I realize that today is not January 17th, but that’s when I took my last progress picture.

So, here where I was on Jan 2nd:

That was all stitched while I was off of work right after Christmas. Man, those were some good days!

Now that work is back in full swing and I’m back to working a ton of overtime I haven’t had nearly as much time to stitch. In fact, in the last week I think that I’ve maybe found an hour to stitch. *sigh*

Here is the progress as of Jan 17th:

That is the outer-most stretch of the arm.

Here’s the game that I play as I stitch these crosses: I don’t look at the finished picture at all so I have no idea what it is that I’m working on unless I can tell for sure from the pattern. So, the pumpkin and acorn I definitely knew what they were going to be as I stitched them. And the heads of wheat I could obviously tell due to the backstitching on the pattern. Those little circles, though? Were they berries? Are they the centers of flowers? Am I stitching a piece of Swiss cheese? One never can tell! That’s one of the many things that I enjoy about cross stitching; even though I know what it should look like at the end I often find myself trying to solve the mystery of what I’m stitching.

In other stitching news, I’ve been meaning to try my hand at sewing a project bag in which this can be stashed when I’m not working on it. As I was watching Flosstube I saw a version where it has a clear vinyl front so you can see your project in the bag. Also, Bob has decided that he prefers to sleep next to the heat vent by my cross stitch corner, so his fur tends to migrate and take up residence on my project. Not that I don’t love his specialty fibers appearing in my projects, but it would be nice to keep it to a minimum.

I also want to try my hand at making a grime guard for my Qsnap. If you search on Etsy you can find all kinds of them, but why buy one when you can easily make your own? I just have to find time to do it! A grime guard is kind of like one of those steering wheel covers that you can buy for your car; they are made of fabric with elastic on the edges so that it wraps around whatever you put it on. In this case you would wrap it around your Qsnap frame and then place all of your extra fabric in it, too. I want to use it as more of a fabric holder than keeping the grime away from my project. Again, I just have to find some time to make one! When I do I’ll definitely show you a picture.