Yahoo!!

First of all, my biggest news -- I'm officially a homeowner!!  YAY!!!!  I made settlement on an awesome house and I can't WAIT to move in!  I especially can't wait to have a special area just for my stitching and crafts!!  I don't have any pictures yet, but I will very, very soon, and I'll post some just as soon as I take them! :-D

Second, I finally finished the "Sleep Tight" Sticks project I posted in my Sneak Peeks post.  Here is the finished product (I still have to do the finishing work, but all the stitching is done) -



Now, I'm not sure if you can tell or not (maybe if you click on the pic and enlarge it you can), but there is absolutely no square unstitched - the entire project is sheer stitching.  I honestly thought I'd never be done, and it's only 7.5" x 7.5"!  I've done Miribilia projects that are 3x this size (pics of them to come, so keep an eye out!)!!  I think this will be my last Sticks project for a good long time - the other one I did (Grow) was exactly the same way.  You'd think I'd've learned my lesson with the first one.

Below are some additional shots I took to give you a closer look -

This moon has the right idea -- nighty night!

If you can get a closer look, there are petite seed beads all throughout the moon's surface...

...and if you can get a closer look here, there are more beads in his hat, in the stars, and on (what looks like) Saturn in the upper right corner...

For as much of a pain in the neck this project was, it turned out pretty cool!!  I love the colors - they're so bright, and a far cry from the pastels which you normally see for baby gifts.  I plan on making this a pillow, so hopefully Katie can find a spot for it atop a shelf or bookshelf in her baby's nursery :-)

I do have one gripe about these Mill Hill Sticks projects....they don't give you the correct supplies.  In Grow, they left out one of the browns for the tree trunk.  In this project, they left out two colors, and didn't give me enough of a third.  Luckily, being the stitching freak that I am, I have almost every DMC color and was able to finish the project without a hitch.  However, for those cross stitchers who don't have an entire Michaels DMC display in their stash, this could prove difficult when trying to complete the project.  My advice -- before you even think about beginning to stitch, separate all the threads, and make sure you have everything.  Use master cards to help separate the threads for the project.  There were PLENTY of beads, so you don't have to worry about that for this kit...just the threads.  And fear not -- this crazy stitcher plans on sending a "heads up" letter to Mill Hill, so hopefully no one else will have this problem!