World Cup picture
I managed to finish half of my World Cup Goal. Sadly, Real Life got in my way and I found myself not having the time to finish the Hello Cthuhlu project. Moving sucks. As a reminder, my goals were:
Finish Wedding Sampler (halfway begun) -> completed!
Stitch Hello Cthuhlu (Nothing done) -> face is half stitched.

I did, however, complete the first half of my World Cup goal, which was the wedding sampler. While my pictures suck (I can't wait until I can set up my scanner again!), I did take a couple of the sampler before it was framed.

The front of the sampler.


The back of the sampler. It's pretty neat, which is the only reason I took it!

Details: The kit is from Anchor and is part of the Forever Friends Blanc collection. It is stiched on 16 ct. cream Aida cloth using Anchor threads.

Stitching notes: I notice now that the date should have been stitched in the European manner - ie 7th July 2006. Since I didn't have the front picture with me when I was stitching this, I did it the US way. Oh well! Speaking of the personalization... the font chosen is terrible, in my opinion. The "on your wedding day" is graphed; however, the way the pattern is set up, there is a gap for one of the "e"'s, making it hard to see how the "e" was formed exactly. Additionally, I just found the font difficult to stitch. I made two mistakes in stitching: one was a miscount on the flowers near the bottom of the left bear's foot. The other was the backstitching of the flowers. Honestly, the way the pattern is set up sucks. It was hard to tell what was a solid line versus a dashed line. Backstitch, full cross stitch, a couple of blended stitches, one or two fractionals (half stitches) and 2 french knots were used.

Despite the font problems, I found this to be an easy pattern to stitch. It took me about a little over a month from start to finish, which is very fast for me. I believe I began it in mid-May. Despite the real world intruding and taking time from my stitching, it was a pleasure to have this finished and framed *before* the wedding.

Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of the Hello Cthuhlu. I have about half the face stitched. This means I did not make my World Cup goal, but I am just pleased I finished the sampler on time.