Dearest Edward

The postman has just delivered five most beautiful gold rings, one for each finger, and all fitting perfectly.  A really lovely present - lovelier in a way than birds, which do take rather a lot of looking after.  The four that arrived yesterday are still making a terrible row, and I'm afraid none of us got much sleep last night.  Mummy says she wants to use the rings to "wring" their necks - she's only joking, I think; though I know what she means.  But I love the rings.  Bless you.
Love Emily

12 Days of Christmas (Correspondence) - John Julius Norwich

Emily seems a little happier with her gift this month, even if Mummy has a bird-induced migraine.

Who remembers singing this part of the song with great gusto and not a lot of tune?

There will be gold beads in the little gaps when I finish this design.  I am saving all the beads until the end so the metallic thread doesn't catch on them.

Here is the full piece so far.  I will be stitching for another day on the top Herald Angel.  The plan is do a little bit on her each month to complete the design this year.

Those crumples do come out when I stretch the fabric out, don't worry!

I also stitched both my Hallowe'en pieces this month.  First up is Happy Hallowe'en by Imaginating:

Black cats are our theme this month

I also started some of the "Happy" as the cat was such a quick stitch

The second piece is Witches by Oberlin Samplers:

Not a black cat!

When I stitched the french knot eyes in the first cat I realised that DMC 3345 is the perfect match for the fabric which is so hard to photograph.  Here's a skein of 3345 on the fabric and they look different!  So go and get your skein and just imagine that the fabric is the same colour as that skein.

Remember my Blogaversary this year, back in April?  I had a little giveaway competition where you had to tell me your favourite quote and you could win the new Stitchrovia Quotes to Live By partwork.  There were a lot of entries and I loved all the quotes.  I used the Random Number Generator to pick a winner.  You got one entry for commenting on that post and then additional entries for taking part in the Easter Blog Hop and Gifted Gorgeousness too.   The RNG chose:

Deborah

who said "at the moment I still like "be kind to dragons, for thou art crunchy when roasted and taste good with ketchup" perhaps not inspiring words to live by but it makes me smile and that is a start."

Not the most deep and meaningful quote but it made me smile too.  It comes from the book Dragonswan by Sherrilyn Kenyon, which I have never read but maybe I should.  Find out more here-

Sherrilyn Kenyon

also here- 

Fantastic Fiction - Sherrilyn Kenyon/Dragonswan

Fantastic Fiction is one of my favourite websites.  The Bookseller's best friend, it is basically a catalogue of almost every fiction author, their books, a synopsis and links to where to get them.  It lists every book written by the author, in series order and in publication date with a thumbnail of the cover.  So when your customer says "have you got the new M.C. Beaton book, it's got Death in the title?" you can look up M.C. Beaton, discover that almost every book she has written has Death in the title, you can print off the list, show the customer and work out which one they want.

It also has recommendations under "Visitors to this page also looked at these authors" which can be useful but remember that every bookseller in the country is skewing the results by looking up both Sherrilyn Kenyon and M.C. Beaton within ten minutes of each other.

Finally, Kaye is hosting a Christmas in July Exchange, so if you want to exchange some Christmas Goodies, hop over and visit her blog.  Click the photo for the link: