Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that you had a relaxing New Year’s Eve and enjoyed yourself. I’m currently nursing a little bit of a hangover, so I haven’t done my New Year’s Day stitching yet as planned – but I’ll get there today. 
Before I really start up with the new year, I want to make sure I recap what I managed to stitch in 2020. It was a surprisingly good year! This will be a fairly long entry, but I’ve been a bit neglectful of my blog again due to life insanity. So time to do a little catching up…
Finishes
I completed 6 projects this year – four of which were ornaments and completely finished. My final finish of the year happened just last night at 11 pm – a great way to close out 2020:
I had to alter the alphabet block due to some crazy miscounts I’d made along the way in the upper half of the pattern. I was recharting as I went along this week because I couldn’t fit in some of the original motifs. But you know what? I’m happy with it. Maybe it’s not quite balanced here and there, but it works. And it’s done. (and it’s mine!)
My other finish in December was for an ornament exchange within my local Stitching Sisters of New England circle. We normally have a holiday party in-person, and there are gifts and tons of food and happy together times. Since that wasn’t safe with the Covid-19 epidemic, we opted instead to do an ornament exchange – everyone made an ornament. We all picked numbers, and the ornaments went into a blind draw exchange. One of the other women and I picked up and dropped off gifts at homes, and then we all gathered together on Zoom to open them and reveal who stitched what. It was a lot of fun and the ornaments were all gorgeous. My ornament went to my friend Donna:
I didn’t realize until I was halfway through the bird that I’d switched to two threads… yet somehow they fit over two on 40 ct! My brain forgot I was stitching on the smaller count fabric. I finished this as a whip stitch pillow. The backing is the same linen as the front. The cording is a 4-part braid from two of the leftover Weeks charted threads. Very happy with how this came out! I’ll likely stitch a second one for myself eventually.
Finishes that I covered in previous posts include:
- Astrology Sampler (Witches Stitches) – July 19, 2020
- To All A Good Night (Knotted Tree NeedleArt) – September 23, 2020
- Owls & Bats (Punchoka) – September 23, 2020
- Beginner Whitework (Teresa Wentzler) – September 27, 2020
WIP Progress
I’m not going to post the photos of all of the pieces I worked on this year, but including the projects above that I completed – I stitched on twenty different projects throughout 2020. The projects that will carry over to 2021 are:
- And They Sinned (Exemplar Danes)
- Midsummer Night’s Fairy (Mirabilia)
- Witches Wheel (Glendon Place)
- Hugs and Kisses (Blue Ribbon Designs)
- I Love New England (Sampler Needlework)
- Quaker Compass (Rosewood Manor)
- Elemental Dragons (Dragon Dreams)
- Snowball Fight (Dragon Dreams)
- Book of Ink Circles (Ink Circles)
- Cowboy Cats (Dimensions)
- 2020 Quaker Sampler (Linens & Threads) – 2020 New Start
- Early Americans – Full Series (Little House Needleworks) – 2020 New Start
- Coming to America: The Women of the Mayflower (With Thy Needle & Thread) – 2020 New Start
- Smoky Mountain Cats (Pegasus Designs)
Of these, I think the best progress I made was on I Love New England. I doubled what I had done on it and have completed the top chart sections left to right.
I’m hoping to make some significant progress on this in 2021. I don’t think I’ll get a finish, but I’d like to complete another two pages at least. I think now that the two side frames are in place, it should get much easier to develop going forward.
New Starts
I had six new starts in 2020. Three were completed within the year as ornaments (To All a Good Night, Owls & Bats, Trimming the Tree). The other three projects are larger and listed above in my WIP list:
- 2020 Quaker Sampler (Linens & Threads) – 2020 New Start
- Early Americans – Full Series (Little House Needleworks) – 2020 New Start
- Coming to America: The Women of the Mayflower (With Thy Needle & Thread) – 2020 New Start
So I managed somehow to essentially start and end with the same number of projects in the queue.
Trust me… that’s changing a lot in 2021. But I’ll talk about THAT tomorrow. Possibly in a FlossTube.
Time to get started on my New Year’s stitching! I hope you and your loved ones have a happier, healthy 2021.
Best,
Mel.
