X is for XS

...or as people who don't abbreviate it, cross-stitch. My pal Joan turned me onto it back in the early 1980s and I was addicted to it for a long time. When I moved from Denver to the Atlanta area about 10 years later, I started attending classes at Spirit of Cross-Stitch. It was a kind of convention where you could take classes and there was a huge marketplace of people selling cross-stitch supplies. I went to it so many years that I probably could still navigate around Winston-Salem, NC without a map. Ahhh, good times.

I've blogged about some of my newer xs finds recently, so I went digging for some old favorite links.

Dragon Dreams come from Jennifer Aikman-Smith. Her designs include both needlepoint and cross-stitch.

Hoffman Distribution is the best place to go when you are hunting for a pattern. You can search by designer, category, or keyword. They've even got a shop locator.

Told in a Garden is where you can see the designs by Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum. She's probably best known for her beautiful angels in flowing gowns. I haven't worked up the enthusiasm to commit myself to one of those angels yet, but it may happen. I've done some of her smaller pieces and some of the free Christmas designs.

More recent additions to the cross-stitch world come from Mochimochi Land. This is my version (pink substituted for the orange of the original, minor mess made of the yarn tangles) of her cross-stitch Stackable Cats. Anna's got a cute new design on her site now, featuring elves.