EmnEllie Cross Stitch Blog

Made it to the blue and gold! Very happy with my choice of golden floss, DMC 680. It's still the right color, while not being Kreinik. Don't get me wrong, I love Kreinik, but it's a bit too fussy for me on my Christmas vacation. I'm hoping I'll get more stitches in tomorrow.  Do you eat mincemeat pies at Christmas? They're served here at the Castle!  Here's a mincemeat pie recipe. I love the jar of None Such mincemeat filling.  Here's a link to it.  I like my mincemeat pies to have meat, but the fruit ones are tasty too!  Merry Sixth day of Christmas, and happy stitching!

  Merry Fourth Day of Christmas! Xavier Romero-Frias, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons How is your Christmas so far, dear reader? There's cookies, ham, carols, and cross stitch here at the Castle! I'll be posting here a bit oftener than usual, so get ready for a big Christmas party here on the blog.  Cross Stitch Corner As promised on my last post, I've made some great progress on my DMC Nutcracker freebie, ( which can be found here at this link, for anyone who wants to stitch along with me). Here's my first two WIP update pictures:  Hopefully, I'll get to his blue pants tomorrow. While there is a wreath in the chart, I'm just going to stitch the nutcracker. The wreath looks wonderful, but I'm really focused on the Nutcracker. Not using the called for threads, instead I just reached into my floss stash and chose the colors that caught my eye. Stitching him with 3 strands of floss on what I think is s...

Happy Tuesday! Isn't wrapping presents fun? Every year I pretend to be a Christmas elf, gather up my scotch tape, paper, and gifts, and wrap wrap wrap. Most of the time I use colorful wrapping paper, with snowmen, Santa, and other Christmas themes printed on it. This year, I've used a lot of paper that is red and white like a candy cane. Next year, I'm thinking of using Kraft paper instead. Like this:  Photo by  Nathan Lemon  on  Unsplash I'll add labels, and use bright ribbons, or maybe bright twine. What wrapping paper do you like? Cross Stitch Corner I'm happy to report that I've gotten out of those couple of dark squares, and made it back to the sky:  Russian Hunting by Riolis Parking my floss has enabled me to make a bunch of progress on this WIP! Going ahead, I don't think that I'll see as much orange as when I had Nikolai's coat to work on, but I am looking forward to stitching on another horse head. Last week I shared one of my new designs th...

Happy Wednesday Last week I decided to try out a new-to-me Christmas movie, called The Shop Around the Corner.  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons It was made in 1940, and stars James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. It's based on a play by a Hungarian playwright, and the story is set in Hungary. I loved it! It was funny, sweet, with great acting. All of the ingredients for a perfect Christmas Rom-Com! Here's a plot description from IMDB : Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand each other, without realizing that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal. Oh, my Dear Friend, my heart was trembling as I walked into the post office, and there you were, lying in Box 237. I took you out of your envelope and read you, read you right there. - Klara Novak, The Shop Around the Corner What's not to like?!? Cross Stitch Corner It turns out that when you listen to podcasts and cross stitch, you get a lot of cross stitch...

Happy Wednesday! It was an interesting week here at the Castle. A new visitor flew in:  Doesn't he look dashing? Judging from his outfit, he must have flown in from some frosty climate. He hasn't told me his name yet, instead he's taken up residence on the fireplace mantle. Cross Stitch Corner Usually I stitch in the morning, but last night I got my stitching done at night. Does that mean I'm a member of the nighttime stitcher club? (Does such a club even exist?) It was nice to lounge on my sofa, fire up a podcast or two, and make progress on Nikolai. I glanced at last week's WIP update picture- which you can see here. Here's this weeks progress:  Now, I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised at the progress I've made! I'm nearly finished with this column! The splash of orange on his coat was great to stitch, and it was thrilling to reach the horse's nose. Nikolai might look a bit out of focus right now, but I'm convinced that backstitch w...

Happy Wednesday Thanksgiving was wonderful. It's such a happy holiday, and it lasts in my heart all year round. On the more practical and less romantic side (but still very delicious) Thanksgiving also lasts until all of the leftovers are finished. That means that I finished Thanksgiving yesterday. Next step, adorn the Castle with Christmas and Advent decorations! Circle of Georg Flegel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Why am I posting an artistic representation of waffles from the 17th century? We'll cover that in Odds & Ends. In the meantime, let's proceed to the cross stitch. Cross Stitch Corner Remember my optimism from a few posts ago, where I boldly declared that Turkey Bay would be finished before Thanksgiving? That proved to be a bit... overconfident. However, someone helpfully pointed out that there is a Thanksgiving weekend, so technically Turkey Bay could still be in my rotation. (Yes, I am a seasonal stitcher). Happily, I can report that I have a finish...

We need to have a talk about Cranberry sauce.  Photo by Rasa Kasparaviciene on Unsplash It's easily one of my most favorite sweet sides when I have a savory main dish. Besides the most well known Turkey-Cranberry combo, there's: Chicken and Cranberry Ham and cranberry Pork and cranberry. It might sound like a weird combo at first, but remember that pineapple and pork go well together Cranberry sauce in a sandwich. The Monte Cristo (the king of sandwiches) comes to mind Next up is the big debate; jellied or whole berry? I like them both, but I lean towards jellied, because I think it looks so pretty in slices on a plate. A cold slightly derailed my progress on Turkey Bay, but I've still got some progress to share: The gravy boat is done! Stitching the gravy boat handle was so much fun. That new pumpkin on the right is adorable, isn't it? Those orange swathes above the right hand side of the boat are flower petals.  The curly green thing next to the gravy boat handle is ...

Don't you just love November? Thanksgiving, Fall weather, wrapping Christmas presents in anticipation of December. It's a lovely month. A general observation. People seem to split into two camps- those who stay in Autumn mode in November, and those who start decorating their house with Christmas decor in November. I'm a Autumn mode in November person. Here's a good example of this. Would you eat those Little Debbie Christmas Tree cakes this month? Or would you wait for next month? Are you listening to your Michael Buble Christmas album of an evening this month, or not? Moving on to my WIP update, here's my progress on Turkey Bay: The gravy boat is looking good! And those waves are so fun to stitch 🌊 I've also picked up Red Alphabet Sampler again. Finished the letter N and now I'm working on the letter O: Sorry about the poor lighting, but I'm writing this post in the evening. Anyways. This chart is one that I designed, and while supplies last, I'm g...

October was here and gone. That means a few things here at the Castle. The first is that the Halloween decorations have been put away, and Fall decorations will take their place. Secondly, Trick-or-treat moon will return to its project bag- and Turkey Bay gets to come out for a whole month. Pretty good progress for one month! Getting that border connected was really rewarding. I never did get to the Cats mouth though… Anyway. More pictures: Behold! My Autumn project bag! And that's where I got to on Turkey Bay last year. First stop, finishing that Turkey in the bottom-left corner. Modest goal for this month- finish Turkey Bay. Lately, I've noticed that when people stitch my Irish charts, they've been adding a surname and a wedding date. Currently, I don't have a chart that allows for that. So, I've decided to design an Irish wedding sampler. It will have numbers, letters, and a place to put a wedding name, and a wedding date. Stay tuned! In the meantime, here's ...

Can you believe that it's almost Halloween? It feels like October just started yesterday! My Halloween night movie lineup will probably be one (or all) of these movies: The Mummy (1997 with Brendan Fraser) Jurassic Park (the original) Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein (hilarious!) I may also watch something else, and that will most likely be whatever my streaming service recommends. Chances are I won't be stitching while watching these movies, since you can't eat candy, be scared by a movie, and stitch all at the same time. At least I haven't figured out how to. Letters have appeared! Those candy corn letters will be much more legible when the backstitch goes in. That little orange blob above the checkerboard is a piece of candy corn. Lastly, here's a big picture of Trick-or-treat Moon Happy stitching!