Don't Call Me Cross

So last night, I didn't knit a stitch. I cross-stitched instead.

I've been plugging away at cleaning out my craft room--I have lots of things hanging around for crafts I don't really do anymore or things that were saved for crafts I never did. I'm trying to do up the ones I want to do and rehome the ones I'm not going to do. So I can have more room for yarn, of course ;-) I just don't feel inspired in that room and it's because there's too much stuff.

Anyway, I was mucking out a big drawer and found literally a dozen embroidery hoops. I used to do a lot of cross stitch but not so much anymore; I might take it up again but a dozen hoops is a bit of overkill, isn't it? Now, I have one that I really like, and I have a couple that are antique that are just super pretty, but that left me with about 10 or so extra ;-) What the heck did I buy all of those for??? I considered donating them but then decided I would use them, along with small pieces of aida cloth I also found, to make little cross stitched gifties for my friends at work. Along with them I unearthed a few spools of lace to embellish them with, too.

I decided on simple designs (the hoops are mostly small) of things that made me think of those people, and then I put a single word underneath. I stitched a little house for one lady, bearing the word "home". Two chickies for another; "friends". A cross; "faith", and 3 rolling ocean waves; "calm". I also made a cute oval one for an online friend with whom I'm doing a swap. It's a beehive with bees flying around it, the word beneath is simply "hive". It looks cute. I'm concerned about it looking too 'country' for that friend, so I'm going to embellish it with some jute twine I have, and I'm still trying to figure out what to trim the back with; usually I use some eyelet lace. I may go for some colored lace to make it a bit less frilly.

My goal is to do up as many of the crafts as I can and make birthday and Christmas gifts for my friends and family. Then I will get the fun of doing the crafts, save a little money, and have a wonderful clean craft room to boot come December!

I'm pretty sure all crafters do this; but it drives me nuts that I will buy nice supplies to do a project, then go buy something else to do the project because I just don't want to use them up....anyone else think this is pretty dumb? No more--I'm telling myself this: you bought the supplies to use. They are not being used just sitting there in storage. Use them already!