Delft finish and start

Shall I say that this last week was marginally better than the previous one?  

I still have no idea what is happening with my own car and am still driving the courtesy car.  However my old garage has made an offer in relation to the fuel leak but wants further information regarding the excess oil issue.  

Dad went for his CT scan on Wednesday and now has to wait three weeks for the follow-up appointment - keep calm and carry on!

Things went better on the stitching front.

 I finally finished Delft 3.  The corners of the border were slightly fiddly, but it is now done.  However I still have no idea what sort of flower it is.

On the same evening I started Delft 4.  I know that this is a snakeshead fritillary because they grow in Mum's bog garden and come in both purple with white splotches and white with purple splotches.  I'd like to get this done quite quickly and then all four made up into cards, so that I can then start on Christmas pieces, either cards for Marie Curie or ornaments for my nieces.

Nice progress on Train of Dreams.  You can see the top of the spine of the first book on the left.  There's quite a lot of confetti to contend with as well as the 25 count fabric, so it is stitching up quite slowly.  As I am doing this using the English method (one x at a time), the back is solid, even more so than Carnation because of being 25 count rather than 16.  I am now using both thimble and tweezers to finish off my threads on the back.  This has not stopped me jabbing myself hard in the left thumb, although I did manage not to get any blood on my work.

Carnation is still going to plan.  I am hoping to have a serious happy dance in three weeks time.  I have started looking at page 3 already and there seems to be a lot more confetti and a lot less blocks of colour than on page 2.  As the only deadlines on this piece are the ones that I set myself, and as at some point I am going to need to find time to stitch for my younger niece, I am considering cutting back to three blocks a week on page 3.  

Finally, someone wrote on their blog last week that they had put some of their stash on Ebay, so I thought that I would take a look.  While I was looking, I noticed that I hadn't actually bought anything since May.  For some strange reason this meant that I had to go mad and bid on loads of vintage cross stitch magazines.  My stash has now increased by assorted older copies of Cross Stitch Gold and Cross Stitch Collection, not all of which have arrived yet.  Next time someone mentions Ebay on their blog, I am going to turn and run the other way!