Magazine S.E.X

I stopped yesterday to get my stitchy mags for the month. Barnes and Noble was well-stocked! I had been a bit worried that, with as busy as I've been the last couple weeks, I would miss out on this month's issues, but they had what I wanted.

It's a good month in magazine world. The two American magazines I bought, Cross Stitcher and Just Cross Stitch were lovely. Lots of summer charts in them. But I think this is a the best US Cross Stitcher I've ever seen. There's a LOVELY chart in there by Mike Vickery of wildlife. It's a big design, requiring a 22X16 piece of fabric. HTB really liked it; he did a double-take on it, and he really doesn't do that for anything that's not lighthouse-related. Sooo . . . he might be getting that for a Christmas gift.

The UK magazines were really nice. Their designs are always really lovely, and I find that magazine designs are the biggest temptation to break my freebie/UFO/ornament resolve. Cross Stitch Crazy has a Bentley Bear design, which I can actually stitch this year, as it's a "free kit" and fits in my rules, but it also has a really sweet All Our Yesterdays design, which is not in the rules. I could probably spend a decade stitching all the things I have been finding--maybe it's the lure of the forbidden, LOL. Cross Stitcher didn't have a lot of charts I want to stitch this instant, but it did have a magnetic chart guide, which will probably come in handy for stitching very intricate designs. And Cross Stitch Collection. I think that is, by and large, my favorite British magazine--it had a nice mix this month of Joan Elliott, a chart of elephants, Sarah Kay and little stuff.

I did waiver about buying Cross Stitch Gold. I'm trying to change my way of thinking so that I don't have to buy every issue of every magazine. This is one that is easier to do that with. It really is a magazine that runs hot and cold for me. They will have a run of really nice charts, then things I wouldn't stitch if I had to. This was an OK month, but not a great one. They've been having a lot of OK months. But last issue was wonderful, so it's one of those things I have to actually think about. Does anyone else do this.

Thank you for the comments about teaching my niece to stitch. The ideas of things to help her are wonderful! At least I'm not the only one with fractional issues. I'm hopeful that a different chart will really spark her interest. But I take it as a good sign that the problems and the loss of a needle didn't discourage her--heck, she was willing to crawl under the porch for that needle. That is a brave stitcher--they battle stinkbugs on that porch, LOL.