One to keep and one to giveaway

I've received a beautiful ornament from Jen for the ASOE - Stitcher's Choice. It's a Christmas design - I love Christmas decorations - and worked in a lovely purple-y overdye. This is the first time I've received a flat finished ornament, or even seen one IRL, hopefully now I'll work up the courage to try this finish for myself, now I can really see how it's supposed to turn out.

Thank you Jen for a gorgeous exchange.

I've finished the wedding sampler from my last post and it's all framed and ready to go. The framer suggested a double frame - I'd never heard of that before - and I think it turned out quite nicely only a bit bigger than I'd originally planned. Now I just have to hope that they like it - fingers crossed.

(Please excuse the reflection from the glass in the photo).

Wedding Spots
The Trilogy
32# Belfast linen with GAST and DMC threads

I'm also very close to my first TW finish - only 18 rows to go! It's "Above the Clouds" which I bought as a kit off Ebay as a practice piece. As it was for practice I just used the aida that was in the kit and have been stitching it using the parking technique - great for the constant colour changes, but the back looks like a dog's breakfast : (

The story behind this is that about 3 years ago I started "Peacock Tapestry" by TW and it quickly became clear that I was waaaay out of my depth so I put it aside until I could figure out how I could stitch it without going insane. I saw these smaller kits and thought what a great idea to practice on a smaller design and work out the kinks. It was still a nightmare until I stumbled across the parking technique and I was finally able to work on it without going mad and now, I'm nearly finished - I am so pleased. Soon I'll be able to pick up my peacock again and make some real progress - without going insane - which will be nice : )

I hope you all find some stitchy time today : )
Karrie

*Edited to add * I've had a question about the parking technique, so I'll add a couple of links which will explain it much better than I could ever hope too. The first site I found that made sense - to me - was on Nicki's blog (if you scroll down the left menu there is a tutorial under Posts to Remember). As with most techiques there are a few different ways to do them, here and here explain it differently. This technique is mainly used for designs with lots of colour changes and dense stitching - such as HAED's and TW designs. The only thing I can think to add is if you'd like to try this is make sure you overlap your rows a little or you can end up with ridges where they meet.