Frankly, I think I prefer birds.

What am I supposed to do with eight milkmaids - AND their cows?  Is this some kind of joke?  If so, I'm afraid I don't find it very amusing.
Emily

12 Days of Christmas (Correspondence) - John Julius Norwich

Emily obviously feels the same way about cows as my Nana did!  This block took quite a long time to stitch compared to the previous blocks.   I think it's the amout of colour changes and small details.  Once again I did the background with just one thread.

In the evenings I have continued with the header.  I have completed both angels and the two Christmas Roses now:

Here's where I finished last month:

And here is where I am now:

I have also stitched on both my Hallowe'en pieces this month, the theme on the blog was Creepy Trees which fit perfectly for Happy Hallowe'en (see this post) but not for Witches by Oberlin Samplers.  However I wanted to get both pieces ready for September's theme which is Spooky Woods.  So here is another Witch:

And the whole piece so far.  Like Happy Hallowe'en it could be complete but has words above and below the figures:

One of the SALs for Cross Stitch Finish Line this month was called Guess What? and each day we had to post first our fabric, then our thread, then 25 stitches per day until Reveal Day on Day 7.  Here are my 7 photos, see if you can guess before the Reveal:

Day 1 - 28 count Jazlyn in Aurora by Crafty Kitten

Day 2 - Threads, mostly purple and yellow

Day 3 - 25 stitches

Day 4 - 50 stitches

Day 5 - 75 stitches

Day 6 - 100 stitches

Any ideas yet?  Two people had got very close guessing the designer straightaway and narrowing it down to one of her Fairy designs.  Shame there are so many to choose from!

Here's a close-up of the part I was stitching:

And here's the Reveal - Joan Elliott's Fairy Dreams AKA Little Reading Fairy AKA September Fairy from the 2013 Diary AKA Year of Magical Stitching:

I've carried on stitching a little bit each day and here's where she is now:

Finally, we had a Tenuous Shoehorn Linky Party on 8th August, the linky is still live if you'd like to join in any time this month.  I love reading the different posts and it would be nice to see more!

Click here to join in.