Five Little Peppers... Finished!

I am finally done with the Five Little Peppers piece! It was an uphill battle. There was a flaw early on and, being lazy, I decided to just alter the pattern a bit instead of unpicking hours of stitching. 

Of course then later on I didn't think to allow for that and had to unpick a ton of shit. It could have been worse, but christ... I nearly abandoned the piece at one point. Glad I didn't though. All in all, I think it's a lovely piece. I definitely want to do a few more book covers.

Now I've got one more Christmas present piece to work on. The pattern was giving me trouble so I'd half decided to skip it. It would be a really fun piece to give though so I think I'll try to make it work.

my adorable nephew!

Let me tell you, there are some days when I despair of making my own patterns. I've only ever stitched one thing that's entirely someone else's pattern. I've taken some pieces of borders from the Repertoire des Motifs and various quite old patterns but they've always taken a lot of tinkering and extra work. I think the effort is worth it, but sometimes it does keep me from stitching since the thought of having to the make the pattern will put me off. C'est la vie, I suppose.

In contrast to all that frustration I had the most wonderful visit with my nephew, Benjamin. He came over to my apartment for an hour or so while his mama did some errands and he was the most well-behaved little thing imaginable. Did everything the first time I asked him, didn't mess with my stuff, and was generally adorable. He carried those mice around during the whole visit (they're my mice, not his). Now I'm in the dilemma of "should I give him and his sister the mice for Christmas..." but he doesn't really like soft toys at the moment and I think it's probably better to keep the few toys I have over here. 

Yes, I am justifying keeping my adorable stuffed mice all to myself. They're named Nourishing and Dark Tan after two of the rats in Terry Pratchett's marvelous book, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. I quite want to go back to Ikea and get a dozen more since they're so cute (and only 99 cents each).