Here I am, yet again, cross stitching another seasonal cross. I have two down, two more to go. First I stitched the Winter Cross.

Then I stitched the Summer Cross.

That leaves Spring and Autumn. I decided that I would start the Autumn cross because I’m not a big Autumn person. It’s the season that reminds me that winter is just around the corner. I was going to say that my allergies are pretty bad in the autumn due to everything dying, but if I’m completely honest my allergies are bad all year round. If it’s growing, dying, or thriving… I’m allergic to it.

Anyway, I thought that if I worked on the Spring Cross first that by the time I got around to the Autumn one I might find a zillion excuses not to do it. So, Autumn Cross it was.

To say that I wasn’t very excited about this cross is an understatement. If you know me, or you’ve followed my blog for very long, you know that I always over-analyze the picture. This one was no exception. The wheat tufts means that this cross isn’t gluten-free. *sigh* I know that I’m not eating them, but it still goes against my nature to have anything to do with them. The random Blue Jay feathers puzzle me as they are here year round. Plus, I’m not really sure what the red berries with orange leaves are, or the purple berries either. I was spoiled by the overly-floral winter and summer crosses because I’m disappointed that there only seems to be three flowers on here. Really? You could place two pumpkins on the cross but only one full mum? I guess that since the designer didn’t ask for my opinion I’ll just shut up about it.

I started this on December 26th and here is the progress that I made in the first week:

I actually did quite a bit. It helped that we were on shut-down last week so I spent Friday doing nothing but watching Flosstube and stitching. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve done nothing all day except stitch. Despite the fact that I’m not really ‘taken’ with this cross I am happy that the colors are a bit more vibrant in person. The picture on my pattern looks really washed out. Part of the reason might be due to the fact that the model was stitched on 14ct aida and I’m stitching mine on 32ct linen. If you’re not a stitcher it means that my stitches are smaller and a bit denser so the white background doesn’t show through the floss. Now that I’m back to work I’m not sure how much progress I will make each week, but at least I’m past the starting point!

If you’re wondering, Flosstube is a community on YouTube where cross stitchers are vlogging (video blogging… or video journaling). They talk about what they are stitching, projects that they want to stitch, anything else that catches their fancy, and of course you have to show off your recent purchases (or stash haul). Now, at first I thought this was dumb; who would want to sit and watch people showing off their cross stitched projects. Well, apparently I do. *sigh* I’m not proud of the fact, but I got sucked in. One woman who calls herself The Stash Queen started at least one new project every day of 2016 so now she has over 350 WIPs (Works In Progress)! I dislike the starting stage of a project, but she likes it so much that she’s doing it again this year. Yikes! Yes, she does work on her WIPs, but now that she has so many they won’t all be worked on nearly as regularly. She does a regular rotation where she stitches on a different WIP each day, in alphabetical order, but man that’s a lot of projects!! I’m a one-project-at-a-time kind of gal! There will be no Year of Starts for me!

The other stitching related thing that I did last week was this:

I framed my Love With A Capital L by Papillion Creations.

This has actually been finished for a few years, but due to it’s odd size I was having a hard time finding a ready-made frame for it. I wanted a white frame so that it wouldn’t take away from the stitched piece itself. It’s our wedding sampler (I Photoshopped out our last name), but you can see our initials and year of marriage. This was the only frame that I could find anywhere near the size that I needed. It was originally black, but I spray painted it white. Now all I have to do is find a place to hang it!