Baby Happy Dance!

Not me (or Nia, despite the hints on her blog) but this little baby sampler:

Danika is my friend's new grand-daughter.  The little characters are from the Mamas and Papas Millie and Boris nursery range that the new parents have chosen for their daughter.  The frame co-ordinates with the white gloss in the room.  I charted the characters from some images I downloaded from the M&P website and found a lovely Slavic font through Google Images which I also converted to cross stitch.

The buttons are Just Buttons and probably cost more than the rest of the project put together!!  In return for stitching it I got some pennies and an Easter Egg.  Hopefully I'll get a nice picture of baby too.  I have spent the money on some new stash already!  There is a woman on FB destashing 25 years worth of stuff!  I bought some Just Nans.  If you're interest in Drawn Thread, Sweetheart Tree, LHN or Lizzie*Kate in particular then ask for an invite so you can browse (it's a closed group so you can't see until you join).

This is a very old finish I needed to photograph for my Happy Dance blog.  Stitched back in 1994 or 95 on black aida, it's a row of cute kitties that sat on my son's window sill for several years.  The first picture is how it looks and the second shows the difference between the front and the back!

Doesn't look too bad until you compare:

Here is this week's main stitching focus:

Just for a change I'm stitching the border first rather than my usual centre start.  This means I can show you a progress picture without giving it all away (unless you are a total stitching geek and can recognise it from the border alone!)

Enabling Spot coming up here:

Here's a nice new blog just launched with a week of freebies - The Snowflower Diaries.  Maja is a Hungarian participant on the Hallowe'en Ornie SAL and one of the first designs is a Hallowe'en chart.  The other one is some rather more seasonal bunnies.

Talking of Hungarians and bunny freebies - here's another link - Palko-lap.  There are lots of different freebies here as well as these Quaker Bunnies.  The Quaker Cat is a favourite of mine too.

Finally, it's Mother's Day in the UK tomorrow so hopefully you'll all be getting breakfast in bed and lots of nice treats from your children and/or furbabies.  If you don't have children or furbabies then you can have a lie-in any time without being suddenly woken up at unsociable hours by unearthly yowling so you don't need a special day!

If your country doesn't celebrate Mother's Day in March then you must claim your English roots and tell your family you need to be treated, make them do it in an English accent too, just for fun.