Some stitching and a little unexpected time off

So once again I meant to be back a little sooner but this time I've got a really good excuse- a week ago Monday (yup, Thanksgiving week) I started having some nasty sharp abdominal pain on the upper right side and a few ER and doctor visits later I found myself on the operating table having my gallbladder out. It's all okay now, today is my second full day home after surgery and the drugs are keeping me comfortable enough as long as I sit still. Getting up and down is another story but I'm sure that will continue to improve as time goes on. The plan is to get back to work right before Christmas so I've definitely got some time to kill and I plan to spend a chunk of that stitching since I'll be sitting around anyway. My first goal is to finish off the Christmas ornaments I want to give as gifts this year. I'm not planning anything fancy but I bought six sleds and several of the Foxwood Crossing sled designs. I've already stitched two since the drug haze lifted Wednesday evening so here are the first two. My only change so far has been to use DMC 739 for the background instead of 729. The gold just seemed a little too dark and dated for the look I was going for. I'm pretty pleased with how the cream brightens things up. I may do the one on the right again with a dark gold border instead of the red. We'll see how much time I have.



In between the surgeon's consultation on Monday and the surgery Wednesday I had one day to run a bunch of errands and get everything done possible before being mostly parked in my recliner for a week or two so I made a quick run to House of Stitches and dropped these off for framing...





Those are the first two of four My Favorite Teddy birth announcements I have planned and I hope to present them to my cousin, the mom of these two brothers, at the little one's first birthday in mid-January. I stitched them on 32 count ivory Lugana with my own DMC conversion since the Vervaco kit I bought did not have DMC numbers attached to the thread card. I'm pretty happy with the results and hope the recipients are too as they are a surprise. I think any off time I have left after my ornaments will go to #3 which will be a pink one (yay!) so at least a little bit of a change up.

That's about it for now, more than enough excitement for me for awhile I think! Back to stitching and surfing the internet while catching up on my Netflix viewing. Be back next week with more pics! I've got some of Dragon Master to share too as soon as I can get someone to bend over and get it for me:)