Happy Birthday to Me, Pictures for You

So today I turn the big 3-0. Yippee....

My mother-in-law and her husband were here on Saturday - we ate entirely too much food and had some interesting conversations. It isn't that I don't LIKE my mother-in-law....but sometimes I just can't relate. She is a very intelligent woman, but her logic train often skips a few stops, I think. They gave me a leather journal as a birthday gift - nice, but kind of impersonal. I mean, I don't know, I'm not being ungrateful or anything, and I'd never say anything to them.....but for me, I wouldn't give a journal unless I KNEW that 1) the person I was giving it to LIKED to write, and 2) there was something about it that made it perfect for the recipient. Oh well. Sadly, events like this don't give me much of a reason to stitch for DH's family, since I always try to find the perfect personal thing to stitch....and they give me things like calendars and journals. *sigh*

Oh, but I DID get something that made it all better....a package arrived Saturday from Margaret (a Wagon member). She sent me all of the beads, charms and metallic fibers for "Mermaids of the Deep Blue"!!!! I was bouncing off the walls (quietly, since my in-laws were still there and would never understand my glee). Thank you thank you thank you Margaret!! I already have a Silkweaver solo that looks like it will be perfect, so now I just need to get cracking on OUAT so I can clear off a set of scroll rods and pick up some of the necessary DMCs....

And now, since you've read this far, it is time for the pictures. First up is Lanarte's Classic Woman.
I stitched on her a good part of the day Sunday. Sometimes I love this design, other times I look at it and think "meh". Maybe my fabbie choice wasn't as close a match to the kit fabric as I'd hoped? Hmmmm.

And then, on Sunday night I was struck with an urge to backstitch. Verrrrry strange, I know! Or maybe I just needed to get away from the sepias and browns for a while.... So I pulled out an old WIP, the Gateway Poem I was working on for my sister and abandoned when she broke up with her boyfriend and got a dog. LOL

I'm sorry for loading the big image....it was only way the text was readable (and it is still a bit squidgy, I think). Anyway, I finished the poem and did some of the backstitching up the left-hand side. I'm definitely going to have to chart an additional border of some kind...the pattern used some rather clunky-looking diamond shapes and hearts, and I don't like it. I think a nice delicate vine-sort of thing would be nice. Nothing too intricate - no TW borders! - but perhaps some green with little pink flowers.