Fun with finishes!

This month, I entered Beth Twist's challenge of Heartstrings Around the World. This is the photo I sent to her which she selected to take part. It was fun seeing my photo among the others...

I received a wonderful pattern from her which I hope to start in the coming weeks. First, I have to spend more time with needle in hand as I have set myself a challenge to bring 2011 to a close. I want to cut back on the amount of UFOs I have in my quilt studio. I am not even thinking of those I stored upstairs when we moved in. I will move to some of those next year. Yikes!

My challenge is to use or complete some of the bits and pieces I have in my studio now. It will involve sometimes simply finishing a project. Other ones will mean rethinking something I am not happy with or needs a finish. This is the first finish from those UFOs and to read more about it, go to my blog TheCranberryChronicle by clicking on the blog name. I use this bag so often but it was not the nicest looking bag and I love it now that it has been "prettied up". *grins*

While we had our week up at Cranberry Cottage, I had also taken a ball of cotton yarn that is in my yarn basket in the studio. Part of this challenge is finally using the yarn I have bought for certain projects. This cotton yarn had a fabulous coloring which I bought in a little shop in the Mosel area of Germany. I used it to make this pretty crocheted dishcloth. I just love this shell pattern! It turned out to be just enough for one dishcloth as what you see in the darning needle is all the yarn I had left.

My current crochet UFO is coming along nicely but I will keep that for the next post but here is a peek...

Have any idea what it is? Off now to bake a cake for a SAL day tomorrow. Nice thing about baking a cake is that I can stitch a little while my cake is in the oven....