The splash of red paint grows

Here is Celtic christmas as she has finished up tonight. She still looks like a splash of red paint, but now she's a splash of red paint with a bit of gold thread running through her. I've done some of the beading on her, decided to do it as I went along instead of leaving it 'til the end as I was getting a bit confused over which squares needed crosses in them and which needed to be left empty for beads, so thats another stitching skill mastered! Weird needle, the beading needle, long and bendy with an annoying tiny eye. Strange. Despite the fact she looks like a splash of red paint and will do until I do the head I'm determined to finish the skirt before I move onto the other parts of the design, although perhaps the next time I do one like this I'll do the head first so at least it has an identity.

Celtic Christmas has been on-the-go for about 10 days now but from tomorrow she goes back in the drawer & the Castle Sampler is coming back out as I really want to get some work done on that before I go on holiday (next Thursday).

Some new ebay acquistions.... The Legends of the Dragons chart (a collaberation of three designers including Teresa Wentzler), and TW's Lily Maiden. Lily Maiden looks quite small for a TW, will probably still take me a good 6 months to stitch though! The threads I bought through ebay still haven't all turned up, but there is another package sitting at the post office with no stamp on, I'm not expecting anything else so it has to be them. This is the second time in the past few months I've had to pay postage on receipt of ebay purchase because the seller has failed to pay enough/pay anything at all. Its more irritating having to go to the post office and collect than actually pay the postage for them because it takes such a long time. Valuable time I could be getting on with my stitching!!!