Cathy's January Ornament

It took awhile, but I finally found an ornament to stitch for January.  It's Fa La La from the 2000 Christmas Ornament Issue from Just Cross Stitch and was designed by Ruth Sparrow of Twisted Stitches fame.

The fabric is 25-count Opalescent Lugana in Elegance and is actually more beige than purple.

Cheryl Decks the Halls for January

This year I am stitching a small Christmas Sampler which includes many of the themes for the year.  So I am "Decking the Halls" with some peace and ornaments, and by the end of the year - I will be decking the halls with a lovely holiday sampler.

The chart is from Cross Stitcher Magazine (Nov 2017). 
Happy January!  

January - Deck the Halls Inspiration

Thanks to the inspiration from Mary, we have various Christmas songs for the themes to our stitching this year.  I thought this was a wonderful idea and I was pleased to see Kaye managed to add a video of the song and the lyrics too in her last post of 2017.

I thought I'd do a little research and share the results with you.  Deck the Halls is based on a Welsh song called Nos Galan dating back to the 16th Century.   The Welsh version was a New Year song which makes it particularly appropriate for January's theme.  The English words were written by a Scottish musician in 1862. 

This clip includes both English and Welsh versions

Here's a more modern version by SHeDaisy which some of you may recognise from a certain Disney movie:

And just for fun, here are some animals joining in with the song:

On to stitching.  This song provides so many ideas for our stitching.  You could chose the words Deck the Halls or Fa, La, La for a typographic design such as this one:

Drawn Thread - Deck the Halls

or this one:

Little House Needleworks - Fa La La

There are any number of designs with holly on them, with or without words.  This one is from Victoria Sampler:

Victoria Sampler - Boughs of Holly

And for a freebie there is this design from Gazette94 which I stitched in 2012.  She designed it as a New Year chart which fits rather nicely with the Welsh version of the song:

Gazette 94 - Bonne Annee

The final design I will show for inspiration is a large sampler I stitched back in 1995 from a chart in Cross Stitch Collection magazine:

I nearly made it on time!

Hi lovelies, 

Here is my January Christmas Ornie (yes, I know dear Jo, it is another possibly-too-big-to-be-an-Ornie finish - lol!), but I just loved this design when I saw it:

Deck the Halls by Prairie Schooler, Book #81

32 ct Willow Linen, DMC threads.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have made at least two errors (😂). I wonder if you can spot them? 

Uh oh!  Big Ooops! The lovely Carol has pointed out a third error - I forgot Santa's belt!  See the photos below for the finally finished version! Thanks, Carol!

Hugs, Kaye

P.S. Everyone has been lovely and said that they can't see the errors but there are two - top right corner and bottom right corner.