cross stitch

The most surprising thing to many has been that I work on cross stitch.  (Well, no, the most surprising thing to many is that I very rarely turn on the tv.)  My mom really loves doing cross stitch and taught me as a young child to enjoy this art.  Well, sometime around high school my mom started making Christmas stockings for each of her kids.  Since I enjoyed hanging with my mom while she did this and enjoyed stitching myself, I started on the one she got for me.  Mom has since finished numerous stockings and various other projects, but mine has been stagnant for years.  Every 5 years or so, Mom would ask how my stocking was coming along and I always was pretty impressed with myself that it had survived the latest move and I knew that it still existed.  So, when I was relegated to bed rest, I told Mom, maybe I can finish my stocking!!  This is a great bed rest activity because it's very relaxing, fairly easy to do lying down, and very satisfying in that I can look and see that I've accomplished something during my time in bed.  I should have taken a true "before" picture to show where I left off sometime in the early 90s, but didn't think about it, so here's what the stocking looks like after a few weeks of working on it.  Hopefully, I can post an "after" picture when I finish before I'm consumed by two crying babies with no time or energy to complete this project.