This set of projects did not come from my mother. Rather, I found these in my own stash a couple years ago. I do not remember how they were acquired. Had I bought them? Did my mother gift them to me? Did they come from the stash of one of my mother's friends who had died? I do not recall.
Again, for a reason I do not recall, I decided to work on these in maybe 2021 or 2022? There were three of them in my stash. As I got close to finishing the third one in late 2022, I noticed the kit numbers were almost sequential. That sent me on an internet search to see if there were other kits. There were! Some of them were holiday-themed, some not. Not all of them appealed to me, but I did like the snowman, so I bought it for a modest fee.
I remember starting the snowman and thinking, "I won't have it done for 2022, but I'll have these finished for Yule 2023." Well, that was before my mother died. So . . . not so much.
Now that I've been home a few months, I got back to the embroidery. I didn't
work on it every day. These aren't projects I can take with me and work on
when I'm stuck waiting somewhere, as I can with knitting. I can embroider
happily with my magnifying light at home, but not easily without it. I can
stitch while listening to news shows, but not if I need to watch the screen.
Sometimes the embroidery required more thought than I wanted to give,
especially late in the day. Other times poking at it was just the thing. They are all a fair amount of work for an ornament. If you were diligent and did a little stitching every evening, I'd estimate you'd finish about one a month.
It isn't uncommon for me to deviate from directions in a kit. These I followed as written. There were a couple possible mistakes in the instructions. Directions for the tree asked you to set aside 4 pieces of embroidery floss to make the corded bows. You need 5, since you can't get two bows from one piece. I ran short of floss in that kit, but was able to use a piece from my general stash. Similarly, directions for the Santa said to retain one piece of floss to make the hanging cords. You need 2 pieces. In that case, there was enough in the kit. There seemed to be not quite enough plastic raffia in the kits. Somewhere along the way I acquired more plastic raffia, so I used a bit more for the bows at the top to fill them out.
An internet search for "Karen Avery cross stitch" turns up lots of designs. I
guess she was a designer for Dimensions in the 1990s? All the Wire Whimsy kits
seem to be copyright 1994. From the number of kits, I am guessing this was a
full-time job.
I've put these in the large crate of embroidered holiday ornaments. Did I need more Christmas ornaments? No, I did not. But I enjoyed working on them. They
are a little more county-folksy than my typical taste. It is nice to think 30
years after they were manufactured, they are complete. When the holidays roll
around, they will be ready to be enjoyed. Score a victory point for finishing
something that's been in stash for a long time!
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