A Christmas finish and a Halloween WIP

Happy Days!  I have my first Christmas present finished!  I'm sooo on top of it this year ......  not.

Anyway, here it is, Home with Jane Austen by The Sampler Girl:

I used Valdani threads for this pattern, my first experience with this brand.  I like them.  The threads laid (correct word here?) nice for me and didn't tangle much.  The only problem I had was that the linen fabric was a little hard on the threads -- the ends would soften up and fray more than other brands.  This won't keep me from using Valdani, just using shorter lengths of thread and/or clipping the tails more often. 



I pulled out La-D-Da's Something Wicked and started back on it.  I lost the original Needle Necessities thread I was using for the boot -- sigh -- how that happened, I have no idea.  Anyway, I bought the corresponding ThreadWorx thread to try to save myself some frogging.  The thread is beautiful but, of course, not an exact match.  However, since I had only put half the cross down before losing the thread, I thought it would be okay.  And I think I'm right -- yay!  Can you tell where the NN ends and the TW begins (look at only the completed cross stitches)? 

hehe -- good luck with that comparison -- I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.  The pic's not that great.

I probably won't get much stitching done this weekend -- the dogs and I are headed to a Teacup agility trial.  Should be fun!  I hope everyone has a nice stitchy weekend!