Belated Christmas Present

Strange things sometimes happen when mailing via APO. Truly, my Christmas present from my best friend was mailed before the tenth of December. I picked it up from the post office today - it had been sitting somewhere forgotten for months! Isn't this great?

These are little watchmakers' storage cylinders and their own metal box! The box got slightly dented in the looooong transit, but isn't it neat? He separated out all kinds of small stone beads and watch parts so I can use it immediately to embellish things. I love it! I've never seen anything like it, either.

Doing Some Dark Here Too

It seems dark colors were the theme of the week this week past. I added darks to this too. The middle building now has its black line on the roof and more dark brown on other buildings. Slowly it builds.

Adding Some Lowlights

This week I worked with one of the darker browns, adding the folds into the skirt. They were scattered across the area, so there are all these islands now across the bottom of my stitching.

Angling Along

I took this piece to my EGA meeting on Monday and got some extra done on it. The double cross stitches are all worked in the same color of Watercolours, but since the instructions say to skip every other and fill in on the second pass, you get a kind of piebald effect to it. That's emphasized by the way the stitches are made - the top stitch changes by placement within the design. I'm not sure yet that I like it this way.

Frame Done-ish

I got the dark blue outline of the frame done this week - now I get to start working on the fun part. Corrected the mistake in the middle, too.

New Part Started

I finally began part four this week - and the beginning looks like a giant black egg outline so far. Hopefully that'll change soon. I'm just so happy to be starting a new part.

The Wheels on the Blackwork Go Clunck, Clunk, Clunk

Another bit of stuff done on band eight. It's a pretty complicated design and I have two more big flowers to add, along with vining. The four small wheels were pretty easy to put in, though I do think I made the wrong choice in using Elegance for this color - it's just too thick. On the other hand, it adds texture.

I'm getting to another stitching wall, though. Here it is nearly halfway through the month and I've not finished anything so far. Last month, I completed nine things! Next month and the month after are going to be slow finish-wise too, since I leave for overseas again in the middle of next month. I'll be doing other things than stitching and enjoying myself, though, so that should be good!