November Smalls

November has turned out to be a very productive month in terms of stitching. I needed a kick in the pants to get moving and I don't know where it came from but it sure worked! I started out the month working on my Christmas gifts for my granddaughters. The oldest requested a snake and the youngest, a rabbit.

 They both turned out far better than I could have hoped for. The snake is called Tribal Snake and is a design from KLT Charting Designs while the rabbit is simply called Rabbit and is from an Alisa Kit out of Russia. I will be turning these into flat ornament finishes so they may hang them or display them on an easel in their room.

I also give the girls a tree ornament each year and this year, to put less pressure on myself, I decided to use one of the many unfinished but stitched ornaments that I have in my collection. I plan on finishing these up this coming week. 

Next I finished most of the stitching on a name tree for a friend. I ran out of floss just as I was finishing the stitching on the tree stand. I ordered more but if the floss doesn't make an appearance in time I will substitute with one other that is extremely close in colour or I may just leave it as is. This name tree is designed by Nouveau Encore Designs.

I know that I had another skein of the floss but I suspect that it fell in the wastebasket near my work area and went out in the trash. This particular tree spells Trish but that T looks more like a C to me so I hope she likes it. I made a small error in counting in the letter R but rather than frogging I adjusted and made sure the same error appeared on the opposite side of the tree so the branches would appear the same. The picture doesn't show it but the fabric is a lovely silver opalescent. If the floss arrives and it's finished, the tree stand will be wider than it is in the picture. Right now the tree looks a little top heavy!

After finishing my gifts I was relieved but didn't know what to tackle next. While rooting through my stash I came upon a partially finished ornament from a start in Oct. 2011. I think I abandoned this one because I didn't like the appearance of the Toasted Marshmallow for the snowman but didn't want to frog it all out. I had got as far as stitching the main body with the Joy lettering. I had no idea what floss I had used other than recognizing the Toasted Marshmallow. The original chart called for DMC for the remainder of the floss and I could tell that I had used an overdye for the red. So I dug out several reds and compared them to what I had done until I found the right one. It had been some time though since I'd stitched with 2 strands of floss, lol!

Here is Sam Sarah Design Studios Winter Joy. It's can be found in the 2007 Just Cross Stitch Ornament Preview issue for those of you who collected these issues.

I decided that it was about time that I had a name tree for myself on our tree. I had a custom pattern by M Designs from 20005 that I ordered sitting in my stash. Imagine.... I've had it for 15 years and hadn't stitched it yet!! I still have 2 others waiting for me to stitch for my sisters too. M Designs has retired as I can no longer get these from her so I am glad that I ordered them when I did!

Mine is not completed yet but I'm stitching it on the same silver/grey opalescent as the previous one. I'm using a really lovely Christmas green silk floss by Gloriana called Serene Green. I love it so far. I've got as far as stitching the letters Y and one of the Ns.

My name tree is stitching up faster than I expected considering it's stitched over one. If I had stitched it over two as I had the earlier one it would have been far too big and I wanted to hang it on the tree, hence the over one.

I have found several other UFOs in my Christmas stitches that I might work on throughout December or I may just stitch something completely new. I haven't decided yet.

I also managed to finish off two of my larger pieces this month which I will post about next week on my monthly WIPocalypse.

Not too shabby this month considering my previous motivation, lol!