Naughty, naughty stitcher

As I predicted, I didn't get a lot of stitching done over the weekend. Friday night I worked on the Mermaids for a while, and on Saturday I got out the wedding piece again. I'm a little frustrated with the wedding design, since I don't have a scroll frame empty for it and it is just a teeny bit too big for my 10-inch hoop. I have a hard time stitching in-hand, since I am used to the tension created by a frame or hoop....and I don't like moving a hoop around and crushing stitches. Ah well. At least I don't leave the fabric in the hoop when I'm not stitching on it, so it will probably be fine.

Saturday I also started feeling domestic, and broke out my collection of "Cooking for 2" magazines. I picked out a couple recipes to try this week, and even went grocery shopping! And I made a pork chop dish for dinner - I put potatoes and carrots in the bottom of a casserole, browned 2 chops and put them on top, then made a sauce with cream soup and some spices and baked the whole thing for about an hour (until the potatoes were tender). Yummy! And the great thing about the recipes from those magazines is that there is no temptation for DH - or me, for that matter - to have second helpings. There is just enough for the 2 of us.

Saturday night, though, DH and I were both feeling a bit antsy, so we decided to head to Borders. Baaaaaaaaad idea. I left with this the book you see on the right - "Magical Cross Stitch," a British publication with designs by Joan Elliott, Ursula Michael, and others. There are some gorgeous maidens in here: The Earth Goddess, Fairy Queen, and Dark Sorceress. They are tall, narrow designs, kind of like Mira's Seasonal Maiden series. The only problem is that I don't think they all "go together" like the Mira maidens, so I'm not sure how I might display them. The Dark Sorceress - my favorite - is done in dark blues and purples with a firey orange and yellow background, the Fairy Queen is in cool silvery purples, and the Earth Goddess is green, pink, and blue (earthy tones). Hmm. I'll take a picture of the page that shows the finished designs, and maybe one of my wonderful readers will have an idea.... ::grin::