Tree Frogs

Brought a small kit with me on Christmas, decided to get one last finish before the year ends. The bright colours were fun, and once again I'm reminded just how much backstitching brings out the picture.

Pretty Roses, Robin Redbreast

I picked up a selection of magazine freebie kits from the thrift shop a month or so back, and they were perfect for making sure I didn't fall asleep at my work conference! I only ended up getting the one done, which I picked because it was the most aggressively pink of the lot and wanted to get it over with. I was having trouble getting a picture of the finished stitch that wasn't either very yellow or very blue, so this'll do for now.

Also got a bunch done on Robin this weekend. He's really coming along. I'm pretty sure I'm already done with at least one colour.

English Springer Spaniel

Made this as a thank-you for someone. It's still wet in the picture, and the thread ends are SUPER visible because the aida gets slightly see-through when it's wet. It will be hooped and hopefully dropped off sometime this week.

Silent Treatment

I needed to finish something, so I did this one last night. "Quick" little piece that took me probably about 4 hours. Yes, cross stitching takes a bit of time!

Christmas Kittens #1

I have to say, I'm not really all that pleased with how this one turned out. Part of it is fractional stitches on aida I know, but it just feels... messy. This was the first of three free patterns in this month's World of Cross Stitching.

First without backstitching:

Looks like a reindeer without the backstitching. And here he is with:

It's hard to tell that it's a bird on his head. He's also supposed to be smiling and my mouth came out more like he's trying to be super serious. Also, apparently my French knots (switched to colonial knots halfway through, then switched back to French) just don't want to be consistent tonight.

Oh well, free kit. Good to practise with.

Herbert Hedgehog

Another free kit from a magazine. Here he is without the backstitching...

And here he his with the backstitching! Makes such a difference.

Laundry Today

Unfortunately, the only cross stitch store in town is moving to another town 1.5 hours away. Fortunately, she had a moving sale 25% off kits and charts. This was one of the ones I picked up yesterday. It came with the hoop.

I always underestimate the amount of time these things will take; I figured about 4 hours, I think it actually took closer to 7-8.

Going to bring this in to work and hang it next to my un-moving rock.

Hidden Harbor

Another section completed... I thought that there would be the tops of those purple mountains in this section: I think the small darker pink section right in the middle on the bottom is the very top of the right mountain, but I'll have to get farther into the bottom section here to confirm.

I would post more frequent WIP shots, but the problem is that these sections are made up of a lot of very light colours, and it's very hard to tell the difference between what's stitched and what's still empty cloth, so you can't really see anything in the WIP shots.

I also picked up a copy of The World of Cross Stitching magazine this week, and spent a couple hours working on this piece instead of Hidden Harbor. This is supposed to be inserted in a cut-out greeting card, but I haven't made the effort to assemble the card yet.

Bunny Bunny Rock (PPG) - Quick Finish

Started and completed on the same day. PPG Episode for reference. I don't know why, but the first time I saw that episode, this line jumped out at me. So I finally decided to pull out some scrap cloth and get this idea completed.

The piece is done on 16ct off-white aida, only two colours, finished in a 5" hoop