Merry Christmas to everyone!

This years Christmas is really quite for the Mr. and me. Both of our families are living far way and we decided to skip the travelling and just staying at home alone. So beside cooking the dinner, I have nothing else to do, and that gives me plenty of time for stitching.

Yesterday I have started and finished stitching two more Christmas designs.

Design: Mistletoe & Holly

Designer Cloudberry Samplings

32 ct. raw linen

DMC thread

Mistletoe and Holly are both my own Designs. I made them for the Adventkalender of my German stitching group.

***

Also, a couple of weeks ago I have finished two Christmas ornaments.

                                                            Design: Merry Xmas                    Design: Weihnachtsvogel

                                                       Designer: The little Stitcher                 Designer: acufactum

                                       26ct. coffee/tea dyed evenweave 1 over 1     26ct. natural evenweave 1 over 1

                                                                  DMC thread                                     DMC thread

it's almost Christmas

Can you believe? It is already the end of November, which means it is almost Christmas. Have you started already with your Christmas preparations, like baking cookies, decking the halls and buying presents for your loved ones? To be honest, I haven't and I am not sure if I will this year. I am just way to busy with my day job as an upholsterer. Lots of chairs and sofas to repair and rebuild and it all has to be ready before the holidays. 

But it also has its advantage to be an upholsterer and that is all that beautiful fabric scrap. just last week I was able to lay my hands on a fabric sampler book that has been discontinued. 

The fabric comes in 27 different colours and has this roughly woven surface. I just love it. Of course with a surface like this I have to count the threads per inch and....

the count is 22 in one direction and 20 in the other. That makes it almost even and therefore suitable for cross stitching. I think it is perfect for making primitive looking ornaments and other smalls. And if not for the stitching, it is great as a background fabric. 

***

Even thou I probably won't do much holiday decoration this years, I've done some Christmas stitching. My German cross stitch group started an advents-calender on November 8 and I think this is the most wonderful idea. Our groupmoms asked a few designer (including me) if they would like to design small holiday related ornaments. Now we are receiving every other day a new Christmas design. There are already 9 designs published but so far I found only time to stitch 2. The first design is by Kathy Bungard but the second one, the Holly branch is mine. I really love how it turned out. 

I've got a lot of positive response on my first published design and that encourages me to now getting all my other designs ready for publishing. This first one I will finish into an ornament and I hope I will get it ready before our next Finnish cross stitching meeting in beginning of December.