Stormy weather ...

The Met Office are promising us gale force winds and associated havoc, so I've battened down the hatches and will wait and see!

In the meantime, I have stitching to show you.

This is the snowman ornament for my youngest niece.  I went for a singing snowman because she would like to sing in the school choir.  Another quick start and finish for me - started on 21st and finished on 25th October.  Now I just need to get my iron back from my sister so that I can wash, press and finish finish both ornaments.

Moving on to Serena, she now has both wings, eyes and a mouth.  There is some more back-stitching to do on her gown, but I have finally decided to leave all the beading to the end.  That way, the process can only drive me mad once and I only get the one opportunity to drop beads all over the floor instead of four!  Now that Serena is nearly finished, she's looking quite pretty.  I am now tossing up between Grace and Angelique for my next angel.

Finally on the stitching progress front, here is Train of Dreams.  I got another three blocks done today and am now on the bottom page for this column.  The green book is now completely finished and the next column will see me start on some new features.

I am however frustrated because I am having difficulty tracking down the fabric that I need for my next project.  It is in an old issue of Cross Stitch Gold dating back to August 2002 and calls for 28 count Zweigart Cashel linen in beige.  In the magazine it looks a sort of sandy colour, but there is no number listed to help me identify it on the Zweigart website.  I confess that I am a bit OCD about this sort of thing - I need to be using the right fabric and threads, and find it difficult to make changes to projects.

On a brighter note, I lost 0.5lb last week, so still heading in the right direction, and am now down to 11 stone 11lb.  Unfortunately there is likely to be cake or sweets this week as two of my colleagues had birthdays while they were on leave last week.

It still seems to be quite quiet outside but I am going to call it a day and turn in.  All the best to you and yours, and may the frog steer well clear of your stitching.