Santa`s Journey - Cross Stitch Collection 241-243

Finally, the day has dawned (well, 2 days ago) when my favourite - and so far, largest - piece has been published, or to be more precise, its picture first appeared but the chart, due to its size, will be featured in 3 consecutive magazines, issues 241, 242 and 243 of Collection. But the first issue is in the shops now, so FINALLY I can show you the progress piccies (made into a "film") that I took every 5 hours while I was working on this BAP back in June. (I`d like to grab the opportunity and congratulate those among you who were observant enough to notice: yes, I did spend my whole Spring and Summer stitching Christmas pieces, lol!).

It doesn`t happen too often that you fall in love with a project so much that even though you`re looking forward to seeing it finished, at the same time you don`t want it to end. This lovely design by Maria Diaz is like the illustration from a picture book; it tells a story and, from a stitcher`s point of view, it means that you can work on mini-pictures within the picture, so it never gets boring for a minute... and then one day you realise that there`s no more detail to add, it`s complete (a bittersweet moment!). When I wanted to see the windows on a house properly, I did the backstitch. When I realised I couldn`t continue the BS because I`ve run out of finished XS, I did a bit more snow that connected the next mini-picture to this one. When I got bored of stitching with just white, I added another wee scene, and so on, and so on. I hope a lot of people will stitch it because not only is it a totally enjoyable piece to work on, but also something you can bring out every year - especially if there are young children in the house: I wonder how many will try to read the names on that list that Santa`s checking - as we all know, twice! ;)