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A couple of months ago YouTuber Lisette Crafts and Tells posted a video detailing how she wants to work through the older diamond paintings in her stash. The premise is that all of the diamond painting companies have updated their canvases quite a bit in […]
Last year while I was still working in an office I started diamond painting during my lunch. At the time we had hour long lunches and I wanted something easy to work on while I chatted with my coworkers. A lot of my coworkers were […]
It’s that time of year again! The new patterns for the 2026 HAED SAL have been released and sign ups are open through December 14, 2025. Don’t miss your chance to join me in stitching a new pattern this year! There is a Facebook group full of lovely people to stitch along with and if you meet the goals set by Heaven and Earth Designs you will receive free patterns at the end of the year. They also are giving out free patterns based on how many stitchers sign up for the SAL so sign up if you are interested!
For reference, I am just now barely finished with my first page of Innocent Dreams by L&L Designs for the 2025 SAL. I am stitching this on 25 count Evenweave 1×1 and it goes really fast when I am actually stitching it but I had to put it down for many many months this year due to our move and some life circumstances. I have been stitching on it most days for the past month and made significant progress. I usually can stitch about 300-500 stitches a day and Innocent Dreams is 85,264 stitches total so if my pace is 300 stitches a day it would take just over 284 days to complete which is totally doable. You would need to average 200 stitches a day to complete this piece in one year but HAED did release it early over the Christmas holiday so I feel like as long as you put in a longer day once a month it is feasible to finish Innocent Dreams within a year for even a slower stitcher. Keep in mind that even just finishing 6 of the 12 full pages is enough to win the prize of all the other pattern choices for 2025.
The patterns HAED chose for 2026 are all gorgeous! I am having a really hard time choosing which one to do so it will hopefully motivate me to work through my piece next year and finish it so I can receive all 12 patterns a the end of the year. Some of the pieces this year are cropped versions of larger kits and others are new never been seen before designs. The panda with wings is part of a larger piece that I absolutely love so I will try and do the larger piece. Same goes for the tower on the top right.
Once of the pieces I am seriously considering is Glistening Wings by L&L Designs. This pattern is by the same designer as Innocent Dreams which I was really happy with this year but it is a little bit more colorful and I think it would look great if I added in some sparkly stitches along with the called for threads. To be part of the contest you do need to use called for threads in the design by HAED but I will need to check if it will be ok to then also add in some sparkles to make the wings shine. I would double check though if you are doing a pattern to see if your substitutions are following the rules.
This design finishes to the above dimensions on 25 count with 87,020 stitches total. You would need to stitch an average of 240 stitches a day in 2026 to finish this piece by the end of December deadline. I looked at the floss usage chart and there is a lot of black in this piece which looks to be mostly in the outlines. It is beautiful and I do like the rendering so it will be a fun piece to stitch. It would be especially fun to stitch the flower on the bottom right after doing so much background with the leaves and sunshine on the rest of the edges.
The other piece I am strongly considering is Stone Cottage Keep also by L&L Designs. I love the flowers and have not done a landscape pattern yet so I would love to try one. In looking over the floss usage chart it also looks like this pattern does not have any black (310) in it which is fascinating to me as I have never seen a pattern without any black at all in it!
I was thinking that Stone Cottage Keep would finish a little bit smaller than Glistening Wings but it is actually slightly larger at 88,145 stitches. You would need to only complete one or two extra stitches a day at 241.5 stitches daily to complete it within one year so the extra stitches are not significant in terms of how much longer it will take to complete if you look at the daily rate. If you are nearing the end of December though and facing a time crunch that extra thousand or so stitches will make a difference in your completion success possibility for sure!
I will probably be on the fence for at least a couple of more weeks while I try and figure out which piece to stitch. Both are good choices and I love them. Hopefully next year I will finish mine and then receive all 12 pieces so theoretically it won’t matter because I will finish and receive all of them right? I will announce which piece I choose on my new YouTube channel Cozy Oscoey in another week or two so stay tuned!
Which piece is your favorite?
Please Note: HAED deadlines are firm and having a Facebook account is required. Please also read through all of the requirements as if you do not fill out surveys as required HAED will refund your chart purchase and you won’t be able to participate.
Links:
2026 Heaven and Earth Designs SAL
This week I am reviewing The One Kingdom: Book One of the Swans’ War by Sean Russell which is not the next book I listed in my last review of On the Beach.It has been a year since my last review and I wanted to […]
Hello my stitching friends! I thought I would post an update on my progress for my 2025 Heaven and Earth Designs Stitch a Long project, Innocent Dreams by L&L Designs. I started this at the beginning of the year and although I made great progress […]
Although On the Beach by Nevil Shute is not on my original list of Books I am Rereading Before I Give Them Away, it is a book that I had heard about a bunch of times before adding it to my cart and accidentally buying it off of Amazon. And yes, it was a total accident. I was in the middle of a book buying ban last winter and somehow I forgot to move this to my wish list while Christmas shopping and I didn’t realize it until it showed up in a box of gifts for the kids. Whoops! I decided to keep it and read it anyways since it had such great reviews.
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
On the Beach is a dystopian book set in a time where nuclear war has happened and most of the world is covered in radioactive material so intense life cannot happen. Australia is the lone holdout where the toxic winds have not reached the country as they spread their radioactivity around the world.
One of the ways the Australians are coping is through maintaining the order and every day routines of life, including our military man submarine captain who leads expeditions around the known safe areas to find survivors and measure the progress of the toxic wind. Our story follows him, his lady friend and his friends who have a baby to take care of as the grapple with the reality of their situation as it gets worse. This book focuses on the reality of their situation and does not sugar coat how desperate the situation is which is very refreshing.
On the Beach was very well written and I definitely think it is one of those books that you will find more meaning the more times you read it and even though it is not on my list of books to give away, all of my books are on the chopping block as we work through downsizing and decluttering. However, I will be keeping this one and reading it again in the near future. I would also love for my kids to read this one as well when they are of the right age.
VERDICT: Please read this book!
Our next book will be: Bringing up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
Links:
We are getting closer to the finish line with our first list of 10 Books I am rereading before giving them away with this week’s book, When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. When I first started this list I had high ambitions about […]
The latest book in my series 10 Books I am Rereading Before I Give Them Away Part 1 is the namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. I am most of the way through my list of books to read and will be posting Part 2 coming up […]
March is upon us and it is time for new monthly goals. This year my focus is on finishing up projects that I have so it should come as no surprise that my main goal for March is to work through my project backlog. I am continuing the goals I didn’t finish in February and starting some new ones as well. I posted a video of my March goal page set up here if you are interested in watching my process.
This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
My first goal is again to finish my Midnight Rainbow Comet piece that I made. I made good progress on this pattern in February and I really want to finish it for March so I can start on another piece for the store. Now that I have started the rainbow section the piece is getting more complicated but I am also excited for some different colors.
My second goal for March is to finish my Joyous Ladies piece from Diamond Art Club (referral link at no cost to you). It looks like they have discontinued this diamond painting but I have many more of them if you want to join me in working on those. I am not an affiliate with Diamond Art Club but they do give out referral links which is what I posted. This is my first diamond painting from them but I am completely in love with their quality and how sparkly the diamonds are.
Next up is the Wild Kingdom Shelves puzzle by artist Aimee Stewart that I started as part of my New Year’s Day puzzle start. I have made some progress on this one but it is much harder than I thought it would be to complete. I really want to finish this one in March so that I can move on to a different puzzle from my gigantic stack.
For my next goal I want to finish at least two coloring pages. In February I started this one out of my Art of Coloring Nouveau book and I want to finish it plus another page for March. It looks like this coloring book is out of print so I linked this Easy Patterns one from Amazon instead.
One of the pages I also want to work on for March is this free download from the Johanna Basford website which can be found here. I printed it on cardstock for more durability and will be working on it periodically throughout the month. I am not sure if I will finish it or not this month but I can always mark it off on the bonus wheel if I work on it.
The book I want to read for March is “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr. I was trying to read this for February but did not get to it so I definitely want to finish it this month. I started it in January but did not get very far so I may just start it over.
Lastly we have our bonus wheel where I get to choose something random and work on that. I put a few different choices on there but now that I am looking at it I don’t see diamond painting which is fine. Based on how long it took me to work on Joyous Ladies I am not sure if I will have time to start another piece this month. If I do though I will use white out to change one of the spokes of the wheel.
Alright so those are my March Project Goals. I am hoping they are more realistic this month and I will get through more of them but I know the tracking of hours will work better for me than tracking days. If I hit 30 hours this month I will be getting myself some fancy colored pencils and I am pretty excited about that!
What are your project goals for March? Join me here for my Live Crafting Togethers most Wednesday nights in March to see my progress!
Links:
Diamond Art Club (Referral code at no cost to you)
Wild Kingdom Shelves puzzle by Aimee Stewart
Easy Patterns coloring book
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The fourth book in my first Rereading Books Before I Give Them Away Series was “We’ll Meet Again” by Mary Higgins Clark. As usual I am writing a brief review of the book with my decision to either keep the book or give it away. […]
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