It isn’t ornamentified yet, but as you can see, the stitching for “Baby’s 1st Christmas” is complete. This was a quick stitch and I should have been done a few days earlier, but between being sick most of last week and spending time with a new friend, I haven’t been stitching as much as I had planned to at the beginning of the month. I am still aiming to do the finishing so I can give it to my sister before Christmas, but we’ll see… I do have some Christmas parties to attend after all!
In other show and tell news, I also received my Stocking Stuffer Exchange piece. This little snowflake ornament was stitched for me by Cathy and is hanging proudly on our otherwise gaudily decorated Christmas tree. (My niece helped me decorate the tree last weekend and we put so many ornaments and lights on the tree I am surprised it hasn’t tipped over yet! 
)
After we finished decorating the tree on Sunday, my sister asked me to watch my niece for a few hours so she could wrap presents. Because I am a cool aunt and because I wanted to keep her occupied, I asked her what she wanted to do while we were hanging out. Imagine my delight when she told me “cross stitch!”
I didn’t know how serious she was about “real” stitching, but I pulled out some 14ct Aida and found a beginner pattern anyway. I told her if we were going to stitch we were going to do it the right way and I was very impressed with the results: Not only did she seem to catch on to the proper ex-ing technique very quickly, I also managed to keep her attention for about 2 dozen correctly made stitches (about half the dragonfly’s tail) before she got distracted and rearranged the colors in my bobbin box.
After she went home I decided to take a few hours to finish up the pattern we had started so that I can frame it and give it to her for Christmas.