Well, this kind of snuck up on me...

In 5 weeks I'm headed to a retreat in the Smokey Mountains.  It's a trip that's kind of traditional for me and one that I look forward to all year long.  There are two gift exchanges at this retreat.  One is a gift box full of stitchy type notions and the other is a stitched ornament exchange.  So I know all year I have to stitch something for this retreat.  But for some reason, this year it slipped my mind until now.  When I stitch an ornament for giving, I like to stitch two so I can keep one myself.  So my stitching schedule grew by two ornaments, lol.  The pattern I chose for this year's ornament is a dove inside a circle with a filigree, leafy type of border around it.  It's charted in blues and roses but I'm changing it up to Christmas colors.  I'm going to give them a simple finish in the clear acrylic ornament frames that 123Stitch sells.

I have a little finish!  :0)  I finished up Frosty Friends a couple of nights ago.  I want to "finish" this into a no-sew cube, just not sure when I'll have the time to do that.  But it's going to need to be before Christmas, lol.  Although truly, this design is appropriate for the whole winter.  One thing kind of perturbed me about this pattern though.  On the picture of the finished product that comes when you buy the pattern, it shows two different ways of stitching it up.  One is like I have done it and the other shows it larger, finished into a pillow.  This one has a border all the way around it, that obviously "goes" with the pattern, as in, it's a style that is consistent with the look of the pattern.  But after you buy it and open it, you find the border is no where to be found.  You don't get the pattern for that.  I just feel like the way it's represented on it's packaging is misleading.  Because it obviously leads you to think that you can stitch it with or without the border, but then it doesn't provide or even address the fact that there is no border pattern.

I'm still working on Lady Victoria as well.  I hope to have her finished soon.  I can't wait to start her silk ribbon roses.  Sorry, no pic.  :-(

I took a Christmas stitch that I did last year and turned her into a pillow.  My intention was always to make her a pillow for Christmas this year, so after stitching her last year I just put her away in a project roll.  But this week I got her out and finished her up.  I am **super** pleased with how this turned out as I've never done anything like this before.  I can't "sew," not in the traditional sense with a machine, so this was all done by hand.  But it wasn't difficult or even terribly time consuming.  I started one day and finished the next.

And one more little extra I want to share. ~ Earlier this year, I stitched and made this little pouch.  It had been sold as a cosmetic case, but there is no way it would work for that.  It doesn't even close up in a way that would work for that and it's rather tiny.  So I put it away (procrastinating) with the intention of turning it into a needlebook at some point - which it's the perfect size and design for that.

So I finally took the whole 5 minutes needed this week and stitched in some felt and added in my needles.  I really love it.  A filled up needlebook makes me terribly happy.  :0)

That's about all I have for now.  Happy stitching everyone!  :0)