New start for Christmas

Until recently , I was never really bothered about stitching for Christmas. It seemed like a lot of effort to put in for it to be only seen a few weeks every year. Over the last year or so , I've come round to the idea a bit more . It would be nice to have a special seasonal picture , and maybe it would be appreciated more for not being up all the time. I've ummed and ahhed until finally deciding to do something. I've probably left it too late for this year , but we'll see. I had a couple of projects in mind , but this one came out tops :

It's from Cross Stitcher 127 , November 2002 issue and is by Rhona Norrie.

So , I turned the house over looking for a spare scroll frame ,and we haven't got one .We have six frames , five have projects on and the other one is too small for this . With my husbands encouragement , I went over to my LNS and bought a new frame. They didn't have the size I wanted in stock , and I didn't want to wait another couple of weeks, so I bought a slightly larger one and it seems ok. I also went for the easy clip frame instead of the type where you sew the fabric on to the bars , and it's a lot easier. I did learn though to put the clips all the way along the fabric , or it gets distorted.

This is where I've got to this afternoon , with less than an hours stitching.

It says in the mag that it will take about 45 hours stitching , but time will tell. Whether it gets done in time for this Christams remains to be seen , but if not , I've made an early start for next year lol.