Some progress with Santa.

But first a quick recap. As I mentioned a few posts back, I adopted Santa as a WIP/UFO.

This is the cleaned up version of what I received.  I believe he had been in a house fire, he was very grubby poor soul. I cleaned him up as best I could. He had a good hand wash and I even left him soaking for a while in some vanish! They are not so obvious here, but there are still some marks I just cannot remove. There is a rusty needle mark on the right and two hoop halos, not to mention some unknown liquid stains.

Poor Santa.

So the other day when Janice was here I mentioned to her that I was planning to cut the border down into bite sized chunks. (It's very repetitive and has loads of back stitch.) I also mentioned my hope that most of the stains would be covered by the remaining design. Well, Janice made the wonderful suggestion that I need not actually stitch the border! The border design around the main picture is actually that of a picture frame and some holly, and as I will be framing it anyway.......

Why didn't I think of that?

Plus, removing the border wouldn't take anything away from the main feature. Lets face it, Santa is the star here.

Janice also suggested tea dyeing, once I'm finished, as a way of hiding any remaining stains. I'm not so sure about that idea, there isn't a huge amount of white, considering he is walking through snow, even the aida is off white so it may be OK, I'll see how he looks once I get him finished.

As you can see I made a start. Right at the bottom.

As I said even though he is stood in snow, there is very little white. Those drifts are made up of very pale blue and lilac! With a sprinkling of sparkly blending filament. That weird blob on the right there is the beginnings of a hare.

The first picture was taken with flash, cause it's pretty dark here this morning, then I turned the flash off to see what it would look like in natural light. LOL Neither one is quite right colour wise!

Hmm, I'm not sure I even need that line of red stitches, I may even pull those out.....

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Janice and Mick are on their way home. I'm sure they enjoyed their holiday here, I know I loved meeting them again, it was great to be able to spend so much time together. We talked about how easy it would be to get together once Tony and I are in NZ. Maybe we'll even manage to meet up more often that every two years! LOL

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The contact lenses went back to the optician! 

Never again!

They were so uncomfortable and didn't settle in at all, I only wore them for a few hours but I had 'swimming pool' eyes for two days.

I'll stick to my specs.

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It may be overcast and dark, but at least it's dry. I'm off to put the washing machine on, throw the vacuum around, then it's play time.