2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #90 - Who Dunnit by Bothy Threads

Another kit from my visit to Paine Free Crafts! This was a new one for me, I'd never seen this cut-thru before. I've always been tempted since they look so fun, but when I saw this one, it was a must.

Again, it's all kitted up with threads, fabric and a needle:

I've had a lot going on, so I didn't get much started, but I did get a few colours into it: 

Who Dunnit by Bothy Threads

stitched 2 over 2 on kit fabric

with kit threads

I think I'll likely do one thread of one colour at a time to get it all filled in. I know there's a lot of backstitch in these, so I'll maybe get a bunch of colour in, then do some of the backstitch, etc. 

I really love the idea of this one since my favourite book genre is murder mysteries. I read all the Agatha Christie books when I was young and that clearly got me hooked. I read fantasy and sci-fi as well, but especially enjoy a good murder mystery. 

For modern murder mysteries, I've been enjoying the Richard Osman books, both the Thursday Murder Club and We Solve Murders. There's lots of other good ones, but that would be my top recommendation. I enjoy how he writes characters. They're never one-dimensional, you get to know the character without necessarily reading "He had brown hair and was a bit over 6 feet", etc. 

Hope it's been a good stitching day for everyone!

Happy Stitching, 

Tiffstitch

2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #89 - Winter Wishes Santa by Jim Shore and Mill Hill

This week has gotten away from me a bit, but I do have some stitching to share. First off is another one of the kits I picked up from a LNS closing. 

I have a few of these Santas, and the other projects I'd picked out last year for the 100 starts weren't calling to me, so I thought I'd give this one a go. It's been a while since I've worked on a Mill Hill, and I still enjoy them. Here's one whole thread length:

Winter Wishes Santa by Jim Shore/Mill

stitched 3 over 1 on 14ct perforated paper

with kit threads

Not a ton of progress, but that's kind of how this week has been. I have a few other starts to post, and still considering that #100. I think like Leonore said, something special would be a good idea, and the Chatelaine definitely would fit that bill. This is the photo of it, if you haven't seen it before. 

It's somewhat intimidating. I was ready to start it initially, but had to wait quite a while for my thread pack. The threads are often backordered, etc. I think I even waited on the beads for now because European cross stitch mentioned they can take a while. I still like the look, although I'm still debating if there's someway to change the brick colour to yellow. My Grandma had a yellow brick house, and this is something I wanted to stitch in her memory. I still have some time to debate it. 

Hope you've all had good stitching days!

Happy Stitching,

Tiffstitch

2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #88 - The Menagerie: Highlander by Bothy Threads

Of course I had to buy something from Paine Free Crafts while I was there. I wanted to find something I couldn't easily get here in North America, and this Bothy Threads kit definitely fit the bill!

So cute, plus I don't have anything similar to it. I hadn't come across these box kits from Bothy before. There was a note inside about having all recyclable packaging, so this is maybe a new thing. Of course this is the first project I started, but it did take me a few days to acclimate back to North America. 

Here's what it looks like inside the box:

And today I had a fair bit of time to stitch and got a few different colours in. I was starting with just one, but I think it will be easier to stitch one threadlength at a time with whichever colour is easiest to get to. The aida is really beautiful, and 14count, so easy enough to stitch on. Here it is so far:

The Menagerie: Highlander by Bothy Threads

stitched 2 over 1 on 14ct kit printed aida

with kit threads

I think that's 3 or 4 different oranges in there already, so there's going to be a lot of that colour. The yellow was good to sort of set up the outline. I don't know if you can see the Nurge hoop, but I tried that out. It wasn't as tight as my Qsnaps, so not sure if I set it up correctly. I'll try again and see. 

Really enjoying this one, although you have to pay attention to the symbols. It's a paper chart, so a little more work. Someone mentioned you can put paper charts in Markup R-XP, so I might have to give that a try and see if I can use it for some of these projects. 

I hope you've all had good stitching days!

Happy Stitching, 

Tiffstitch

2026 September Wrap-Up - Surprise Trip!

So the big news from me is I got a huge surprise for my birthday this year. DH bought me a trip to Scotland to stay with my best friend from high school! She lives near Glasgow, so we were close to many things I wanted to see, the first of which is Doune Castle!

If you're not familiar with this sight, it's the castle they used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We watched Monty Python a ton in high school, and a few years ago our families went to Spamalot together, so this was an absolute must. It was a gorgeous day, remember this is Scotland, so apparently this is rare, but it was almost cloudless and beautiful sunshine all this day. We also made a pit stop at Loch Lomond on our way up:

And I think Ben Lomond is way back there. I believe "ben" is hill in Scottish Gaelic. Beautiful day, and the little cafe there, called Zest, not sure if it's a chain, had 4 vegan options for desserts/treats! That's more than I usually get anywhere over here in North America. We took some to go for later and I had an oat latte for "take away", not "to go". :) 

Doune Castle was so much fun. We spent a good amount of time there. With your entry fee you get a little audio device and you input a code to listen to some history and bits from either Monty Python, read by Terry Jones, or from Sam Heughan of Outlander fame. I also managed to crack my head on a low doorway because I was listening and not looking where I was going. I'm still a bit bruised, so I did it really well. 

The way back home was mostly past the Falkirk Wheel and we were lucky enough to see it go around pretty soon after we got there. Such an amazing feat of engineering! 

I didn't want to go through it, but the gift shop was full of interesting things, and had a nice cafe where we both had good vegan options. 

Another outstanding part was a visit to Dumfries and Paine Free Crafts!!

A very fun shop with many temptations. I picked up 2 Bothy kits, one with a Highland Coo, because of course I needed one of those. I also grabbed a couple Nurge hoops since I hadn't tried those yet. My friend doesn't stitch, but does knit and Sarah has some nice bright yarn collections, so she found some good choices for a couple hats. 

Also in Dumfries, a very Scottish sight:

A statue of Robert Burns with a traffic cone, just perfect. 

We spent some time in Glasgow as well of course and I hope I can get back again soon. It was an amazing few days. 

Stitching wise, none except for my starts earlier in the month. I kind of started a bunch at once and set up the posts so there wasn't a long gap. It was a good idea because it took me a few days to get back into the North American time zone I'm in. I did get some knitting in on the plane and while I was there. Mostly on this Corrugated Baktus shawl:

Corrugated Baktus Shawl by Kathleen Blass

stitched with 3.00mm Chiaogoo needles

with Wonderland yarns Mary Ann colourway The Snark

I took another photo so you can see the texture. It's a simple repeating pattern, so a good one for travel. 

I love the colour of this yarn and it's knitting up well. I actually thought when I wound the yarn that I had weighed it properly and made a slipknot at half the weight. However, I got to the slipknot and it didn't look quite right, but I started decreasing and had it almost finished before I realized I'd only used about half the ball. The idea behind this pattern is to use up those one-off skeins that we pick up because they're so beautiful, but then aren't sure what to do with them. 

I also worked a little more on the Spine shawl:

Winter's Spine by Lani Stanistreet

knit with Queensland Rainbow Cake cotton yarn

I'm getting close to finishing the next white section, then it will be orange. I don't really like where the colours switch, so I'm keeping the yarn out to cut in the ends later. I know it's not the point of this yarn, but it's a weird switch. 

And that's all for now, hope everyone had a good month!

Happy Stitching, 

Tiffstitch

2026 Year of 100 Starts: Starts #85, 86, and 87 - Traditional Santa Ornaments by Bucilla

This is another one of the Restash bargains! I found this kit for $5

And I really liked the look of these. Smallish, but also useful for ornaments, etc. I managed a nice start on each of them with a few strands in each:

Middle Santa by Bucilla

stitched 2 over 1 on 14ct perforated paper

with kit DMC threads

Right Santa by Bucilla

stitched 2 over 1 on 14ct perforated paper

with kit DMC threads

This is the left Santa when I realized I had made a mistake on the placement of the red thread and had to unpick it. Fortunately it wasn't too difficult to unpick it and I fixed it here:

Left Santa by Bucilla

stitched 2 over 1 on 14ct perforated paper

with kit DMC threads

I think these will be fun to get back to, and it was good to go to back to some successful starts after the issue with Joy a while ago. 

I do enjoy these, very similar to Mill Hill, but less beads. There's some charms and bells to add, so that will be fun when I get to those as well. 

I hope your days have gone well, stitching or otherwise!

Happy Stitching, 

Tiffstitch

2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #84 - Joy by Seba Stitches

I felt like a bit of a change, so pulled out this free design from Seba Designs. Due to restrictions in her county, she cannot sell her designs online any more, and I believe this one is still free in her Facebook group. 

I did a floss toss with a scrap of bright fabric with some Silks4U advent threads

It seemed like this would work similarly to the photo, it's a Dinky Dyes thread, the precursor to Silks4U, so figured it would be somewhat similar. I thought the blue could be some of the outlined part that's the darker purple in the top photo. 

Joy by Seba Designs

stitched 1 over 2 on 28ct scrap fabric 

with PR178 by Silks4U

This didn't get that much work on it. I had to frog a bit early on, and then I was stitching another part, realized it didn't line up and I have to take out the whole box with the specialty stitch in it. So this has gone away to think about what it's done for now. 

I think given how many new starts I've had this year, only having one start get me so frustrated I had to put it down is a pretty decent average. And I might have forgotten one by now if it was early on. 

I do like how the colours work on the fabric, so it will sit and rest for a bit till I figure out what to do with it when it comes out again. 

I hope you've all had better luck with your stitching!

Happy Stitching, 

Tiffstitch

2026 Year of 100 Starts: Start #83 - Chat Noir by Art-Stitch

 Okay, that Restash store had some really interesting things. One I picked up is this one:

There were several Art-Stitch charts, all for $1! I kept myself at this one for now, since everyone should get a chance to check out the store. I also found a couple kits that I'd seen before, but never picked up. One that I'd been looking at for years and had just been talking about with another friend that cross-stitches as well. That might show up this year still. It depends on time since it's a time consuming project. There were some Mill Hill kits too, some of the Santas that are more rustic style and I resisted them this time! Although one of the other kits is a Bucilla that has a few Santas. That one also might show up soon. 

The store is accepting donations, so I might bring some things by another time. 

But for now, here's the small start:

Chat Noir by Art-Stitch

stitched 2 over 2 on 28ct Demeter by Chromatic Alchemy

with DMC as charted

I'm not sure if I'll be gifting this one or keeping it. DD was with me and they really liked this one as well. They found a few things to add to their crafting stash as well, some popsicle sticks and another ball of yarn in a dark green that they said they're going to use to make something for their dad (DH). We'll see if that happens. 

I hope you've all had some good stitching time!

Happy Stitching, 

Tiffstitch