December's Bee, Myself & I

At the end of November I shared that I've decided to do some more embroidery as my selfish sewing. Specifically, I've joined a Facebook group called A Year in Stitches. That's doing a good job of encouraging me to pick up the sampler to try out a new stitch or keep my skills sharp. And it has the added benefit of a bit of selfish stitching every day or every couple of days!

Last month my sampler looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

Well, there are a few stitches that have been added since this picture was taken but you get the idea. I finished framing the numeral one, started another square of daisies, fleshed out the garden above with more flowers and foliage, and embellished the paisley with some pistil stitches.

Here's a close-up of the flower garden. In my mind the purple flowers in the lower right corner are violets. I didn't realize the top of the square had been cut off when I took the picture. Sorry about that. I may eventually add a spider in, or dangling from, the web.

Not only does this sampler give me a place to practice my embroidery skills, it gives me an excuse to play with the hand dyed flosses I've been acquiring. Hubby did not take the hint I gave him about a special bundle of floss I was hoping to receive for Christmas. Lots of other lovely gifts, but I had to order that for myself after the fact. With any kind of luck it will be here for some New Year's Day stitching!

There was one unexpected gift on Christmas morning:

A pretty dusting of snow!

We do get snow occasionally around here, but to have it arrive in such a timely way was a surprise.

There will be another Stitch Along check-in on the last day of the year. I'm happy to report there has been some progress on the latest caravan. I hope you'll stop by to see what I've done on that front. 😊