Mandalas, SALs (Totally Useless) and Santa

When I got home today there was an email from my Mum and this was the attachment.

The Holland Mandala, finished. Then she tells me the last download arrived on Tuesday! Never mind my melting red pen her needle must be glowing. It looks great.

Today it's the new moon and time for a picture of my ort jar for the Totally Useless SAL. As I was taking it upstairs to photo The Other Half commented that there wasn't much in it! Mmm, I replied that I am very frugal with my orts. Especially as over here, Treasure Braid, hand dyed silk and all the other speciality floss that are used in Chatelaine designs, Waxing Moon Designs etc are VERY expensive. Very little DMC floss in this jar so far!

So here is my contribution to the Totally Useless SAL this month.

At the end of stitching tonight this is how 'The Red Santa' looks.

The picture does not show the metallic embellishments on his coat and I have to say that in the end I frogged all the French Knots except the ones in his eyes as I did not like them. There is quite a lot of couching to do but I am going to leave that until the whole thing is finished. So the next time this hits the rotation it's on to 'The Pale Blue Santa'. A sort of finish for this week or not?

Work in progress ~ not mine but my Mum's!

Not much progress has been made on 'The Red Santa'. I hope to post a picture tomorrow. Anyway, this is a photo of one of the things my Mum is stitching at the momment. This is the Minature Winter Sampler by Teresa Wentzler. This is her afternoon project as in the morning she is working on the Holland Mandala from Chatelaine Designs.

The skaters are done in one over one (on Sunday they only had feet). In fact, at the weekend the whole piece looked like it had just been started and Mum recons I am a faster stitcher than her, not so sure about that one.