TUSAL of Stories

It's TUSAL time again!  For those of you new to blogging, the TUSAL is a project run by Daffycat, click on the button on the right hand bar for more details.

This year I am intending to stitch The Little Stitcher's Twelve Days of Christmas as a monthly project.  Laura has designed twelve charts with a different theme for each one to represent the days of Christmas.  She has invented the different themes herself using her lovely imagination!

This week I have stitched The Day of Stories.  Here it is as part of my TUSAL photo:

And on its own:

I wonder what story the sitting up squirrel is telling its little friend?  Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin maybe? Or how about "The Little Squirrel Who Sneaked into a Round Robin for Bunnies" by Karen McEwan?

How many of you are reading to your children/grandchildren in the evenings?  It's one of my favourite times of the day and always has been.  We started with simple board books and picture books, limited to three stories and one poem book each night.  As my son grew older we moved onto "chapter books" working our way through the classics  from my childhood via anything with a dragon in it and a selection of proof copies from work.  I am a great believer in reading the book before the film so we often read books which are due to come to the cinema soon.  I also quote alot from books so that's another reason for choosing to read a book, so he recognises the quotes.  In the last year or so we have moved on from children's books to my great love, fantasy, especially comic fantasy in the shape of Sir Terry Pratchett.

We still read a poem each evening, we have two different books of A Poem A Day and alternate each year.

Thanks for the advice on the stitching over 1 for the Joan Elliott SAL, I also asked on the Mirabilia FB page because those stitchers do some beautiful conversions and the general consensus was to rechart and smooth the steps.  It is so amazing to have such a pool of stitchers to ask advice from, I really appreciate the knowledge we share.

Here is today's progress:

Stitched on 28count Snapdragon evenweave from Crafty Kitten.

Talking of advice, I noticed recently that my blogoversary countdown was stuck on 67 days, as was everyone else's!  I reloaded it and the same thing happened; changed the date, still 67 days.  So I have replaced it with a ticker which isn't quite as good (it's a bit wide!) but at least it's accurate.  If you have this gadget on your blogs you might want to check it out.  If you find a smaller one then please let me know!

Those of you on Facebook may have become aware of a new event - World Cross Stitch Day.  I don't know if there is a website or a blog or if this is just a FB thing but the date is Friday 8th August.  No time zone given, so if you start at 00.01 New Zealand Time and finish at 23.59 Baker Island (Pacific Ocean) Time then you actually get 48 hours of stitching time in total!

Finally, another card went out for the Summer Postcard Blog and this one came with a bonus picture from me.  Hop over to Krista's blog to see what that is all about.

First postcard from Marcy goes to Gracie at Needles, Pins and Dragonflies

Second postcard from Krista goes to Jocondine at Jocondine

Third postcard from Michelle goes to Sharon at Shebafudge

Fourth postcard from Mouse goes to Vickie at A Stitcher's Story

Fifth postcard from Christine goes to Marcy at Stitching Plus

Sixth postcard from Astrid goes to Krista at Just Stitching Along