Stitching books

How many cross stitch books do you own and how often do you use them?

Before I even start to count them up, let me just say that I have many, many more knitting books these days that I do stitching books. Many more. But I have been known to collect stitching books, too.

Let's see... Over to the right of my desk there are nine cross-stitch books, one of which is a huge book of alphabets and border designs (I've used some of the alphabets from this volume), the other eight are Leisure Arts hard-cover books in a series they started years, and years ago. I used a pattern from one of these books when I stitched the Santa stocking for Dave.

And then if I were to look around my monitor to the shelves on the other side of the room, there on the bottom shelf below the knitting books and yarn, are some more stitching books. Let me go take a look at them...

Ooh, that's right. That space is shared with my precious needlepoint books. I have a couple of Glorafilia's needlepoint books over there, a William Morris book, a Kaffe Fasset book, an Alice Starmore book, all about needlepoint. Then I also have five more cross-stitch books: The Secret Garden in Cross Stitch by Thea Gouverneur, 500 Flower & Animal Cross Stitch Designs by Julie Hasler, Donna Kooler's 555 Fabulous Cross-Stitch Patterns, Mary Engelbreit Cross-Stitch, and my favorite The Art of William Morris in Cross Stitch by Barbara Hammet. I haven't used patterns from any of these books yet, but I will. Honest I will. Some day.

There are a lot of single patterns, too, stand-alone jobs, but I don't think they count for this question.