2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #47 - Love is Best by Lizzie Kate

Time for another Lizzie Kate start! I have several of her patterns, as I'm sure many of us do. Most of them are smallish, although this one had some decent stitching to put into it. 

Here's the cover photo:

And I jumped at another chance to pull out some of my stash threads and fabric. I don't remember what scrap fabric this is, but very likely Chromatic Alchemy since I was in her FOTM club for many years. 

I debated a few colour choices, as well as how long I wanted to have this out. In the end I stuck with it till I had finished it. It was a few nights of stitching to complete and I'm happy with the finish. 

Love is Best by Lizzie Kate

stitched 2 over 2 on 28ct evenweave unk name

with WDW Crepe Myrtle and Cylcamen, Jodyri Over the Rainbow and Carrie's Creations Bliss

I think most of the colours are fairly obvious, but for the CC Bliss, I fussy-stitched and fussy-cut so the colours were more aligned than they are in the actual thread. The swirl near the bottom is stitched with Bliss as it is on the skein, so that's how the colours would normally work together in the variegated thread. 

I didn't intend for the interesting colour pattern that resulted in the largest heart, that just happened as I stitched along in my normal 4x4 way of stitching with variegated thread. 

The end result is 4x6ish inches in size, so a little large for a card, but maybe a box top, etc? I haven't figured out what to do yet, but it's a finish!

I hope you've all been having a good weekend and a good start to the week. 

Happy Stitching!

Tiffstitch

May 2026 Stitching/Crafting Update

Another month, and a bit, has passed us by. It's been a little busy (understatement) and things have been a little off the rails. Everyone in my family is healthy, but a co-worker's spouse was in a terrible car accident and things have been a lot recently. Also DD played at a local baseball team's game with their band and they did a great job with the National Anthem. That took out one day of stitching, although I did get a lot of knitting done at the game. 

Without further ado, my knitting over this past month:

First, a finish!

Fair Winds hat by Celeste Knitwear

knit with 3.5m needles after 3.25mm for ribbing

in Malabrigo Rios Purple Majesty

This was a fairly quick one and I'm not sure if I love the decreases for the crown, but it's complete and I used up about half a ball of DK Rios, so I can make another hat with this really nice colour. 

Next, I managed to almost finish one ball of yarn on the scarf for my mom:

Cold Snap by Angeline Webb 

knit with 3.5mm needles 

using Great Adirondack Yarn Co Cotton DK in Hydrangea

You can see the colour a little more accurately in this photo than the one from last month. I don't know if you can tell, but the edges still curl a bit, so this will need to be blocked, although I think it's more difficult to block cotton yarn maybe? 

Speaking of blocking, I managed that for 2 other projects once I got my blocking pins back from a friend. I'm going to put the unblocked and blocked photo for the first project, so you can see what a difference it can make:

Very Merry KAL by Claire Slade

knit with Fiberstash superwash sock yarn

Please ignore the colour differences, and it's subtle, but the top and bottom edges of the cowl especially needed work, so they're much straighter. The pattern is also easier to see compared to the unblocked version. Possibly it's easier to see in person too. 

I also blocked another project that's been waiting and waiting for blocking so I could finally wear it:

Farpoint by Vanessa Smith Designs

knit with FiberStash fingering weight yarns

Just in time for summer here! So it will wait, but I am looking forward to wearing it. It was a very different project for me with lots of stitch differences, etc. Plus bobbles!

And that's the month. Not too much accomplished, but a lot of time went into the massive cross stitch projects, plus, it felt like the month disappeared fairly quickly. 

I hope you all had a good May and have a good stitching weekend!

Happy Stitching, 

Tiffstitch

2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #46 - Book Dragon by EmJayP and Paine Free Crafts

Here it is, the last week of Mega-Maynia! I didn't hit 3500 stitches on this one, but I did manage around 2K, so I'm happy with that. It was quite a busy week, so I'm happy I managed that much. 

To refresh our memories, Book Dragon will look like this eventually:

And here's my progress:

Book Dragon by EmJayP and Paine Free Crafts

stitched 2 over 1 full cross on 25ct Easy Guide

with DMC as charted

If you can tell, that's the top left corner. I'm not sure how many blues I stitched with, but it was a lot! Many different shades, and it looks pretty nice. Good thing it's my favourite colour. 

Back to normal, somewhat smaller starts this week, although it's another busy week. 

If anyone is interested in life/local news, I was in Montreal this past Saturday at the Montreal Victoire Championship Parade! It was amazing. So exciting to see women's hockey do so well and get such a good turnout for their parade. There were 20K+ people there! 

I'm way at the back, but I saw them bringing the Walter cup in, so that was exciting too!

It definitely cut into stitching time though, since it's about 2hrs each way, plus the event was about 4 hours. I got some serious stitching in the next day while resting my feet from all the standing and walking on Saturday. It was a beautiful day, as you can maybe tell from the photos. About 16C, not much breeze there since we're surrounded by buildings, but enough to keep it comfortable with all those people around. 

Hope you've all had a good week, and with more starts I should get back to posting more often as well. 

Happy Stitching!

Tiffstitch

2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #45 - Kirby by Walking Melons and HAED

As I mentioned, I had asked DD which full coverage project they'd like me to start next, and they chose this one:

I took a look through all my easy guide fabric stash, and could only find a piece of 32ct easy guide to fit the size of this project. It's so teeny! I've been using 25 or 28ct on my other full coverage projects. I did manage to get a little over 3500 stitches into this one and I think it will be enjoyable. There's confetti sections of course, but there seems to be some big sections of one colour that help break up all the fiddly bits as well. 

Here's where it's at now:

Kirby by Walking Melons and HAED

stitched 2 over 1 tent stitch on 32ct easy guide

with DMC as charted

You can see the indent where Meta Knight's sword will be, so you can tell I started in the top left corner. It's been enjoyable so far, not too much dithering and works well in Pattern Keeper. I've had to frog maybe 50 stitches or so where I miscounted, yes, despite having easy guide, but that's not too big a deal for me. 

For this week I chose another enormous project, I know, I know. But I've been eyeing this one for a while and can't wait to start, even though it looks more confetti heavy than Kirby. This will be this week's new start:

So cute! I love this one. I think I have a few other charts that have books and dragons in them, so not surprising that I have this one too, but I'm finally starting one! 

I have the kit from Paine Free Crafts and that will help me stay somewhat organized as well. 

I hope you've all had good stitching weeks!

Happy Stitching, 

Tiffstitch

2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #44 - Punch of Color Girls 6 by HAED and Hannah Lynn (Mega-Maynia)

Another full coverage start this past week! I've had this chart for a while and it was just waiting for the right time to start. I have another Hannah Lynn that I've started, but it hasn't had much progress yet. This one will eventually look like this:

I found a nice fabric from BeStitchMe and I managed to get 3507 stitches into it, all black. I thought that would be the easiest way to get a lot of stitches in. I think there's still about 10K black stitches left though!

Here's where I got to:

Punch of Color Girls 6 by HAED/Hannah Lynn

stitched 2 over 1 on 18ct Scroll by BeStitchMe 

with DMC as charted

I like this one a lot, it's the only chart where I've seen someone in glasses and with a book. I think it will be a fun one to finish, but I'm not getting ahead of myself, there's a lot of stitching left to go. 

DD was looking at what I was doing and really liked the look of it as well. I asked them if they'd like to pick the next one, and after a lot of thought and a couple false starts with charts I've already started, they settled on Kirby! 

If you don't play video games, you may not have heard of him. Kirby is a video game character that sort of swallows his enemies and gains their abilities. The opponent shown is Meta Knight, one of the fierce enemies you have to battle. This chart is discontinued, so not sure if it's available elsewhere. 

Hopefully I'll get some good stitches in, although I'm going to have to use easy guide, so this one will take a long while to get finished. 

I hope you've all had good stitching weeks!

Happy Stitching, 

Tiffstitch

2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #43 - Basset Hound Night by Unconventional XStitch (Mega-Maynia)

Here it is, my first Mega-Maynia project. My goal was about 3500 stitches, and I got close. I ended up with 3450, and since that was a nice round number, I stopped there. Again, eventually, it will look like this:

And this is some of the top left corner:

Basset Hound Night by Unconventional XStitch

stitched 1 over 1 full cross on 25ct easy guide

with DMC as charted

This is my first Unconventional XStitch project and so far it's been great. Easy to get into Pattern Keeper and the colours seem to flow well. That could be how the design is, or their charting, not sure. It seems easier than the HAED SAL project, but again, could be I'm comparing different things. 

Anyone else notice differences between full coverage designers? I don't think I've stitched enough of them to know much difference at this point. 

Hope you've all had good stitching days!

Happy Stitching,

Tiffstitch

What is Mega-Maynia?

Like many other stitchers, I often participated in Stitch Maynia, and I think a lot of stitchers have carried on some kind of tradition even after the FB group closed. There's lots of ideas on FlossTube, and I decided to keep it part of my new starts for this year and do "Mega-Maynia". 

I dubbed it that since I'm going to spend one week on 4 large projects, be it full coverage, or just really large stitch counts. 

First up is a new designer to me, Unconventional XStitch! I found this amazing project on their page and started it this week:

I have some easy guide 25 count that will work well, and will use my DMC master set for the week. I'm interested to try a different full coverage company. I've stitched HAED, Cross Stitch 4 Everyone, and Cross Stitch Collection. 

My loose plan is to stitch 500 stitches a day for 1 week, or a total of 3500 stitches, and try and keep that up on each big project. Wish me luck!

Happy Stitching,

Tiffstitch