C is for Cross Stitching (and, of course, cookies)

Cross Stitching has been my hobby for about 10 years.  It goes back to my grandmother and also to the summer that I had my wisdom teeth out. 

My Grandma was a very gifted stitcher.  Unfortunately, she died when I was 11, so she never taught me how to stitch.  Her favorite thing to stitch was birds.  Here's an example of her work:

I myself started cross stitching when I had my wisdom teeth out when I was 16.  I was laid up for a few days, so my mom picked up one of those Learn-a Craft kits at the local crafty store (which sadly is closed now, the non big box stores don't stand much of a chance anymore).  Here is the completed project:

Empowered by my newfound hobby, I went back to my local non-big-box-craft-store and picked up this kit:

I picked it up at the beginning of December, thinking I could stitch it by Christmas (ha ha ha ha ha).  By Christmas, I think I had stitched the order around the words in the bottom middle and that was it.   Oh, and I should point out that this is definitely counted cross stitch so I jumped in the deep end coming from a printed kit.  I finished it the next summer and framed it (with help from my dad) and gave it to Mom who I had been hiding it from and stitching in my room where she couldn't see it so she was surprised.  Amazing Grace is her favorite hymn.

If you look at my Finished album you'll see that I've cross stitched a wide variety of stuff over the years.  I'm missing a lot of pictures of stuff since I didn't start taking pictures of my finished stuff until shortly before I started this blog.  Here's the album:

Finished Projects

Oh, and I'm not a snob.  I do embrace all needleworks including needlepoint and embroidery.  You'll see some needlepoint stockings in the album (here's a secret:  they take less time!).

And now for something completely different, a monster that eats cookies!