Projects for the New Year

It does not feel like ten days have passed since I unwrapped these on Christmas. How did those days slip away so quickly? 

I've got a stack of kits for the new year and I'm struggling with whether to start European Bistro or Maggie the Messmaker now...or to wait for Stitch Maynia which was the original plan. 

I've also got a pretty new stack of Halloween prints that I can picture as gorgeous project bags. There's going to be fussy cutting and careful choice making and that's what kept me from plunging into the stack of Halloween prints I bought a couple of years ago.

I'm excited  to plunge into all of this!

Confetti Stitching

This week, I'm enjoying the challenge of confetti stitching. While that lasts, I'll see how much progress I can make on Ripe Apples and Pyramid of Skulls.  

The weave of the basket and the shading of the skulls are both extremely fiddly and the skull chart uses lots of similar symbols, which adds to the...what's the word I want... Challenge?  Tedium?

It's actually feeling like I could finish both of these, if this confetti stitching mood doesn't pass first. Either way, I'm not stressing over it.

How Many Times Can I Lose My Planner in Three Days?

This isn't a very fun game. If there's a place this little book can slide to or a corner of a quilt it can vanish under, it's been there. (And I'm not even going to mention that this one is a replacement for the blank planner that I had all ready to go, the one that vanished the day before I was ready to start using it.) 

It's not the prettiest layout and doesn't have the straightest lines, but it'll serve my purposes. 

Looking back at my planner for 2016, it was much cuter. I was keeping notes and lists about more things. Last year's planner has lots of weeks where I didn't fill in anything at all. Remember how my year end totals were almost missing projects? That's how it happened.

The big important stuff is in there, but I want to do better this year. I want to keep better records and I want to have more fun while I'm doing it.


That's where I think Creative Journaling: A Guide to Over 100 Techniques and Ideas for Amazing Dot Grid, Junk, Mixed Media, and Travel Pages by Renee Day might come in. This is an amazing book!

The first section shows how to do lots of different planner layouts and trackers. I've seen tons of different trackers online, but these are simple and not so intimidating and there are a lot of ideas I hadn't seen anywhere else.

Other sections get into junk journaling and mixed media and travel journaling, all in a straight forward way.

I guess I needed someone to hold my hand and show me how to cut the ends of my washi tape to make it look cute and how to make a weekly layout with circles traced around canned goods instead of a special magic circle template. I needed something to spark my creativity and this book is definitely it.

Disclosure -- The publisher sent me an advance review copy. This post contains affiliate links. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {1/3/20}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

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2019 Year End Totals

I think this is all of it! My tracking for 2019 wasn't great. I've gone through the blog and the photos on my computer and done my best to include everything. 

It doesn't look like I did as much knitting as usual. 

Maybe that's because stitching takes so much longer than knitting? In the time that  I spent on Little Girl with Cosmos or the Hedgehogs, I could've knit four or five shawls. That's a total guess, but I don't think I'm that far off.

Crocuses on the Windowsill needs a little more back stitching and the upper edge of the window filled in, but I'm counting it as a 2019 finish because it's SO close to done. 

I'm ending the year with a lot of unfinished cross stitch projects, which I'm totally fine about. My productivity was definitely off, but I couldn't explain how or why. 

2020 will be whatever it's going to be. The last thing I'm going to stress about is how many shawls I might or might not knit. 

Yan at the Dollar Tree?

The two Dollar Trees in my area with Crafter's Square aisles have both been stocking worsted weight acrylic. I was curious enough to buy a skein to knit up. I'm not sure why, because I have worsted weight acrylic for  small projects already, but new yarn is a tempting thing. 

It's not bad! One 130 yard skein was enough to knit myself a pair of pocketbook slippers. Its texture is  comparable to the softer skeins of Red Heart Super Saver. For big projects, it would make more sense to buy your acrylic at Michaels or Joanns or Walmart, especially with a coupon. But for a little project or a craft for the kids, this stuff could make sense.

{I've Been Reading} Sell Low, Sweet Harriet

Sell Low, Sweet Harriet by Sherry Harris

Sarah's latest job is planning the estate sale for a couple of former CIA agents. Their house is full of things accumulated during their extensive travels, but events quickly make her wary of working there alone. There's more going on here than a brother and sister just selling off their parents collection of  antiques. Sarah is also helping to investigate a murder at the air force base, just listening to see what she can find out about the dead woman and her friendships.

I absolutely loved this one. There's a lot of vicarious estate sale shopping to be had (which is always one of my favorite parts of this series) and the mystery kept me guessing. I always enjoy spending time in Sarah's world. The characters are well developed and relationships seem to be evolving so I can't wait to see what's coming in future books. I started reading with book one and they're just getting better and better.

Disclosure -- The publisher sent me an advance review copy. This post contains affiliate links. 

Hedgehogs in Lingonberries

I guess we can hang it on the wall while I search for the perfect frame. I'm still loving the idea of a round one. 

Kit: Hedgehogs in Lingonberries, by Riolis 

The back stitching was tedious (and I was tempted to skip most of it) but it definitely paid off. My prickly little hedgehogs are actually prickly looking. And their little noses look like actual hedgehog noses! In most of the patterns I've seen, they don't. 

Restful Rainbow Shawl

Lion Brand's Shawl in a Ball is exactly the kind of yarn that appeals to me when I'm standing there in the craft store. The promise that I can make a  whole shawl with one skein of yarn? Yes, please!  

When Hobby Lobby had it on clearance, I grabbed all of the different colorways. This one is Restful Rainbow and it's the least subdued of my choices. 

Whether or not you can get a full shawl out of one five hundred yard skein is open to interpretation. This is definitely a shawl and if I'd used a lacy stitch pattern it would have come out bigger. Two skeins would open up a lot more options.

I like the effect of gradient yarn but if there's been knots in the skein (there weren't!) this could have ended completely differently. 

Designer Cross Stitch Projects: Over 100 Colorful & Contemporary Patterns

This is one of those books that I picked up just because it was about cross stitch. The cover didn't particularly appeal to me and I'm much more interested in that "your grandma's cross stitch" that everyone else wants to avoid. So contemporary projects didn't sound promising. 

I'm obviously confused about what's contemporary. Some of these projects absolutely scream 1970s to me.

I can see myself stitching the passport cover, maybe with more muted colors or on a different fabric, and that little blue camera case.

I am absolutely going to stitch the manual typewriter because just about any pattern with an old looking  typewriter is one that appeals to me. The quill and inkwell are adorable, too.

Designer Cross Stitch Projects: Over 100 Colorful & Contemporary Patterns was a pleasant surprise and I'm glad I picked it up at the library. I do think that they're counting creatively to get to that hundred patterns, maybe including each element of the Scrabble tile alphabet. But there are more than enough great patterns in here that I might want my own copy.

If you want to see a complete flip through, click the video below --

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {12/27/19}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Procrastiknitting

The plan was to knit a couple of ballband dishcloths for my sister's new kitchen. Three seemed like a good number, but they were quick and fun and it made sense to make a fourth one so that there was one of each color combination. 

I also wanted to add something to make it more obvious that it was for the kitchen. That was going to be a little bottle of dish soap or a store bought scrubbie, then I remembered the little rounds ones I'd knitted back when I was making ballband dishcloths a few years ago. It took some searching because I couldn't remember the name of the  pattern  and there wasn't a trace of it in my blog posts from back then. (It's like this Welted Spiral Scrubbie but I was using a different pattern when I made the first ones.)

I can't believe that it was way back in 2006 when I first made some of these from the pattern in Mason Dixon Knitting. How does time pass so quickly?

{I've Been Reading} 17.5 Cartridges in a Pear Tree

There's a new Maizie Albright book out!

I couldn't quite drop everything the second 17.5 Cartridges in a Pear Tree  By Larissa Reinhart came out, but I sure wanted to. This might be my absolute favorite cozy series and this book has everything I love about Maizie and her world -- the chemistry between her and Nash, her dangerous little half-sister and the pack of small dogs that constantly follow her into trouble, and lots of fast paced adventure. Someone is determined to get their hands on a prop from one of Maizie's old movies no mater what they have to do to get it. Maizie is determined to keep the death necklace where it is. I absolutely can't recommend this series enough. Because she spent her childhood acting as Kung Fu Kate and then a teen detective, Maizie manages to be both completely unqualified as a private investigator and also able to defend herself. It's always fun to watch as she gets herself out of impossibly  ridiculous situations and I can't wait for the next book.



I've only read a few of the Lucy Stone mystery series by Leslie Meir. Invitation Only Murder intrigued me because it involves a billionaire's island that's been stripped of modern conveniences. After attending a party where the locals get a glimpse at what's been done to restore Holiday Island, Lucy is invited to spend some time there gathering information for an article. She jumps at the chance, not realizing until too late how isolated the place really is and how dangerous that would be if something went wrong. I enjoyed this one, especially the glimpse of how the family that's lived on the island for their entire lives deals with their lifestyle.

Disclosure -- I purchased 17.5 Cartridges myself. The publisher sent me an advance review copy of Invitation Only Murder. This post contains affiliate links. 

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {12/20/19}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

{I've Been Reading} Sylvia Stryker Space Case

It was more than two months into my three month trial, but I finally found what I wanted to read on Kindle Unlimited. Last week, I read through all three of the Sylvia Stryker Space Case mysteries back to back.




In I'm Your Venus, Sylvia has signed on with Moon Unit 6, this time as the official uniform lieutenant with no false credentials or computer hacking involved. On her first Moon Unit trip, she found a body in the uniform closet. This time, she finds a body in a hallway just outside the uniform ward. The carefully screened winner of the Moon Unit corporation's promotional contest isn't who she claimed she was, and  the atmosphere of Venus is having a strong effect on the ship's passengers.


 In Saturn Night Fever, Sylvia and Neptune, the head of ship security, steal a Moon Unit ship to rescue a friend who sent a plea for help via Sylvia's robot cat. With a crew they acquired under false pretenses and far more passengers than they planned on, not  to mention some sinister grey aliens who shouldn't be on the ship at all, Sylvia has more to deal with than ever.



I really enjoy this series. It's different from any of the other cozy mysteries I've been reading. It's fun and fast paced and mostly light-hearted. Imagine it as the sort of thing that one of Diane Vallere's other characters, Madison Night, might watch or read when she's not working or solving her own mysteries.


Disclosure -- This post contains affiliate links. 

{Thrift Shop Temptations} A Break from Christmas Shopping

I must not have been the only one who had the idea to take a break from Christmas shopping and duck into the thrift shops on Monday afternoon. They were more crowded than the mall. 

This piece of needlepoint was hanging in with a lot of old bedding and tablecloths. I'm not in love with the texture, which reminds me of the wrong side of a stockinette sweater, but I love the colors. Just look at the froth on the waves and the detail of the rocks!

I had to remind myself that I already have an old radio. Mine doesn't have that amazing Zenith logo....but it does have sentimental value. I didn't even check to see if green tags might be half off, because as much as I love this thing I couldn't justify bringing it home with me.

To see everything else I found, click on the video below --

What Delilah Did Presents Storyland Cross Stitch

I literally squealed when I saw Storyland Cross Stitch on the shelf at Goodwill. Then I flipped through it and realized that I'd mistaken it for another book that's on my wish list. That's okay, though, because there are patterns in this one that I want to play around with.

Every project in this book, even the ones labeled as for the courageous and determined, are simple. Most have only one color or floss.

I'll probably stitch some of them, but what I really really want to do is take the jackalope pattern and convert it to make a postage stamp quilt out of dark and light neutrals. Wouldn't that be the best thing ever?!

To watch my full flip through of the book, click the video below --

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {12/13/19}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

On My Needles in Mid-December

2019 is coming to a close and I'm thinking/hoping that I might be able to get all of these projects finished and bound off before the new year. There's also the pair of Finding the Yellow Brick Road socks, which are buried in a project bag. 

The shawl should be easy enough and so should the Toes in the Sand Socks. The second Smock Madness sock....Let's just say that this is the third time I've cast on for that one. If I make the first, I should be able to do it again, right?

{I've Been Reading} Space Mysteries and a Ghost Chicken

I knew there were going to be Kindle Unlimited books that I wanted to read and after a slow start I've finally started to find them!




A Frosty Mug of Murder by Contance Barker is the first in the Grumpy Chicken Irish Pub mystery series and I've never read a  cozy quite like this one. Ginger O'Mallory runs her family's pub which just happens to be haunted by a ghost chicken with a grudge against the pickled egg jar. When Ginger returns a stray cat and finds its owner dead, everyone she knows wants to get in on solving the mystery. All of the team work between the quirky characters made this one a fun read.



Fly Me to the Moon by Diane Vallere

I was curious about the Sylvia Stryker space mysteries, but not sure if I'd enjoy them or not. I was so wrong -- these are all kinds of fun!  Half Plunian, half Earthling, Sylvia Stryker has hacked her way onto the crew of a space cruise ship. She's more than qualified to perform the duties of the job, but things go wrong immediately. Starting with the dead guy in the uniform closet and continuing with her discovery of another stowaway. It's light-hearted and fun and Sylvia has a great personality.

Disclosure -- This post contains affiliate links.