New Year, Two New Starts, One Finish

I'm really pleased to say that so far 2012 has been a fab stitching year. On New Year's Day I had my first new start of the year and also my first finish! Sally and I had decided on a quick SAL for New Year, similar to the one we did last year. We both stitched Kelmscott Designs Miniature Monogram Hornbook. I stitched mine 1x1 on 32ct white linen using a HDF custom colour called Peacock Crowns. You can't really tell from the pic but the colour is the same gorgeous green/blue you see in peacock feathers and I love how it turned out. I'm hoping to get it finished finished over the weekend or early next week, and will post another pic then. The chart is now available on my For Sale page on the link at the top of the page. As I said in my last post I'm attempting to stitch from stash for at least the first half of this year, and will be using any funds I can make from the sale of stash that I'm parting with to either buy fabric & threads for charts I already have, or save up so I can make a dent in my growing wishlist when the challenge is over. I will be adding items all the time as I finish projects and also get the rest of my stash organised, so please keep checking for new goodies as they become available.

My other new start was Prairie Schooler September which is to be a gift for DH at some point when it's eventually finished lol. On Wednesday when DD went back to school I decided to finish kitting a few things up. I chose fabric for LHN's Quilting and for Gentle & Kind, and pulled the fabric and floss for September, intending to leave it at that. However the rotation I had worked out meant me stitching on September on a Wed night when DH usually goes out, so the next thing I knew I'd cut and prepped my fabby, found the centre and put in the first few stitches! This design is really not something I'd usually choose and it's also not my usual colour choice, but you have to do some funny things for love sometimes don't you lol. One thing I did make sure of was that I chose 40ct fabric so that I could stitch it 1x2 which is my absolute favourite, to make it more enjoyable.
I've also made progress on Alisha, 6 Fat Men and my Personalised Sampler but I'll save pics of those for next time.
I would like to start either LHN Quilting or Gentle & Kind soon. They are both for gifts and I'd like to make them into mattress pincushions, however I've never done one before! A long time ago I stitched LHN's Cottage Garden intending to make that into one, but I never got further than stitching the main design and starting the backstitch on the front piece. So I've dug that out again and have now done the backstitch on the front and back pieces and most of one of the edge strips. I need to either find some iron on interfacing which I THINK I have somewhere around here, or go buy some, so that I can starting trying to make it up into a pincushion once the backstitching is finished.
Well I think that's about it for now, can't quite believe I've managed to post again so soon after my last one lol, let's hope I've started as I intend to go on!