Winners, Commenters and a Little Stitching

First of all, thank you for the good wishes for my health.  I seem to have recovered from the cold part but ache all over and have been getting really early nights instead.  So no evening stitching!!!

As part of the Grow Your Blog Party I held a Giveaway for three different cover gifts from various magazines.  There were three winners chosen -

Julie Bagpuss

Kathy H (no blog)

Astrid's Dragon

I have all the addresses now so the charts will be in the post soon.  I also had a Secret Giveaway for my 3000th commenter.  I like to keep an eye on my comments and noticed that 3000 was looming.  The lucky person was Linda from Stitchin with my Furbabies for her comment on the January WIPocalypse post.  So there'll be a little something in the post to Linda too.

It's good to have some post to send out because I'm taking part in this -

 

All you have to do is write a letter every postal day of February (so not on Sundays) and mail it.  Respond to anyone who writes to you.  So I've started the month with four letters to the four winners.  Tomorrow I have to think of someone else to write to.  It's the Small Boy's Birthday at the weekend so that's next week taken up with Thank You letters.  A couple of Birthdays and a random trawl through my address book and I think I can do this challenge!  I saw this Challenge on Anna's Stitch Bitch blog where all the good ideas come from!

Stitching-wise I had one finish last week, the Joan Elliott January design from the 2013 Diary:

I already had this nice page for my scrapbook and bought some snowflake trim yesterday to finish it off.  I stitched this on 28 count sparkly evenweave over 2.  I used the recommended colours except for the robins' breasts.  There were a few little transcription errors made by the magazine and Joan herself has been helping put them right on the FB group.  They used the incorrect red and not enough of it for the robins!  I also changed the green in the trees to one strand rather than 2 like the rest of the design.

This is a January finish for the Needlecraft Haven Freebie Challenge.  Peace by Happiness is Cross Stitching blog.  I stitched it over 1 on the same 28 count sparkly evenweave.  It's framed using a Christmas card I kept for this purpose.  I keep lots of cards that look like frames because I like to horde, and sometimes they come in useful.

I also stitched the next JBW cat for February's ornie.  I dyed some fabric using fruit teas, 2 bags of blackcurrant tea make a lovely strong pink.  Here is the cat on the backing fabric I bought yesterday:

Finally, don't forget to send me your Secret Stitching Sweetheart photos before the 10th February (that's this Sunday!) if you want to join in with the Blog Hop.  Click on the Heart on the right hand sidebar for all the information.