stitching :: Deer in the Forest, originally uploaded by earthchick.

This cross-stitch pattern has been all over Pinterest this season, just like it was this time last year. I bought it last year when it was on sale for Black Friday (as all her patterns are again this weekend – 20% off!). I worked on it off-and-on it December and January – and then I lost it! I’ve been wondering for months where it was, and have been looking for it a lot lately. I have felt so sad every time I’ve seen it pop up on Pinterest, knowing that I was more than halfway done with mine but might not get to finish it in time to hang for winter.

Then today, when I was looking for something else, lo and behold, there it was! I’m so excited to finish it! I’m very happy that I saved the deer for last – that’s the part I’m most looking forward to doing.

The pattern is from sewingseed on etsy. She has many cute patterns. I have two more of them (including one that I got as a kit), but I had wanted to finish this one first, so I haven’t cracked into those yet.

Cross-stich was actually my first craft. My 6th grade math teacher taught our class how to do it as part of a combined math/social studies project. We each had to pick a country we were interested in, then graph it out on graph paper, and then cross-stitch it. The teacher got hoops for all of us, and we got to pick out what color embroidery thread we wanted to use.

It looks like the dye lots of my thread didn’t match up well, and I also didn’t cross all my x’s in the same direction. I still love it, and I think that teacher was pretty cool for assigning this. The local newspaper thought it was pretty cool too – they actually came to the school and did a story on the project, and my picture was in the paper, stitching (I still have a copy somewhere).

It was another seven years before I took cross-stitch up for real, and until this little deer pattern, I hadn’t done it in more than five years. I’m enjoying dabbling in it again!