A Little Weekend Stitching

It's always a little disconcerting, this first day of "normal" time after a summer of daylight savings time.  The extra hour of sleep was most welcome, but the getting dark early takes some getting used to.  I got up to take a wee break from my stitching this afternoon, thinking that it must be around 5 o'clock, only to discover that it was closer to 3:30.  6pm looked more like 8.

I was in a sampler kind of mood today, so I decided to pull out Little Paradise.  The fibers are Thread Gatherer Silk 'N Colors and I wanted to work on this before the cold weather gets here and starts doing a number on my hands, making it difficult to work with silk.  I haven't worked on this piece in 3 or 4 months and here is where I left off:

I didn't make a lot of progress today but some is better than none.  The green on the tree is done in chain stitch to represent weeping willow leaves.  I was looking at it before I put it away and discovered that I had miscounted a little, but I don't think it will make any difference.  It'll probably stay the way it is.

I was in ornament mode last night.  I've been working on Bluebird of Christmas Happiness by M Designs; it was in the JCS ornament issue in....ummmm, maybe 2010?  I'd look but the magazine is downstairs and I'm not (yeah, I know...lazy).  Anyway, I switched out the DMC for some silk that I had in my stash, mostly HDF but the red is a mystery silk from a detritus bag that I bought who-knows-when and from who-knows-where.  I think this is the first picture I've posted, as it finally looks like something other than a blue blob.

I also finished Daffycat's reindeer ornament:

She has a new design on her blog in the post from Nov. 5th, and if you e-mail her she'll send you a copy.  It's not a reindeer but a cute little bird.

Time to go watch the Steelers and the Ravens go at it, though I'll probably miss the first quarter because there's a special on one of the cable channels about Susan Boyle.  She has the most awesome voice and I truly admire her for having the guts to follow her dream.

Wishing everyone a good week....happy stitching!

Edited to add that the bluebird ornament is in the 2008 JCS ornament issue (2010, 2008...just off a couple of years!)