I was bad, but it was worth it!

For the past month I have been diligently stitching on a model, which I started the day after my first stitch group meeting last month. Karen didn't want me to take her piece to stitch group, so I pulled Nora Corbett's Snow Queen out of the Bucket o'WIPs, where it had been consigned four years (!) ago; my previous post showed a bit of progress that I made on it at last month's group.

This past Tuesday was the day of my stitch group, so I once again worked on Snow Queen. It felt so good to take a small break from the model that I decided to work on it for the rest of the day. Well, it turned out that by the end of the day, I had completed all of the stitching, and all of the backstitching except for the doves; after a bit of work on Wednesday morning, it looked like this:

And, as any bling-loving stitcher could guess, I couldn't stop there! It wouldn't be practical to try to do the beading at stitch group, so I HAD to take another day off from the model so I could bling this girl out. So, yesterday I pulled out a bunch of beads, using whichever ones I thought looked good, and I finished her (except for two treasures that are currently in the mail). She's so sparkly and pretty:

Four years in the Bucket, and it turns out she only needed three days to be completed! Here are a couple more pictures:

For those who are interested in this pattern, it is in the Cross Stitch & Needlework: Cross-Stitch Keepsake 2010 Calendar.

Now I will get back to work on the model, which I'm hoping to finish within a couple of weeks; hopefully before the Door County retreat in November!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy weekend!