I turned back to an old love this summer, after many years away: cross stitch.

I started back with when a friend was posting her embroidery in Instagram. My first pattern back was one I’d bought two years ago and never made. I manged to finish a bit over half of it before we were heading off to Grand Teton and Yellowstone. I guessed that I would probably finish it while there so it wasn’t worth bringing with me. Of course, I forgot about it entirely until I was going through my pile (yeah, a pile) of cross stitch stuff in my office.

(Pattern is Crafty Manifesto by Satsuma Street)

On the Teton/Yellowstone trip, I manged to finish another Satsuma Street pattern, Blue Village. I’d started it just before we left so it was maybe 90% complete on the trip.

(Blue Village, when it was almost done being stitched)

When I finished with Blue Village, I was on my trip and still needed something to work on. I had managed to find two great kits at park gift shops – one of Grand Teton and another of Old Faithful. I decided to start on the later, as it was smaller in size and not completely filled in.

(Yellowstone National Park kit finish)

I was loving the big projects, so I immediately (this was early July) started on the Lovely Little Washington, DC pattern from Satsuma Street. This is still a WIP but I haven’t touched it in a few weeks.

(Lovely Little Washington, DC)

My current big project is a surprise for my brother and sister-in-law so I’ll just post a link to it. (Click here.) It’s about 80% complete, I’d say.

Lastly, I do work on smaller things, mostly projects that take an evening or two to make. These are mostly combinations of patterns I find online and fonts from Sublime Stitchery or another book I have or got from the library. I have a another one I’ve made but it’s not family friendly (picture is here).

(Made for a friend who is LGBTQ and, well, pretty awesome.)

(Made for my husband’s coworker who is obsessed with squirrels as they don’t have them in his native Australia.)

(WIP: Will eventually have a bunch of different sized hearts on it. The unicorn thing is a needle minder and not part of the design.)

(This was my cross stitch project I threw together in England/Wales. I love the look of the pattern but not at all sure about my color choices. This will probably languish for awhile.)

DO you cross stitch? Any favorite patterns?