Happy Dancing!

Tonight I have two finishes to report - the Robin and the Xmas Tree.  Both need to be finish finished, but the final stitches are in!

I put the last stitches into the Robin yesterday after a little frogging for the ID, and then washed and pressed it today.  I now have three weeks in which to find a suitable frame, lace it, frame it and wrap it.  I really like it - I hope my friend does too.

The other finish was this little Xmas Tree - the last of the back stitch went in early this morning.  It has also been washed and pressed, as have the two other little Mouseloft pieces that I did earlier on.  Now I just need to make them up into cards if I can find suitable colours - this is on a creamy yellow aida (hasn't photographed well) and the other two are on a pale blue.  Not exactly Christmassy colours despite the designs.

I also washed and pressed the Poinsettia that I finished a while ago.  That is now ready to be beaded, something I've not tried before.  The deadline for getting it beaded and finish finished is mid December, so watch this space.

On to work in progress.  This week you can actually see what I've done on the Beetle without going back and looking at the previous post.  A small frog visited this morning while I was working on this, but only about half a dozen stitches.  That's what happens when you are doing the laundry and handwashing stitching pieces as well as actually stitching.  There's still a long way to go on this one so I'm thinking that perhaps I need to give this an evening in the week as well as Sunday mornings.  I'll let you know.


I got another two blocks done on Carnation - it's confetti time again.  However I only have two more full blocks to go on this page and then it is on to the partial blocks in column 8 and row 10.  The plan is to get page 1 done before Christmas.

However, the kit has arrived for my cousin's baby and I need to get cracking on that.  The aida for that was washed and pressed this morning as well in order to get the creases out.  I've measured it up and it looks as if it will fit on my Lapman.  Once I get it all sorted out, I think that that will be my travelling piece (at least I will give it a whirl).

In addition, I think that I've found the piece for my other friend's 40th birthday - it is a Jayne Netley Mayhew cat from a very old issue of Cross Stitch Gold.  I'll need to buy some fabric for it - 28 count desert sand evenweave.  I had been thinking about doing some Ginger Tom bookmarks as they would be easy to send to the States, but if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well.  At the moment, I'm thinking on stitching it and sending it unframed, a) for ease of postage and b) cos I don't know what their decor looks like out there.

And lastly, but definitely not least, I've applied for a new job!  It is the perfect job - using all my skills and qualifications, regular foreign travel, more money and I can walk to work!  They've acknowledged my application - now I just have to wait to see what happens.