Busy as a little bee

This week was pretty busy at work.  I have been helping with a database conversion and in the past month or so it became apparent that a little assistance was needed.  On Monday I got two temps to help and a third arrived on Friday.  So all week I've been training them on what needs to be done and the sorts of things to look for and ask questions about.  I didn't get a lot of my regular stuff done, so I'm going to continue to be as busy as can be, probably through the end of the year.

Lizzie*Kate's Christmas ABC's became the at work project, but with training my temps I didn't really get to stitch on it at all.  So no progress to show off on that.  I went to my last hardanger class on Tuesday and practiced a bit of the blanket stitch before loosing interest and pulling out the Merry 15 biscornu to work on instead.  I decided to purchase a couple of hardanger instruction books and they arrived in the mail from Nordic Needle this past week.  (Don't you just love Nordic Needles' mail order catalog?  I've spent hours pouring through it's pages since it arrived with my order.)

I don't know that I'll ever really attack a purely hardanger piece, but I am glad that I can navigate the instructions when hardanger in included in a cross stitch piece.  All in all, the class was completely worth my time and money.  I'm thinking of attacking one of those tassel/ornaments as one of my Christmas in December stitching projects.

Speaking of the Chrirstmas in December focus, here is my progress on the Merry 15 biscornu.  All of the red and green bits of borders are done, along with one snowflake and one tree block.  These are fairly easy to stitch, the spectacular comes from all the colors and the beads that will be added once I finish the stitching.  I'm thinking I was overly ambitious when I pulled six projects out of my stash to work on.  I'm starting to think that I'll be lucky if I get the biscornu done in December!!

Last week while I was up at Shepherds Bush, I asked about ordering 24 skeins of GAST's Current so I can stitch up the Christmas Quaker II: Songs of the season.  They had to order it in for me so that the floss would be of the same dye lot and the package arrived on Friday of this week.  Talk about speedy service!  Now I just need to figure out where I put the pattern, green flosses, and fabric for this project.  I know it's around here somewhere...

The buttons are for This is Christmas by Raise the Roof, one of the projects I pulled out for Christmas in December.  I moved the hoop on my Nativity Sampler today.  Before moving the hoop, I finished up the green in the pine tree, added a cardinal at the top of the tree and put the beard on the shepherd.  It's a good thing that I don't have any plans for finishing this up this month!

And lastly, Mom sewed these up for me.  Two are Christmas presents for my Sisters-in-Law, and one is for me.  They are still looking a bit funky because I've put the stuffing in them, but haven't sewen up the opening yet.  Once I do that, they will look just fine. I'll start sewing them closed after I finish up this post.  My SIL's love Halloween more than they do Christmas.  So I've been making a Halloween ornament for them for Christmas.  Right now, they have more Halloween ornaments (2 each), than I have of Christmas ornaments (zero!)!!!

I have their ornament for next year all picked out an ready to go.  I have the flosses and fabric all picked out too.  I have my Mom's Christmas present picked out for next year too.  However, Mom and Dad are leaving the country for 18 months in April... so... Do I even start on her project or do I wait until they come back?  It's quite tempting to wait.  I miss stitching on Flower Power.

Hugs and Stitches,
Kay