Dare I say Christmas presents...?

I know it's January and the last thing anyone wants to hear about is Christmas presents, but as promised before here are the two quick stitch Christmas presents that I did for my Mum and Dad and a good friend. (I'll be completely honest - I've only just finished them - that's awful isn't it??)



The Canadian flag was for my parents who fulfilled a lifelong dream of going to Canada in the Autumn of 2009 - they had a wonderful time and took hundreds of photographs. I've done the flag so that they can put it in the front of their photo album for the holiday (when they finally get around to putting them into one!). The flag is on 18ct white aida using DMC blanc and 349. The pattern was from issue 129 of Cross Stitch Crazy. Mum and Dad also bought me back a wonderful seal chart from Canada which is from a painting by Sue Coleman who combines traditional pictures of animals with native representations (the seal picture is on the linked-to page as I can't get a decent photo of it).



The rainbow was for a friend who's going through a tough time and wasn't quite as quick a stitch as I had imagined.... I got a bit annoyed with the blue sky for some reason. I'm going to put it in a small frame for her and give it to her when I see her next. The chart is from the same issue of Cross Stitch Crazy as the Canadian chart above.

Now that I've got these two little projects sorted, I've had a good sort through my stash and tidied everything up in readiness to work on Raggetty Ann and a small flower picture that I started over Christmas whilst I was at my parents. I'm hoping to make good progress on her, and that she'll start to take shape soon. All I've really wanted to work on whilst we've had all this cold weather is Winter Wonderland, but I was struggling to finish off the flag and rainbow instead!

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