but as you can see, it didn't necessarily happen that way the past few weeks.  Oh well, life moves on!

Since Wednesdays are always my busy days, I decided to go small again.  Here is my progress on Triple Scoop by Mill Hill. 

This actually wasn't originally on my challenge list, but it is a gift for someone and I just found out our trip to see them got pushed up, so this one (and a few others) bumped a couple of the other Mill Hill kits off my list. 

I also got some more progress done on Perfume Bottle during my lunch hour yesterday. 

Sorry for the shiny reflections on the photos, I forgot to take a progress pic before I shoved it in it's bag and I was in a hurry since I was late getting back to my desk. I was finding this one really tedious, but since this picture was taken I've moved onto the next stripe over and I'm re-excited about it again.  I guess I just get bored with huge blocks of the same color.  Hoo boy, that's going to be difficult when I finish up Horse Yin Yang and get to my planned Silly Ladybug project...

So what's for today?  So far, I've done a little more progress on Perfume Bottle, and I think it will be another Mill Hill start today. 

Progress Update: Days 16-20 of the Crazy January Challenge

Hope everyone had a nice weekend.  It was a long holiday weekend for us here in the US, so I'm back today on a Tuesday with my long update from my (internet-less) weekend instead of a Monday.  Once again, this is long and picture heavy, so you've been warned.

Last week was the week of the My Little Pony projects, so Friday had a bit of progress on Apple Jack (again, only a sneak peek right now because it's for a gift):

Saturday I had a busy day of working on unpacking boxes, so I didn't get much stitching done, just about two rows:

The lighting was really wonky when I took this picture, sorry.  The fabric is normal white aida, not blue.  This is called Cat Lady Kit and is a pattern from dailycrossstitch.com.  The two rows I got done are part of the top of a cardboard box flap.  It eventually will be the whole box with three different cats sitting in it.  Nice, easy pattern, just didn't have time to do more yet.

Sunday I knew I would have a little more time, so I got this done while watching rerun of Agent Carter and then Galavant.  Luckily, no frogging this time.

This is an old pattern from a back issue of CrossStitcher magazine.  Unfortunately I don't remember which issue off the top of my head, and I don't have it in front of me to look up.  I don't even know the official name of the pattern, but in my head I'm calling it the Purple Paisley project.  Can you tell the English major likes alliteration?  It is on Lavender aida, and so far, yes, I've only stitched with purple DMC, so the progress is kind of hard to distinguish. 

Monday (yesterday) I had off from work, but the rest of my family did not, so I took the opportunity of an empty house to work on a (maybe) Christmas present for my Mom.  It will be a maybe depending on if I get it done by December this year or not.  This is also from a back issue of CrossStitcher.  I am not posting the official name here, since it will give away what it is for now and I'm not sure if Mom reads the blog or not.  So if you read this Mom, fess up so I know to hide it better in the future.  For myself, I'm calling this one Polka Dot Bouquet.

Got a nice start on a couple of the leaves yesterday before I went back to unpacking boxes and organizing again. This is on light blue aida (yes, actually blue this time).  The pattern calls for it to be on white aida with blue polka dots, but since that is a little hard to source in the US right now, I went for the light blue option instead.  This is my second project on the blue aida, the first being the Gingerbread Houses SAL project from last week.

In other stitching news from this weekend, I have another finish for 2015!  I was finally able to get Giraffe Mitten finished, so it's now on its way to become part of a quilt for World of Charity stitching. 

I was so glad to get this done, because it's actually a bit late, but being sick right after Christmas just threw me for a loop stitching-wise, and I've been behind ever since.

Onto today's progress... So during lunch I went ahead and started up the last of the MLP patterns, the final member of the "mane six" Fluttershy:

For some reason, I decided to start with her mane instead of her tail like the others.  *shrug*  Go figure.  Fluttershy is my favorite of the group, so I will enjoy this one.

So, what will tomorrow's stitching adventure be?  Guess we'll find out what I pull out of the box tomorrow!

Progress Update: Day 14 & 15 of the Crazy January Challenge

Well, I meant to get this post up on Thursday, but sadly I had to stay home from work that day due to a huge migraine I woke up with first thing in the morning.  Ugh.  And still no internet out at the farm, so if I'm stuck at home = no blogging. 

So for Day 14 and Day 15, I have updates on two more of the My Little Pony patterns.  Again, can't show you the whole thing yet, since they are for a gift and I don't want to risk them being seen early, but here's a sneak peek. 

Here's the beginnings of Twilight Sparkle's blue tail:

And the beginnings of Pinky Pie's tail.  Have to say I loved stitching the curls on this one. 

Someone asked what kind of fabric I was using on my last update post.  These are stitched on 14 count white plastic canvas, 3 over 1.  The plan is to turn them into magnets, so I needed something that was sturdy enough to stand on it's own, and believe it or not the plastic was cheaper than the perforated paper. 

Also, you may notice both are mostly half crosses.  I forgot to mention this in another post earlier, but a lot of my progress pictures have shown only half crosses.  That's because I'm a firm cross country stitcher, and I also on top of that have a weird habit of doing outlines/blocks of color all in one direction and then filling them in with the other direction once the whole block/outline has been done.  So these projects aren't all meant to be half crosses, they're just not that far along yet.  :)

The nice thing about staying home with a migraine is that once my excedrin kicks in enough to take the edge of the pain, I can do some limited activities (as long as they don't involve moving much).  Perfect for stitching.  So I did have the chance to work on the Giraffe Mitten piece I'm doing for World of Charity Stitching.  Here's where the progress from the first half of the week had left me:

And then the progress as of last night.  I just have a bit more yellow to finish filling in and then backstitching the border, and then it will be off to its new home to be sewn into a quilt with its brothers and sisters.  I'm hoping I'll get it finished soon, since it is a bit late (oops). 

The other nice thing about staying home with a migraine is that kitties will insist on keeping you company.  As long as you feed them, they'll curl up in a nice quiet ball with you while you're stitching. 

He is fast asleep and snoring in the picture.  Hmm, maybe I'm posting too many cat pictures lately.  Can you tell he's my baby?  :)

I will probably be back with another super long update on Monday with this weekend's progress.  Until then, happy stitching to everyone!

Free Pattern Friday: Happy Winter

Well, we're continuing with the non-English language blog theme for today's free cross stitch pattern.  But it was just too cute to not share. 

Today's pattern comes from a blog called Crocette Stregate, which I think is written in Italian?  If you scroll all the way to the bottom of this post, you'll find this adorable pattern of a cat dressed up in winter woolens, with the words "Happy Winter" at the bottom.  Which although the blog is in another language, the pattern is in English?  *shrug*  Whatever, it's super cute, so it's all worth it.  :)

This pattern is in picture format, and it has both symbols and a color guide contained in the picture itself, but it's a little small.  I found that clicking on the picture to enlarge it and then saving still made it a little small to see the individual symbols and key.  I solved this by doing it this way (in Firefox browser): Right click on the picture and choose "Open link in new tab" from the drop down menu that appears.  In the new tab, click on the picture once when the magnifying glass with the "+" in the middle appears to enlarge the picture.  Then save it to your computer.  That should make it big enough to see all the details of the pattern.

You can find the chart picture for this free cross stitch pattern on the blog, all the way at the bottom of this post. 

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.

Progress Update: Day 12 & 13 of the Crazy Challenge

Yes, you read that right.  I have an update on the 13th day of progress, actually posted on the 13th!  That's because I managed to get today's start done at lunchtime and I know I won't be doing more on it today because I need to get back to Giraffe Mitten. 

Sadly, don't get too excited about the on time update because I can't actually show you much of today's (or yesterday's) progress.  This week I am planning on working on my patterns of the My Little Pony "mane six".  But they are for someone who occasionally reads this blog so I can only offer you a small sneak peek at my progress.

Here is a sample of what Rainbow Dash has so far

And here is a small bit of Rarity so far

Sorry for the kind of weird pictures, for some reason the lighting is a little wonky in these.  

Of course, if any of you are part of the CrossstichCrazy2015 or Debbie's Ultimate Crazy January Challenge 2015 (DUCJC2015) groups on Facebook, I've linked both group names above to my progress post in each group where I show the full pictures of my progress so far.  But you'll have to be members of the group to see them I think. 

Not that I've gotten a huge amount done on each one so far.  Just about 20-30 minutes each during my lunch break for the past two days.  Why do things always come up on the days I want to spend hours stitching?!?!?!?

So the plan for the rest of this week is to stick with the ponies, unless something else comes up in the meantime.