This one is called "Winter Saltbox" and is another design by Melisa Vandergriff at Pinker n Punkin Quilting and Stitching. I stitched the pattern as designed in the called for colors with the exception of the "January" that I added to the bottom. Only four more months to go.
In the meantime, I began thinking about what my next project would be and I came across this adorable Nutcracker pattern by Vitaliya Mishchuk on Etsy:
I just adore nutcrackers at Christmas time, and I think this looks like a fun one to stitch. It will finish at about 8 X 12", and I hope to have it done by Christmas of this year.
As I have said in the past, I haven't had much luck finding Aida fabric locally that isn't either white or off white. I finally located a needlework shop about an hour's drive from me so I made a field trip. The shop owner helped me find a nice shade of what she called "sage green" to use as my background.
It's surprising to me how much orange is used for a Christmas project. Here is the "floss toss" for the first nutcracker on the left:
I plan to work on one nutcracker at a time, in between finishing my last 4 saltbox houses. It seems that after a long break, I have re-entered my "Cross Stitch Era". I was going through an old sewing box and found a few floss bobbins from back-in-the-day. They used to be a lot bigger than the ones I use now: