Noel Letters are Finished! Welcome Gus!

Today I finished beading the letters in Noel. It took two full tubes of beads and just a few from a third tube to complete the letters. I spent a week of dedicated beading on the letters. The beading lends so much texture and dimension to the canvas - well worth a week's work.

Ruth has lots of fun planned for the bottom red border and I'll get started on that tonight or tomorrow depending on how interesting I find the Chick-Fil-A Bowl tonight.  Would love to see South Carolina win - apologies to fans of FSU! I hate to see SEC college football come to an end for the year.

This morning I dealt with the not-so-fun part of Christmas - the dismantling of the Christmas decorations. Andrew was home for a short 24 hours earlier this week and he helped me put away the decorations that had to go to the attic. What's left to do now is find a place downstairs for all of this:

Basically I end up finding places here and there to store these things until next year and hope that I remember where I put them when Christmas rolls around again.

My new friend, Sarcoph A Gus, arrived late yesterday afternoon via the big brown truck. He will be magnificent - the majority of the outer sarcophagus is beaded! I thought three tubes of beads for the Noel canvas was a lot but Gus has it beat. There are 12 colors of beads for this canvas.

As you can see Sarcoph A Gus is on the stretchers and the stitch guide is ready for the notebook. I gathered all the required threads together last night from the previous characters' kits. I haven't quite decided where to start - bottom border or the mummy himself. Amy and Kelly have worked their magic again with this canvas.

Have you see the January newsletter from Amy's? It's always so fun to read and there is so much great information inside. I loved the "article" on our next character, Dev L Mann. Did you know he'll be wearing an asbestos pant suit? Too funny! I enjoyed seeing Caron's 4 finished Halloweenies. She finished hers as easel-back stand-ups. Good job, Caron! Jill gave us a great "how to" tutorial on finishing
a personalized tote bag. Amy has added another Melissa Shirley banner to her Home Study series for next year. Another decision to make - stitch the Thanksgiving banner or the Christmas banner, or stitch both?

Not too many hours left until we say goodbye to 2010. Stitch-wise, I don't think I have ever finished so many projects as I have this year. The Halloweenies have been challenging and lots of fun and just the right size project for me. These characters pretty much pushed all other projects to the sidelines. While I hate to see the Halloweenies come to an end, it will be nice to pick up some stitching that has been put aside for the last year.

I have a standing rib roast in the oven tonight for my New Year's Eve dinner - it smells so good! My plans for the evening include football, more football, and lots of stitching. I hope whatever you have planned is festive and safe.

Thank you for supporting my blogging these last six months! I look forward to more blogging this coming year and would love to think that maybe I will actually get to meet some of you in person this year!

See you in 2011!