First Finish!

Hey, it's small, but it's a finish!! I present Squirrel Fob by Heart's Content:

Well, it's not a fob yet. But I'm calling it a finish. I do have a whole stack of things I need to finish...mostly ornaments, but also some needlework accessories.

In my absence, I have also made progress on some of my other challenge pieces. I've been keeping up with my goals for Random Thoughts:

That blackwork border was fun! I thought it would be a pain, but it was so clever, I marveled at it the whole time I was stitching it.

I managed to get one of the corner gardens done on Chatelaine's Mystery II...but it's not looking good for me finishing this in 2011! This one corner took me so long, and there are 3 more to go...not to mention the rest of the thing!

That's a LOT of Jessica stitches!!

One band down!

I did everything I needed to do this month on Random Thoughts to put me on a good pace for finishing this year:

That's the entire top row, with two of the borders done. The instructions say to wait to stitch the borders until you withdraw the threads for the hemstitching, but the way I figure it, I only need to wait on the borders around the four corners where the threads will be withdrawn. I redesigned the white house to look like the townhouse where we live...mainly because I thought I had counted wrong while stitching it and was looking for a way to reduce the amount of frogging! But now I'm happy that I did it. =)

Only one wrinkle...I noticed the large pine tree is one stitch too far to the right. *sigh* I've already cut it out so I can just start restitching next month.

Another Start and Progress

I made another start this weekend: Drawn Thread's Random Thoughts.

It's not a very good picture; it's been very dark the last few mornings (from rain clouds) and I had to use a flash. You would think that with being snowed in the whole week, and having a 3-day weekend, I would have gotten a lot more done. However, despite the snow, I still had to work (from home) the whole week, and the fabric didn't show up until Saturday afternoon. We also spent some time with friends, so that's not a bad thing. =)

I did make a little progress on Mystery II, as well, although it has a serious case of the frogs.

I even frogged a bit of the center (haven't restitched it yet), since I finally came to grips with the fact that I do not like the "new" Waterlilies Antique Brass and I never will! (Too orange--or "on-ange" as a friend's daughter used to say.)

The rest of the week I'm going to try and finish the top row of Random Thoughts and maybe a couple border pieces. You're supposed to wait until the end to stitch the border, but I think the withdrawing of the threads for the hemstitching will only affect the corner borders.

How's everyone else doing?