puffins - Cross Stitcher 348

This week the new issue of Cross Stitcher is in the UK shops and the cover star is Rebecca Spencer`s cute design of a bunch of characterful puffins*:

*Hehe, I used bunch in the sense of `lively bunch` but it made me think, so I looked up what a group of puffins is called: "A group of puffins is known by a range of names – a colony, a puffinry, a circus, a burrow, a gathering, or an improbability." - and now I`m cry-laughing at puffinry... not that an `improbability of puffins` is much better! 😂😂😂

I absolutely adored working on this project! 😍 I have a thing for puffins - most recently, staff of various souvenir shops of John O`Groats bore witness to my slight obsession:

So this project was perfect for me, and I especially loved that each bird is slightly different from the other - my favourite is the one in the Sou`wester rain hat 😂 At the magazine, they turned it into a cushion with some off-white fabric framing the puffins...

 ...but I think if I was stitching this cushion for myself, I`d pick a matching navy fabric for the back and I`d add bobble trim to the edge, maybe blue or, if I felt especially adventurous, with red pompoms to make it even more cheerful. 😊

And talking about stitching `for myself`: in the end, I didn`t manage to finish The Monarch of the Glen for my husband`s birthday, there`s still 1 page missing from the sky, but I`m glad at least I could complete the 11th page (just!) of the 12-page chart on the day before - and with a little tweaking, he barely noticed the almost seamless continuity:

Although the summer holiday is over (and by the looks of it, so is summer, full stop) and I`m back in full swing with commissions, I`ll try to pinch away a few hours - about 18-20 should do - and finish this so I can take it to the framers. Hope to show you the end result in the not too distant future, until then, happy stitching! 😊

singing penguin and Monarch update

The latest issue (259) of Cross Stitch Crazy hits the UK shops today and the free gift that comes with the magazine is this cute little penguin - the first design this year (by Helz Cuppleditch) that can be considered Christmassy 😲 (although this wee fella still hedges his bets, he could be singing anything after all, not necessarily Christmas carols, right?) 😉

But as I see from next month`s preview, from issue 260 (in the shops from 29 August) it`s full-on Christmas already - so hard to believe when a few days ago, we were still roasting in Rome on our summer holiday. But now that we`re back in Scotland, I`m furiously working on The Monarch of the Glen: two days ago, I finished page 9 of 12:

And thanks to an almost 10-hour wee session yesterday, I`ve got most of page 10 done too (I`ve finished the whole sky and most of the antler since this pic was taken last night).

So when Birthday Boy goes back to work on Monday, I have less than a week (thanks to a doc`s appointment 🙄) to finish this and the remaining two pages of the chart - in other words, I have another 40-50 hours of stitching to complete in 4 days... I`ve already resigned myself to the fact that it won`t be framed for The Big Day, now I`m just hoping it won`t have too much of the left corner missing when I hand it over on Saturday. 🤣 I might have to sneak out to the living room in the middle of the night and stitch for a few hours while hubby`s sleeping... watch this space! 😁