Reading Jane Johnson's The Tenth Gift has really put me in the mood to stitch. I've mostly only been managing to work on a few smaller projects on the weekends. I tend to work on seasonal projects when I can fit them in, so in honor of the upcoming 4th of July holiday I've started working on a project by Little House Needleworks. It's a freebie chart that's several years old now called "Early America". Little House Needleworks tends to design samplers with a folksy, Americana type feel to them, and I have lots of her designs in my stash. You can see how another stitcher finished this design here. I am stitching on linen as well, but over two linen threads. Another stitcher stitched it over one linen thread, but stitching over one drives me mad (too tiny to work on and the threads slip and slide all over the place). I'm not sure how I'll finish my project.
Another design by Little House needleworks that I started (ages ago actually) is a small project called "ABC 123". It's only perhaps 4" square, but I can't seem to finish it. To be honest I don't like stitching with white floss very much--at least not when I need to use two plies of the floss (cotton floss has six strands). If you're messy, it's really obvious, so I take lots of care that my stitches are laying very straight. This of course slows the process down. I tend to get lazy and don't want to stitch even slower than I normally do--hence taking forever to finish it! If I can just get beyond that little white house...
At the end of last year I completed a project, and I'm sure I already shared this photo of it. It's by Drawn Thread, one of my favorite designers. It's called 
a Toccata, which is a term used in music meaning "touch piece" meant to show off and improve an individual performer's skills. In this case a Toccata is used for learning, practicing and improving a stitcher's needlework skills. So last year I finished Toccata #1, though I still have to hemstitch it. I meant to start working on Toccata #2 early this year. As you see in my photo I've yet to stitch a single motif. It will be lovely when I manage to stitch any of it. If I could just get that first motif stitched--it's starting that's always hard. I have Toccata #3 all lined to work on when I finish #2. And I just this week discovered that Toccata #4 was released last month! It's going to cost an arm and a leg (maybe even two legs) to buy, but I have to get it to complete the whole series. The thing is--it's so much easier to pick up a book when I only have a few minutes free time, whereas stitching isn't something I can do quickly. In past years I've completed twenty or more projects. So far this year, I've only managed two! And they were both small. On the upside of things, I've spent very little money this year on stitching supplies. If only I could say the same about books.