Friday Finishing Frenzy!

I was intending to post on Wednesday or Thursday this week to space the posts out but I was so close to finishing Little Snowy Gray Cottage I wanted to push on and have a Happy Dance post!

So without further ado, here is Little Snowy Metallic Gray Cottage:

Look at all the bling in that!

Design Details:

Little Snowy Gray Cottage by Nora Corbett

Started on 19th January, 2015 for DUCJC2015

Recommenced on 6th April, 2016

Completed on 13th May, 2016 (22 days stitching in total) 

Stitched on 32 count Blue Hydrangea Opalescent by Crafty Kitten

Recommended DMC and Kreinik except for the following:

B5200 for Blanc

Emerald Forest by Jodyri for the Caron Waterlilies

Kreinik 001HL and 014 blended for snowflakes instead of RG Arctic Rays

The Rainbow Gallery Arctic Rays is weird stuff, it's like metallic Whisper and likes to form hairballs on the back of your fabric!  Where the two sides of diagonal stitches meet in the middle the fabric is a little puckered (you can see in the last photo) but hopefully it won't show so much when it is stretched and framed.  

It will need a deep rebate on the frame because of those huge beads on top of the wall posts.

The nicest thread was the Kreinik 9294 used for the walls of the house, I love the colour and ir was so easy to stitch with, a pleasure!

I finished the Cottage this morning which left me some stitching space for the afternoon.  The second Friday of the month is for the Christmas Ornie SAL which is usually my Primitive Hare Christmas Cubes.  But there isn't a Cube which fits this month's theme of Reindeer.  So that gave me the excuse to finally start a series I have been hoarding for about five years!  Daffycat's annual reindeer freebie!

Jinglebell Reindeer from 2008

I didn't stitch him twice but I couldn't decide which photo looked better.  The colours are more accurate in the top one but you can see him better in the bottom one.

I stitched him over one on 28 count silvered white evenweave using the following colours:

Brown - 801

Green - 3346

Red - 815

Beads - 40557

I changed the red and green because colours can look different when you stitch over one and I wanted them to be a little brighter.

The reindeer himself took exactly one hour to stitch.  I timed myself.  The border took longer because my son came home from school and there were snack interruptions and I was needed to read the subtitles on a YouTube clip to him!

I have enough fabric to stitch eight of them, there are nine so far.  I plan to stitch six of them and finish into a cube ornament and hope that Daffycat does three more so I can have two cubes!  If not, then I will "flip" three of them and stitch them reversed.  I will have to get some more fabric though.

In the evenings I have been working on this sweet little chart from Sweetheart Tree:

stitched on 28 count Platinum linen

I am pleased with how well the blackwork shows up in the photo.  It is quite time consuming, the top border took two evenings to complete (doing about 30 minutes per session).

Finally, I joined a new-to-me FB group called Cross Stitch Finish Line which is all about celebrating different types of finishes, encouraging WIPs to become finishes and they host themed events too.  My shoe horn and I do enjoy a good themed SAL (I still miss Theme-a-licious).  The first one will be Sing Me a SAL starting 15th May.  Anything song-related will fit.  Now, I have completed another one of my 16 WIPocalypse projects so I will be continuing with one of the others.  Gathering Honey is earmarked for a later SAL and I have three dragon-themed projects to choose from!

So any suggestions for Dragon-themed songs APART from the obvious Puff the Magic Dragon.