Stitching Progress

I used late June to do a bit of a check-in on my stitching projects to see where I was with regards to my goals for my yearly stitching resolutions:

I am trying to get my active WIPs down to 12 by 2019.  Good progress on that front, as I am down to 13 as of this week. I finished the stitching for the Mill Hill Buttons and Beads "Believe" Santa. It needs a press and to be fully finished, but I'm counting it as done.  Super fun to stitch, but whew - a lot of work as it has tons of beads and is basically full coverage.  I did switch out the perforated paper that came with the kit to put this on a 14-count hand-dyed Aida.  I've got some blueish-green batik fabric to back this with.  Undecided on a flat fold or a little pillow, but since I'm waiting on the fabric, I've got time to decide.

Also got my The Winter Garden back from the framer and they did an amazing job - I absolutely LOVE how this one came out.  The combo of that antique barn red mat with the slightly distressed, whitewash-looking frame absolutely delights me!  I couldn't wait until the cold weather to display this, so it's out on my sideboard already. 

My other goal was to get a page finish on all of my full coverage pieces this year too.  I've currently got 4 in progress: Winter's Encounter, Six of Swords, A Stitching Shelf, and Witch Way.  All but Witch Way have had a page finish, so I'm tackling that one next.  Here's the current progress:

I'm going to work on this for the remainder of July or until I get this page done, whichever comes first. 

I'm looking forward to taking a bit of a break from monogamous stitching to participate in Arbitrary August.  That'll be a randomly-generated WIP to work on each day in the month (minus a few days I'm on travel), so I'll be able to at least put a few stitches in multiple different pieces and should be a nice way to work towards my final goal of the year which is to touch all of my pieces at least once. 

Still on the fence about a new start for my birthday this month.  I'm so close to reaching my magic number of 12 active WIPs, I sort of hate to bump that number up again - and since I've got a couple of weeks until my birthday, I 'm going to mull it over a while longer.