festive animals and calendar girls - Cross Stitcher 339

The latest issue of Cross Stitcher is in the UK shops now and I have loooooads of pictures for this one... of the not-well-lit-but-informative (perhaps) kind.

First up, the festive animal hoops designed by Durene Jones. I loved working on these, not just because of the Christmas theme but also because I was reading a book at the time in which there was a family tradition of picking out the tree together and it was mostly the father`s thing but after he suddenly died, the family kept on doing it every year in his memory. So one minute I was going Awwwww! while stitching the dogs, and then I started on the cats and giggled every time I looked at them because I pictured my husband with the Christmas lights, doing The Detangling (another annual tradition, I`m sure, in many households).

I love stitching pieces that evoke such feelings and I also have a couple of photos for these hoops to show what a difference adding the backstitch made - I was in a stitching frenzy at the time, so I forgot to stop and take a pic for the first one, but I remembered (just!) when I started the BS on the cats and by the time I got to the fox, I was fully cognisant and stopped after I finished the XS to take a photo (let`s focus on this fact and not the quality, shall we?). So here they are:

With this same issue of Cross Stitcher, readers (of paper copies, I`m afraid, not digital) get a CD-case type calendar, designed by Maria Diaz. I stitched 4 of the 12 wee calendar girls and they were great fun to work on - you know that "same, but different" feeling? The same little girl every month was just familiar enough to make it quicker to stitch e.g. her hair but not enough to get boring and "same old, same old" because she wears/does something different each month. And on top of that, I got May, June, July and August - what`s not to like? 😉 It was a nice wee breather among all those Christmas projects. Happy stitching!