Nora's Christmas Stocking

Around nine years ago Nora Corbett designed a little stocking ornament for a charity stitching group on Facebook. I joined the group and saved the chart but never stitched it, and actually didn't even know what it would look like when it was done. Someone asked about obscure Mirabilia/Nora Corbett charts recently, and it reminded me of the stocking ornament, so I decided to pull it out and stitch it. I was thinking it would take a couple of days, but for a small design it's fairly intricate and it ended up taking about five days (though I haven't had a lot of stitching time lately). It's a cute little design, and I'm hoping I'll get the urge to make it into an ornament in the near future:

The fabric is an old remnant that I no longer know the name of, but it looks like it's 32ct opal Lugana. I messaged Nora about the chart and she had me send it to Wichelt so that it can be offered as a freebie in the near future, so keep an eye on the Mirabilia site if you'd like to stitch this.

I sent my Queen City Retreat piece to SewMuch2Luv on Etsy, and just received a photo with a rough idea of what the finish will look like:

I'm really looking forward to seeing the actual finish. If anyone is interested, the retreat design has been posted and can be found here. The Queen City Stitch Retreat has their own site now, and they announced that the guest for next year is Autumn Lane Stitchery. The plan right now is to have another Mirabilia retreat in 2025, so hopefully that will happen.

Three Nora Corbett models arrived while I was in North Carolina, so I've been working on the first one for just over a month now. Stitching time will continue to be a bit limited with Thanksgiving this week, and then starting some Christmas decorating, but I'm hoping to have a finish within a couple of weeks. 

I'm not sure why but this past weekend I had a sudden urge to pull out Nora's Needle Fairy and put a few stitches in. I haven't touched her since 2013, but after Saturday she finally has some arms:

She's the third in a series of six Stitching Fairies, and probably my least favorite of the six. I've completed Floss Fairy and Pincushion Fairy (my favorite of the six):

The remaining three are Linen, Bead and Thimble Fairies. I'm going to try to work on Needle Fairy one or two days a week, just a length or two of floss at a time and see if I can get some decent progress on her.

Hope those who celebrate it have a wonderful Thanksgiving this Thursday!