I just sent this piece off to my sister, who completed the Avon 39-mile walk for breast cancer in April. It's a Bent Creek design, stitched 2 over 2 on 28-count Wichelt Star Sapphire linen. The charted greens were a little too muted for me, so I selected my own from Gentle Arts Sampler Threads and also used the DMC variegated green (4035?) that has become my favorite all-purpose green.  I left off the white dots and buttons of the original--I thought it gave it too wintry a look. This sister is a green girl (as my mother would say; she remembered everyone's favorite color) and red birds are special to her.

The colors in the photo above are pretty accurate, but here's a view without the distortion:

I love the silver-painted wooden frame that the frame shop helped me pick out.

I entered two cross-stitched pieces in this year's Indiana State Fair. This one won an Honorable Mention in the small (less than 100 square inches) category:

Framed area is about 8" x 8", stitched over 2 on 28-count Cashel (I think?) Willow. Design by Lori Markoviz for La-di-da. Frame from local thrift shop, painted black. The quote's from Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven," of course; I've had this hanging in my office for the past school year and decided on a whim to enter it.

And this one, I'm pleased to say, was awarded Second Prize in the intermediate (101 - 150 square inches) category:

The design area is about 9" x 12", stitched over 2 on Light Mocha Cashel. Design by Sandy Orton for Kooler Design Studio, published in The NeedleWorker, Summer 1998. (Obviously, unframed and unironed--I didn't get a picture of the professionally framed piece before I submitted it.) The verse is from the Book of Job, and I like it because it reminds me of how much we have to learn from creatures other than our human selves.