Go Directly to Christmas, pass Halloween and November

My title is a little play on the Monopoly game. Stitching-wise I did go directly to Christmas, as you'll see!

How's everyone? It's almost the end of October and it was 84 degrees yesterday! What?! The good thing about these temps is not having to turn on the heat.

Good news! I returned to work last Monday, not yesterday, and it kicked my butt! Sore back, especially my lower back where contact was made with the concrete floor. It's not the actual fracture site but my tailbone area that is still tender. Yesterday, it wasn't too bad. It's just a matter of getting back in the swing of things.

So I had a couple new starts-one for a contest, two FFO's, a project bag sewed up, a finish.

Here's my freebie finish for Black Cat Inn by Primitive Betty's..

and the back..

My first time ruching ribbon! Turned out fine and was time consuming sewing it on. Yes, I centered Trick or Treat on the back. And that folks was my last Halloween stitching. It's kind of strange as I love Halloween but I think it was all the big Halloween finishes I had the last 2, 3 months, like Jack's Bash and Halloween Revelry that got me wanting to do something else. I think next year I may stitch a Halloween ornament a month.

And another FFO...

Peace by Misty Hill Studio. Another ornament with no idea in mind as far as finishing it. I do like how the stars in the fabric go with the color of Peace.

I also sewed up a project bag...

Me and my lousy sewing! See the sides? I'm just a lazy sewer. I don't measure twice and cut once; I measure once and then cut too many times. There are some people out there who make gorgeous project bags with all the bells and whistles and they sell them. That's well and good. I have no plans to sell mine!

Onto Christmas!

This pattern has been in my stash since 2014. Vixen at Crow Creek..

Trying to find a completed picture of this is near impossible. This one I found at Pinterest. Designed by Pamela Dervarits. She used to have a very nice blog with free patterns and ephemera for prim items and had a few cross stitch patterns for sale. If you google her name, you'll find her blog. She no longer does anything on it. I have one other design of hers and some craft ideas. Below is my version of Vixen..

I changed a few colors on this. A through L was to be stitched in black but I thought it was too stark for this primitive design (now I'm questioning my color for the deer!), so I used a gray/green color for that part of the alphabet. I like the color someone used for the deer in the Pinterest photo. My fabric is 30ct Beige linen. I'll be coffee dyeing this later so all the colors should get muted a bit. I'll add the snowflakes at the end. You can see the roof coming in on the right. This is my nighttime stitching.

Here's my daytime stitching. This is the contest start. An Italian designer named Mani di Donna is running this contest on FB. On black 32ct linen, taking a page from Stitching Dreams Carol's book! 

The designers name is Simona and on December 21 she will pick two finishes to win. The winners get so many euros (don't know the exchanges) worth of her designs and also an extra package of fabrics and flosses. Even if I don't win, I still have an ornament for my tree. So be sure to watch this space for my FFO of this!

Uh, what's next? Oh yeah, here's my finish of that Pine Mountain kit that came with my exchange..

I have a pumpkin button to add to the blank spot between O and Q. This is basically my only Autumn finish! I'm probably going to add a piece of fabric on the right that will match the greens in this. Stitched on 14ct! That was a nice change after stitching on 35 to 36cts. 

Another finish is this design by Maggi Co's Village, Rojo y Verde (red and green)..

Hope it's not blurry on your end. This is so cute and I enjoyed stitching on it. It's big and I'm thinking of this as a wall hanging with some season appropriate fabric sewed on the sides. After my mess of a project bag, maybe that's not such a good idea!

I now have 25 finishes on the year! Happy happy.

I almost made a Flosstube video too! As it got to the 90% upload point, I stopped it. I stopped it because I kept forgetting the names of the designers, the fabric I had stitched things on, and other info. I introduced myself at the beginning and then showed my WIPs being worked on and then had a finish parade and used up 40 minutes, and that was half of my finishes! Haha. A finish parade is showing all your finishes. Floss tubers have WIP parades too. One other thing I'm not happy about is using my real name on a video. So I just need to go and open up another YouTube account in a fake name. In this day and age, you can't be too careful with using your real name for all the world to see. Another thing was that I wasn't happy with how I had my phone set up. I was looking down into it. I'd like to have it sit where I'm looking at everyone straight on. Also I kept having to flip my hair back! I needed a haircut anyway before this and it's getting long. So once I get all these things fixed, I may give it another try. Evidently, I have no trouble talking to a red button! 

I think that's it. The month went by fast since my last post. I tried Sunday but my internet was out almost the entire day. I took care of some chores this morning and now just enjoying some downtime.

I'll keep stitching the two Christmas things, and once I'm done I'll start something else Christmas!

Take care, everyone! Glad you stopped by!