Moving along nicely, thank you

Today is Election Day here in the states ... an off year so far as federal elections are concerned, but still important on a local level. The Parish Religious Education building is a polling place, so we will be having strangers in and out of the building all day. Consequently, no afternoon or evening classes ... can't have children in a building when strangers are walking in and out. The upside of this is that I get to go home in daylight and can add a little more stitching time to my day. I hope to squeeze in another two hours between the time I get home from work and the time I have to prepare supper. Happily, supper is just a matter of of converting last night's leftover pasta with tomato sauce made with sausage into a baked ziti casserole with the addition of ricotta, mozzarella, romano cheeses and some beaten egg and parsley. What could be easier?

My morning "before work" stitching time was spent on my pine cone ornament project ... all I have left to stitch on that is the over one monogram on the front, the back for the piece and, of course, I will be making a twisted cording hanger. Having finally mastered that skill after decades of stitching, I gleefully include cording in every project that is remotely appropriate. Since this is a gift for a reader of this blog, no photos just yet. With any luck, I will finish this piece today and get it in the mail by Thursday or Friday. Photos will be posted once I am notified that it has been received.

Once that project is done, I'll focus on finishing up Brightneedle's Esmeralda's House. All I have left to stitch on that is the front parlor and a few spiders in the back hall on the first floor plus all the French knots. While I generally like French knots, I have some very tiny black beads that would make perfect "victims" in the spider webs and dials on the TV and some very tiny orange beads that would look good as embellishment on the shoes under the bed. The noses on the mice will still be French knots, though. I wasn't able to finish this in time to make a wall hanging this Halloween which was a bit of a disappointment but there is always next year. And after that, I can either frog my mistakes in the Peacock biscornu and the Ghoulies and Ghosties Etui or I could stitch on TW's Autumn Faerie. I am sure you can guess what my choice will be.