Klimt and robins

Two remarkable things have happened recently in my life: I`ve been awarded British citizenship and, after not being able to meet up in person for 18 months, my mum was here with us when I was notified, so it was even better that we could celebrate together. 😊

Also, having been nowhere for about a year, except for mini walks to the post office or the local shops, it was extra special to go on a proper road trip with DH, DS and my mum. We decided on a westerly loop and spent one day/night in Oban, then went to the Isle of Skye to see the Fairy Pools, and finally came back to Fife via Blairgowrie to see the famous beech hedges there (see pic/info here).

We also had a lovely lunch and wander around in Blairgowrie, where in one of the charity shops I discovered a Klimt frame for a mere £2.50 - if the kind person who donated it reads this: thank you for the perfect keepsake that`ll always remind me of this glorious time in July 2021! 😊

Since the frame already had The Embrace on it, I thought The Kiss would be a fitting companion, so I went on to Etsy and purchased the chart (from here) that`s small enough to fit this 10x15 cm frame. I wanted it to fill the aperture as closely as possible, so I did a little number crunching and decided that 4 over 2 on 18ct aida would give me the result I was after. I knew there`d be a gap on the top but I didn`t want too much of the stitching to disappear under the embracing couple, so I copied the artist`s signature on graph paper and added that in the blank space on the top. All in all, I`m very pleased with the end result and as I said, it`ll always remind me of this great Summer. 😊

In other news, the latest issue of The World of Cross Stitching is in the shops now, with the cute little Christmas robins card by Emma Congdon as the freebie. I`ll be honest: when I saw it last month at the back of issue 310, it looked familiar and I could have sworn I`d stitched it but since I couldn`t find a photo of it anywhere in my folder, I concluded I must be bonkers. So in a way, it was a lovely surprise (and confirmation of my sanity 🤪) when I saw my name under Stitched by - and as luck would have it, the very next day I came across my photo of it too (it was saved in my Crazy folder as originally it was for that magazine 🙄🥴🤦‍♀️). Anyway, hope you like them and thanks for visiting my blog - happy stitching! 😊