Story Time Sampler – Little House Chart!

by alwaysacraftylady

The last time I shared this project was waaaaaaay back in March of 2015. I love cross stitch. It is the craft I’ve done the longest, but it is slow. Slower than knitting. I have this problem with buying kits and then losing steam. The Story Time Classics stitch-a-long from The Frosted Pumpkin was a project that started off great. I completed the first 3 clues right on time, but then it got put aside for over a year.

Looking back at Instagram I now see I started working in the sampler again in July of 2016. Cross stitch is a good summer time project. The light is better and holding linen on your lap is much more comfortable than wool. I finished Story Time back in September 2016 and it has been patiently waiting to be framed ever since.

Sorry sampler, your wait just got a lot longer. In December The Frosted Pumpkin announced a 3rd sampler in their book series AND I got the kit for the 1st sampler as a Christmas gift so at this point I think I’ll wait and frame all 3 at one time.

I’m a pretty big fan of The Frosted Pumpkin style. It is cute and their taste in books really connected with me. So many of the stories were loved by my childhood self. I mean they even put my besties Anne and Jo right next to each other!

However I’m not the biggest fan of their original pick for August (Phantom of the Opera). So I swapped in another one of my favorite characters, Laura Ingalls. I’m a huge fan of pioneer fiction and it didn’t seem right to leave Laura out of the party. I took to excel and managed to work out my own pattern for August. Picking a part of the story that would fit in the frame was tough, but I settled on Laura and Jack following the wagon train as a recognizable scene.

If you’d like to swap Laura into your own Story Time Sampler just follow this link. The lovely ladies at The Frosted Pumpkin said it was okay as long as I only posted the part I designed. One tab with has a design with Jack and one without.

15Jan2017

Christmas 2016 – Part 2

by alwaysacraftylady

And now part 2! Things I made for adults in my life.

So 2016 was the year I learned to knit socks. It’s silly. I don’t wear socks during the day. However I do enjoy wearing the hand knit socks I’ve received as gifts! So I started off knitting a couple pairs for myself and realized if I was going to feed my sock knitting obsession I needed to branch out to gift knitting.

It started with this pair I made for my mom. I didn’t quite have the right colors for her so I wandered down to my local yarn shop and picked up a skein of Malabrigo Sock in Anniversario. It is quite lovely with reds and purples all intermixed. It looks a little nutty in the photos, but in person the colors blend nicely. We have fairly similar feet so they it was easy to gauge the size and I hear she enjoys wearing them.

Next up are socks for my sister. My mom and sister are pretty forgiving gift receivers should things turn wonky. Thankfully this pair also turned out just beautifully. This time I used Dark Harbour Yarns in Bluebottle, but the color really reminded me of Elsa from Frozen and the color is a gradual fade from white with speckles to a dark blue-green. Totally stunning. Nikki creates gorgeous colors!

And then there is the cross stitching! I bought the kit from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. It was a mystery stitch along and their patterns are so darling. Not sure what I’m going to do with the long narrow piece, but the bonus ornament pattern was super adorable! So I made two, one for our tree and one for their cousins’ tree!

Then there were was cooking, baking ,and tea towel calendar hemming and all those little projects that fly under the radar! A busy season to be sure, but it was fun to dive into my stash of supplies and come up with some fun customized gifts for some of my family this year.

And now back to my ever growing queue of projects! On top of sewing my usual favorites we have two weddings to attend this spring and of course Easter dresses to plan. I so looking forward to making some fun things!

1Mar2015

Story Time Sampler – February!

by alwaysacraftylady

Okay so in 28 minutes it will be March here in Los Angeles which means the next installment has come out for The Frosted Pumpkin’s Story Time Sampler. March’s book is Sherlock Holmes and I started working on it right away because I am all caught up. YAY!!!

And look who is tagging along, my new needle minder. Isn’t it cute?

Still hoping to get a photo session soon. I’ve finished 2 dresses and 3 skirts I’d love to share, but my poor husband seems to have caught what DD2 had a few days ago.

2Feb2015

Story Time Sampler – January Update

by alwaysacraftylady

Well, you might have noticed it is now February. But I am still plugging away on January’s clue for the Story Time Sampler. It is okay though. First of all, the January clue (the biggest one) didn’t come out until January 15th. Then my supplies didn’t arrive for another few days. Unless I dropped everything it was unlikely I’d finish the whole clue before January 31st, but I did what I could. So now I have Alice (from “Alice in Wonderland”) and Mary Lennox (from “The Secret Garden”) waiting for me to catch up. I’m getting there. I swear.

30Jan2015

Try and Try Again

by alwaysacraftylady

This week I feel like nothing is going quite right. Our three month old has only been taking cat naps, so I haven’t had much time to work on my projects. My Story Time Sampler hasn’t made much progress. I tried to make a dress to fit my postpartum shape and it was a miserable fail (more on that later). But I did get this beautiful quilt top pinned into its batting/backing sandwich today so tomorrow I can start quilting it all together…if I can pick a pattern.

I’m feeling so indecisive. Anyone have a suggestion? Part of me wants to hand quilt it, but I think I would lose steam quickly. So I will most likely machine quilt it. Hopefully tomorrow I will wake up inspired.

Moral of this story…not every project turns out perfectly the first time and not everything has to be made quickly.

25Jan2015

Story Time Sampler – January

by alwaysacraftylady

Anyone else working on The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery’s 2015 Story Time Sampler? I haven’t finished a cross stitch project in years, but when I found out about the 2014 version I couldn’t wait to sign up for the 2015 stitch a long. This year’s version is going to feature some favorite characters from children’s literature, but before I can fill in January’s details (Alice in Wonderland), I need to finish all the prep. Four frames down, 8 more to go!