TUSAL - January ORT report

And so here I am at last with a real TUSAL report (Don't know what this is? Click the button above!) - it's been months since I last did one despite me keeping a jar for each month for it but with me having some health issues and working on a lot of secret stuff it just didn't happen. Instead I've made a photo of every single ORT jar I have - from September 2012 to December 2014 - there have been a few months where I didn't stitch at all and for those months I do not have a jar but looking back it's amazing how much I DID stitch.

The top row are the jars for 2012, just 4 of course as I only found out about this in September. The next row down and the two on the left of the 3rd row are the 11 jars for 2013. I had some really productive months there as some jars are almost full. If you consider that these are standard 450 gr / 1 lb jam (jelly) jars that's quite a bit of ORTs! the other 4 of the 3rd row and the jars on the bottom row are all from 2014, also 11 jars ,  which shows that I did quite a lot even if I didn't post about them.

A new year and a new shape of jar, sadly the company that made the jam changed the jars they put the jam in some time ago and Decembers jar was the last one I had of that shape. The new jars are taller and skinnier, which might just be a plus as you can see the layers of the threads better.

So what did I work on to make all those pretty layers?
Well there was the Death of rats and Mike's Mushrooms which you can read all about in my blog post D.E.S.I.G.N. & Death of Rats. There was Teresa Wentzler's Castle Ridge that I started on January 1st. I got quite a bit done on this but I set it aside to work on the ornaments of the month and give mike's mushrooms some love and will pick it up again at a later time, I'm in no hurry to finish this so am switching between projects.

 

Then I made the two Ornaments of the Month which you can read about in this blog post: WIPocalypse - January, new finishes and more and last of all is the little freebie that came with this month's CrossStitcher magazine on Monday - an owl scissor case with matching scissor fob.

I just need to finish a little bit of the eye and then the top piece of the case is ready. The body will be done on a separate piece of Aida and after hemming the top of that I will layer the two together with some felt to make the back and sew them together, although admittedly I'm not so sure about the felt that came with the kit as it's rather flimsy and very stretchy so I may just dig in my stash for a nice bit of cotton to use instead. The pattern gives instructions to do a scissor fob that is one side cross stitch and one side felt but I'm thinking that if I have enough thread left I might just do the other side with embroidery too as they have enough fabric to do that.