Sew It Begins

I've tried my hand at blogging before--some attempts (The 30th Year) have been more successful than others (Mumblings and Musings). It appears that I accomplish more when I have a specific goal in mind, such as taking a photograph once a day for an entire year. This time, I am inspired by my friend Laura, who recently pointed me in the direction of her knitting blog, A Knitting Knerd.

Now, I've never knitted a stitch in my life, although I've been crocheting since I was about 11 (courtesy of Aunt Marge). My real crafting passion, though, is counted cross-stitch. I've lost count of the number of projects I've completed over the years (dating back roughly twenty years now), but most of my focus has been on wedding and baby gifts. I seem to lose my motivation when making something for me, and I have more than one partially-stitched project stuffed in a bag in a closet.

I've long wanted to document my stitching in some way, which includes trying to obtain photographs of as much of my 'back catalog' as possible. Some are, I think, out of my reach at this point, but I'm hoping to gather most of them and post them here. I have a feeling this is going to entail quite a bit of "Hi, can I come over and take a picture of X?" phone calls to friends and family!

In the meantime, however, I am on the verge of starting a new project. My friends Jason and Maria had a baby boy last week, which seems like the perfect occasion to start sewing. I completed one for his older sister, Alexa, which you can see below.

I'm planning to use the same alphabet and numbers for her baby brother, although 'Zacchaeus' is going to take up quite a bit more space! I've spent the last few days plotting out the design on graph paper, to determine the overall size required. I'm looking forward to setting the first stitch and really getting things underway!