Happy New Year!

Hello everyone, I hope you've all had a great Christmas!  We've had a lovely time but it's gone so quickly, I can hardly believe it's New Years Eve.  For the first time in years I am not working tonight and can stay up stitching until midnight!  I do have to work tomorrow though - boo! 

I have enjoyed reading everyone's reviews of their stitching this year and am amazed at the number of starts some of you had and are planning next year.  I finished lots of smalls this year for card challenges and a few bigger projects too - my reindeer, Pretty Little Hong Kong and my first HAED Forest Walk.  None of these have yet been framed or finished finished so that is one of my goals for 2016.

The reindeer is going to be a cushion by next Christmas and the other two need framing.

Bamboo Fan is still a WIP but I have made a lot of progress, I'm more than half way with the stitching.

I would like to get this finished by the end of the year.

And my final goal for 2016 is Treasure Hunt Bookshelf by HAED.  I wasn't going to start it until January 1st but it has been calling me so I decided to start it on my son's birthday just before Christmas as it will be an easy date to remember.  I've worked out that there are 282,500 stitches in it and if I did 500 a day it will take less than 2 years.  Of course I won't actually be able to achieve 500 every day but I reckon if I make some steady progress I could do the whole thing in 2 years or thereabouts.  So my goal for 2016 is to be half way through by the end of the year.  I have even figured out how to add a progress bar to my blog to keep track of how I'm doing.

So far so good, as of last night I was at about 6100 stitches on day 11 so am actually 600 stitches ahead of schedule.  I'm stitching it on 25 count magic guide evenweave 1 over 1 using the recommended threads.  I decided having done 2 over 1 on Forest Walk that it was too hard to get the needle through in the confetti heavy areas.  1 over 1 has been much easier and the coverage is fine.  At the moment I'm stitching this on my small snap frame and will move it to my bigger one when I need to but I'm not sure what to do when it gets too big for that.  I'm worried that when the snaps are covering the stitching that the stitches will be squashed and spoilt. How does everyone else manage these enormous pieces?

Thanks for visiting my blog this year, wishing you all a very happy 2016.