I'm working hard at getting this site ready. I'm excited to open it, but also a little nervous! I've put in a lot of effort, and I hope my readers enjoy it. For March I added a tutorial how to make this lovely stumpwork flower. Click for the instructions and the pattern. Of course this design can also be stitched as a regular surface embroidery project, if you wish!

Forgive my "quietness". The squirrel project ended up to be a bit more intense than I expected, but these stumpwork projects often are. I finished it Friday:


And a side view picture:

I am calling this project my four-in-one because I "accomplished" several goals with this one. First I needed a project for the Stitch Explorer challenge - Assisi style for March. It isn't a style that has had great appeal for some reason, but I did want to try it, I just couldn't think of a good motive until I remembered the jellyfish that I wanted to stitch.
I had been considering doing a project of the unique jelly fish, Turritopsis nutricula, which can switch between medusa and polyp form and live forever. I already had made a little drawing, but I couldn't work out how to do the project, until I connected it with the Assisi challenge. This jellyfish is tiny btw, under a quarter of an inch. The jellyfish was originally found in the Caribbean, but has managed to spread all over the world.
Also, I am trying hard to sort of push back my boundaries - get out of my comfort zone and try some new things. And this project is definitely very different for me. The background is free-form, and this is the first time I managed it. There are things I will do a bit different next time - like make some of the color fields a bit bigger and repeat more of the stitched elements. This was fun, and I want to do it again. I used a lot of Caron Wildflowers on it, they worked well - so I'm going to get more of them!
And last but not least, I'm going to put up an article about turkey knots soon, and I needed some examples, so I made an effort to incorporate some in this for some pictures for my article.
The Reader's Gallery
I'm going to beg anyone and everyone out there to consider sending me your pictures or links of your projects for inclusion in the April reader's gallery (and future months!). Any kind of stitching, any designer, even your stitched items you are selling. You can email me them at emily @ theflossbox (dot ) com or leave your links in a comment. No need to be shy! :)

I finished this tulip this week. It ended up being a bit larger than I envisioned, so of course it took a bit more time to do. It was a bit of an experiment doing this - with these colors and the design, but it turned out pretty well.
I'm officially blogging from here now. The old Wordpress blog is officially defunct. I'll leave it for a bit, then put up a re-direct script so people end up here. The content will be deleted, so if you have bookmarked pages, it's time to update them.
Commenting works a bit differently here. You may log in to leave a comment with your name, or you can leave anonymous comments too, but they will be moderated. I am going to try it this way first, if it shows out the spammers aren't a problem, I may change things.

I didn't sleep well last night, so I'm way off today! It didn't keep me from putting in the stitches though - I have to be very tired for that. I stitched this little spring tree last night:
It's about ATC size, although I am not sure that's what it will become. I'm leaning towards attaching it to my doodle cloth. I have more stitching completed - some more cross stitch, but I'll have to get it later, one picture was all I could manage tonight, lol.
Signs of spring are showing up here, finally!

I took a picture tonight of the project I started last night:
The tree isn't quite done yet. I'm doing raised stem band on it. I've only laid down the padding threads so far. There will be a flower in the lower right corner. I wasn't sure if it would overwhelm the squirrel. Hopefully not - the project is going to need a little splash of color. I think I'll be doing the little squirrel next, the shape and colors are coming from Jane Nicholas's stumpwork book.

I've put two new cross stitch finishes in the gallery. These I've done over the past week.
This one is named "Claire":
And this one has the great name "biscornu 5":

I'm finding that doing a little cross stitch is a nice break from my other embroidery projects. I'm not the obsessive cross stitcher I used to be - that wasn't sustainable, but I still enjoy it, so the projects will keep rolling along.