A Halloween Project a Month

Starting in July, I added a Halloween Project a Month to my goals. I already have several other routine goals: a Christmas ornament a month, a Quaker Quilt project a month and a UFO > WIP project a month. This will make the fourth predictable monthly goal. In paging through my binders, I found that I have more Halloween than Christmas projects pending so this will give me a systematic means of stitching all these fabulous charts.

My current Halloween project is Not Forgotten Farm's The Giving Sisters. This chart reminds me of the quaint and lovely woodcut illustrations in very old books. My only quibble with it is the green faces on the sisters ... a pet peeve of mine. I substituted a flesh tone in the first of the sisters but it will have to be frogged. Against this particular fabric [Silkweaver's 32 ct Cashel linen: Days Gone By] the skin tones look positively pink ... equally inappropriate for a witch. I'll try another skin tone with a beige undertone and if that fails, I will reluctantly return to the green as charted. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and I find that once I pick up a Halloween project I tend to stitch on it exclusively until it is finished. So, it is unlikely that there will be progress on any of the other monthly goals till this is ready for the framer. Happily, it seems to be moving along quite quickly.

Starting next month, I'll have to start booking on my Christmas projects: finish TW's Autumn Faerie as a gift for my daughter and finish 2008's Prairie Schooler Limited Edition Santa as a gift for my youngest sister ... these two need to be finished by early November to allow time for framing. Then there are the TW Woodland Angel stocking to finish up for my grandson and a snowman bellpull to stitch for my god-daughter. I have a chart with a snowman balancing a large candy cane button on his nose that I think I will use for this last project. The candy cane button is in my stash and I have some lovely 4" and 6" stitch band lengths in pine green and in cranberry ... no doubt I'll find something that will work for the chart. I may have to put the Quakers and the UFOs on hold for the remainder of the year to free up stitching time for these projects.