To Thine Own Self be True

or Stitch Whatever Makes You Happy!

That has been the theme of my stitching since I finished Rachel's Large Mira RR piece.  I should really have picked up another large project with a view to finishing one before Christmas (ie Green Goddess!) but instead I have been stitching smalls.

Here is my progress on the Little Brown Splodge from last post:

It's the Owl from JCS Hallowe'en issue, stitched on black over 1.

And to continue the "over 1" theme here is another new start, this is the Fairy Tale Advent Calendar from The Little Stitcher.  I wasn't intending to stitch it over 1, I got out my stash of neutral 32 counts and found I had 32 count in Vintage Grain which was close enough.  The main thing I wanted to check was that Winter White would show up enough.  Then I looked at the little designs and thought "these would look cute over 1" forgetting it's 32 not 28!  Anyway, they have come out about the size of a postage stamp.  So I'm thinking of brown luggage tags and a small tree to display them on.  Here's 1, 2 and 3:

That's a one pence coin for scale.

The title of this post is also an allusion to a Challenge piece I stitched earlier this year.  Anna the Stitch Bitch launched a Challenge into the ether then promptly forgot all about it!  So she was nicely surprised when someone sent her a photo of their piece.  I decided to go one better and send her the actual thing.  The design Anna chose was a Plum Street Sampler freebie found here.  Now regular followers of Anna will know she has a "thing" about stitching being referred to in the same sentence as the words "Granny" and "craft" so I thought alot about the idea of being true to yourself.  I am a stitcher, I love traditional samplers but I am also a geek, a rock chick, a feminist, I have old fashioned ideas about books and education but love technology.  So what could I stitch to show the multi-faceted me?  Answer - a tattoo.

I looked through several magazines and books and found two tattoo designs from an old issue of Cross Stitcher which worked well with the original design - a dagger in the same proportions as the plant and a bird the same height as the original bird.  Here is the finished result:

I used the same colours throughout to link the two designs.

I chose the fabric because back in May I couldn't decide which fabric to use for my Alphabet Kitty.  One option was the pink version of this.  Anna commented that she liked it, but for her stash not the ornie!  Unfortunately I couldn't get anymore of the pink but I found the blue so used that.

Finally, it's time to sign up for the Annual Advent Calendar Blog Hop.  As in previous years there will be 24 doors posted on my blog.  Each person who signs up will be allocated a date, on that date they must post a photo of something Festive they have stitched, either in the past or this year.  I will then copy the photo across to my post and by Christmas Eve we will have 24 Open Doors each linked to a different blog.  Last year I had more than 24 people so we had some Double Days which was great.  To take part please email me letting me know if there is a date you prefer or wish to avoid.