Hiya all,

I've been steadily working on my new cross stitch that I purchased last week. I've been calling it "In Love".

These are my progress photos. I started in the middle like you're supposed to and when I bought the aida cloth I agonized for a good 20 minutes in Micheal's about which one to get and what I bought should be enough for almost 2 of my pictures...but of course I've got this worry that I will end up not having enough room to complete the picture.

The only thing that is preventing me from being totally and absolutely in love with this piece so far is that I can't see the picture. Do you know what i'm talking about? When I craft I really like (and need) to see the 'big picture' forming...and right now I can't. It's just a jumble of oranges and browns so far. & you can't tell from the picture (& you can barely tell in real life) but there is so far at least 8 different colors in use on the cloth. Some of them are so close that when I'm stitching I can't even see the difference. I'm seriously hoping (& praying a little bit) that once it's a finished product it will look beautiful and the color variations will really mean something then.

As a funny aside Andrew has figured out who this is for. I couldn't help but exclaim, 'how did you know?' when he said who it was for. So the cats out of the bag at our house and even though I told him about a zillion times that it's a surprise I have feeling when he sees my friends next week (they're coming over for dinner) he'll tell them all about their present. Hopefully he'll have forgotten by then...but I wonder if I should tell him that it is for someone else (like grandma) and then let them know the deal?

Anyways...tomorrow is Friday and then it's the weekend! Yippee Skippee!