Mousey

I can report (mind you, only report and not illustrate) that I finished both my Mum`s and my Gran`s little present for Mothers` Day, which I can take with me when Gregory and I fly to Hungary in a couple of weeks` time. And when the girls can open their prezzies on the first Sunday in May, then I can FINALLY post some pictures here... Well, a long way to wait until then but just so as not to leave y`all without a photo, here`s a wee mouse I knitted last night:

He`s a wee bit nose-heavy and I realised too late that white mice usually have red eyes, not black, plus I forgot to secure the whiskers so they`re just sitting there at the moment (until Gregory casually pulls them out) but, as far as prototypes go, I think it`s not too bad. By the way, this is one of the first tentative steps towards changing my profile a bit; a few weeks ago I posted my Woody-story to the cross stitch forum I`d joined on Facebook, and you wouldn`t believe the debate it sparked! Silly little me, I just wanted to brag a bit about my achievement, but a few members of the forum went into battle with all guns blazing about illegal pattern distribution and other nasty things. While I was gutted on the one hand, I also had to admit they were right, so I started to look more closely into copyright issues. Up to a couple of weeks ago, I thought that I can just stitch anything I like in my magazines and then sell the pictures in my Etsy shop; naturally, I was aware that the actual pattern in the magazine is the designer`s intellectual/artistic product but I thought the stitched, finished picture is MINE - however, now it turns out that that`s NOT the case: even though I created that work of art, sometimes with several months` worth of work, it`s still not my property and I can`t sell it, unless I ask the designer`s permission first (which, let`s face it, would be a bit cumbersome). So I decided to take every such picture off my Etsy shop (nobody`s interested in buying these big, and expensive, cross stitched pictures anyway), and from now on I`ll concentrate more on smaller items, such as keyrings, bookmarks, kids` toys, etc., that will be all designed by me. And the big patterns I still fancy from my magazines, I`ll stitch for myself. Now, I think my Mum wouldn`t try to read this far with her English (she`s following my blog but I think she`s just looking through the photos) so, without attaching any pictures, I can tell you that I made a new glasses case for her (also my own design), and for my Gran a bellpull with some alpine flowers on it - I hope they`ll like their prezzies! If I don`t write for a while now, it`s because I`m on holiday - oh, and the Celtic birds are still waiting to be finished!