Season's Greetings!

Well, let me be the next blogger to  start a post with "....sorry it's been so long since my last post, but...".  I'm sure there are so many of us right now we could form a line longer than the one for the Macy's Santa Claus.  It's December - 'nuff said!  So let me pick up where I left off sometime around Thanksgiving....

I was waiting patiently for the next supply of Finnegan's Fog to arrive so I could resume work on Ann Grimshaw.  After a lifetime of anguish three weeks, I did track some down at another source and it was in my hot little hands within a matter of days.  Yay!  Poor Frances Eden was once again chucked aside and work resumed on Ann.  Here's where I started back in with her.

And at the other end of the line is this.

Ann in all her up-to-date glory.

 

I'm not sure what to think of this latest dye lot of silk.  It's not nearly as bright in either the light or dark tones as the first 3 were, but is more grayish over all, with not so much contrast between the two.  My fear is that the alphabets and bottom row still to come will not work well with the shade variations on top, but that's the chance I took,  No doubt Ann herself would have carried on with the silk in hand and not have been terribly concerned about changes in shades.  How's that for a rationalization?

Remember in November when I spent some time working on those little Prairie Schooler fruits, all excited and ambitious about making them into this year's stitched ornaments for the holiday tree?  Well, I had a profound moment not long ago when I realized they just weren't going to happen.  I'm simply not a finisher.  There, I said it.  I got up one weekend morning, got all my stuff out to whip them into something wonderful......and just couldn't do it.  Didn't even try.  So one of my New Year's resolutions will be to stitch with the certainty that I am strictly a big picture kind of gal and to be completely OK with it.

Now, having said that, is it completely loony of me to need to show you some of my past ornament finishes?  A walk around my Christmas tree has some favorites....

This little guy is a tiny PS Santa, framed in a brass label holder.  My stitching group did these as a project one holiday season - what a hoot!  The sand dollar is from Clearwater Beach.  Like the beach, our tree is always littered with them.

 

This little pocket is probably my best finishing attempt.  The design was from an older JCS Christmas edition, worked when I still had the patience for that sort of thing.  Halley usually finds a Starbucks card in it come Christmas morning.

This woolfelt Santa was supposed to be a scissor keep.....

 

...but somehow earned a promotion to ornament status!

 And this sturdy fellow....

.... also hails from JCS, but  back when perforated paper was all the rage.  I keep him around because he still makes me jolly.

And last but not least are my Santa Bells, surrounding yet another PS Santa.

 

A friend of my mother's is a local folk artist in my home town.  For a number of years, Mom had a lot of fun collecting her annual Santa Bells.  My sisters and I were lucky enough to share in the Santa bounty!  Here they are creeping a little closer to PS Santa and  his reindeer.

So I'm hoping this lengthy post brings me up to date and time for stitching and blogging will be more plentiful in the new year.   That sounds like a lucky wish for all of us, so here's looking at you too.  God bless us, every one!