A new start

This past Saturday I finished the model I've been working on, which means I have a bit of free time until the next model arrives. To make the most of it, I immediately started Nora Corbett's Faerie Autumn Glow, on a piece of SMF Moon Princess Belfast (my last piece, unfortunately!):

I'm hoping she'll be a fast stitch, so I can finish her before I need to start another model. Then I'll just have Faerie Summer Love to stitch in order to have all four seasonal fairies completed. Autumn is definitely my favorite in the set!

I thought I'd also post another picture of Snow Queen, this time with the two additional treasures attached (they arrived the day after my last post):

And here's a cute picture of Gracie, demonstrating the claim that "If it fits, it ships":

Now it's off to the post office to mail the model, then down to my craft room to stitch and watch season 2 of Person of Interest on DVD. Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

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!