Round Robin and some smalls

I have some new stitching pics today!

The first is for the Round Robin I'm in on the WWRR Yuku Board.  This is Sophia's RR, she has sent it round the world once in 2008 and now it's travelling again.  The theme is the great Teresa Wentzler and I was very excited to be stitching on this piece as I love TW's designs.

I chose a floral band from The English Cottage Sampler partly because there is one other UK stitcher on this piece and she chose from The English Garden Sampler and I thought they made a nice pair.  It is a more freeform band than some of the others but happily fitted into the 80 squares wide allowed in this sampler.  I stitched it exactly as the pattern except for the top 4 rows which I mirrored the bottom four for symmetry.  I also changed the edge leaves to single stitches where they would have gone over the edge.

This is my band with the previous one:

I've been super-careful with this one.  It only comes out in the evening when the small one is in bed and I haven't been wearing my usual eye makeup.  Why on earth not? you may well ask.  Well, when it's getting late and you have "just one more row"itis and rub your eyes there is a risk that you will get black eyeshadow on the fabric!  A risk I was not prepared to take!

I had to frog the parts of the beige background crosses at least twice as they kept jumping one square over.  Then the palest leaves (504) didn't look much different to the 503 so I looked at the thread in a better light and realised I had two skeins of 504 and one is lighter than the other.  So I frogged them and redid them in the new skein.  This is the woman who never frogs but recharts instead!

This is a little piece I mailed off to Rachael to help raise money for the Cats Protection League.  Hopefully it will be added to a quilt or cushion.  The design is by Tralala from SoCreaStitch and I stitched it in DMC 4215 a lovely variegated blue/lilac and pink.

And for those who like a more artistic photo -

The two cats were bought with the money I got for serving 15 years with my old company.  I also got my stash chest and a jacket (total spend £250) plus a party at the pub shared with a fellow "lifer" for 50 people.  We were supposed to have a nice genteel buffet in the boardroom for 30 but the senior management wanted it too and as we refused to change our date they had no choice but to give us the money and send us to the pub instead!

(note from proof-reader mode - I spelt Genteel as Gentile originally, not what I meant at all!)

The final pic is a small freebie from   The Stitcherhood blog which I found via the Needlecraft Haven Forum in their February challenge.  I stitched it twice with a subtle difference.  Now all I need to do is find some black ribbon with hearts or maybe some thick lace and decide how to frame it.

That's all folks!