Noel, X

My most recent stitching on Noel has been what I think of as "clean up" stitching.  I finished the lettering on the Joy ornament.  I added the green trees and red "spots" on the white ornament.  Then I frogged the pale aquay-blue shine on the dark blue ornament and replaced it with a basketweaved more blue-light blue.  I'm now happy with that ornament.

I used the same color scheme on the other dark blue ornament, but ditched the original stitch since it had been a pain to see and stitch.  Instead, I did my now trusty nobuko.   Then a finish for the very velvet mosaic on the last of the bow in this photograph.  I also stitched the white in the Noel ornament.

 The following photo shows my progress, thus far.  I foresee a future of while silk lame braid and shades of red very velvet.  There are only 3 ornaments to be stitched (two on the right, aqua and green, and the gold one in the center).  I have started the dark brown on the central gold ornament.  I've saved them for last because I couldn't think of pattern stitches to do on them.  I may just fall back on basketweave.

Pelicans everywhere, v

The background is finished--hooray!! 

I didn't attempt to continue the background pattern in this little area between pelicans.  Life is just too short for that headache.

Now I've started stitching the individual pelican heads, top-knots and beaks.  Beak doesn't sound right.  The head is basketweave and I'm using the diagonal mosaic for the top-knots and beaks.
EDIT:  I remembered--pelicans have bills.  Glad I finally remembered that!