EmnEllie Cross Stitch Blog

Made it to the blue and gold! Very happy with my choice of golden floss, DMC 680. It's still the right color, while not being Kreinik. Don't get me wrong, I love Kreinik, but it's a bit too fussy for me on my Christmas vacation. I'm hoping I'll get more stitches in tomorrow.  Do you eat mincemeat pies at Christmas? They're served here at the Castle!  Here's a mincemeat pie recipe. I love the jar of None Such mincemeat filling.  Here's a link to it.  I like my mincemeat pies to have meat, but the fruit ones are tasty too!  Merry Sixth day of Christmas, and happy stitching!

  Merry Fourth Day of Christmas! Xavier Romero-Frias, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons How is your Christmas so far, dear reader? There's cookies, ham, carols, and cross stitch here at the Castle! I'll be posting here a bit oftener than usual, so get ready for a big Christmas party here on the blog.  Cross Stitch Corner As promised on my last post, I've made some great progress on my DMC Nutcracker freebie, ( which can be found here at this link, for anyone who wants to stitch along with me). Here's my first two WIP update pictures:  Hopefully, I'll get to his blue pants tomorrow. While there is a wreath in the chart, I'm just going to stitch the nutcracker. The wreath looks wonderful, but I'm really focused on the Nutcracker. Not using the called for threads, instead I just reached into my floss stash and chose the colors that caught my eye. Stitching him with 3 strands of floss on what I think is s

Happy Tuesday! Isn't wrapping presents fun? Every year I pretend to be a Christmas elf, gather up my scotch tape, paper, and gifts, and wrap wrap wrap. Most of the time I use colorful wrapping paper, with snowmen, Santa, and other Christmas themes printed on it. This year, I've used a lot of paper that is red and white like a candy cane. Next year, I'm thinking of using Kraft paper instead. Like this:  Photo by  Nathan Lemon  on  Unsplash I'll add labels, and use bright ribbons, or maybe bright twine. What wrapping paper do you like? Cross Stitch Corner I'm happy to report that I've gotten out of those couple of dark squares, and made it back to the sky:  Russian Hunting by Riolis Parking my floss has enabled me to make a bunch of progress on this WIP! Going ahead, I don't think that I'll see as much orange as when I had Nikolai's coat to work on, but I am looking forward to stitching on another horse head. Last week I shared one of my new designs th

Happy Wednesday Last week I decided to try out a new-to-me Christmas movie, called The Shop Around the Corner.  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons It was made in 1940, and stars James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. It's based on a play by a Hungarian playwright, and the story is set in Hungary. I loved it! It was funny, sweet, with great acting. All of the ingredients for a perfect Christmas Rom-Com! Here's a plot description from IMDB : Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand each other, without realizing that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal. Oh, my Dear Friend, my heart was trembling as I walked into the post office, and there you were, lying in Box 237. I took you out of your envelope and read you, read you right there. - Klara Novak, The Shop Around the Corner What's not to like?!? Cross Stitch Corner It turns out that when you listen to podcasts and cross stitch, you get a lot of cross stitch

Happy Wednesday! It was an interesting week here at the Castle. A new visitor flew in:  Doesn't he look dashing? Judging from his outfit, he must have flown in from some frosty climate. He hasn't told me his name yet, instead he's taken up residence on the fireplace mantle. Cross Stitch Corner Usually I stitch in the morning, but last night I got my stitching done at night. Does that mean I'm a member of the nighttime stitcher club? (Does such a club even exist?) It was nice to lounge on my sofa, fire up a podcast or two, and make progress on Nikolai. I glanced at last week's WIP update picture- which you can see here. Here's this weeks progress:  Now, I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised at the progress I've made! I'm nearly finished with this column! The splash of orange on his coat was great to stitch, and it was thrilling to reach the horse's nose. Nikolai might look a bit out of focus right now, but I'm convinced that backstitch w