Still here!

I have been spending every spare moment on the model, and am happy (ecstatic!) to report that I finished it two days ago, and mailed it off to Karen yesterday. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted!

I spent most of yesterday taking care of my woefully neglected chores, and I still need to take the Christmas tree down, but I'm going to take the weekend off and do that on Monday. The lack of presents under the tree makes it entirely too easy for the kitties to climb up the middle:

Speaking of presents, I received my prize from the Winter Whisper contest, and love everything Laura sent:

Part of the prize was my choice of a digital chart, and I asked for her newest release "Into the Darkness"; I love how moody the whole design is, and am looking forward to stitching it.

My newest start is a chart from Bramble Crafts, which is known for their papercut designs. I asked the owner, Deborah, about possibly getting a couple of the designs as cross stitch charts, and ended up getting Cinderella and The Princess and the Pea. Today I started Cinderella:

The details are a bit 'blocky" due to the transfer process, so I'll probably play with it a little bit, but I think I'm really going to like this one.

I need  to stitch fast, because my almost-empty ort jar makes me sad; here's a picture of last year's orts, next to the soon-to-be-this year's orts (it does have a bit in it now, from finishing the model):

Hope everyone is having a good new year so far, and a great stitchy weekend right now!