Adam and Eve at Year's End

Today is the last of the four day holiday weekend we have for Christmas.   Most people will now have three days work before another four day weekend for New Year.   You'd think I would be rested and refreshed after that amount of time off wouldn't you?   I'm not!   I feel tired, hot and frazzled. The past days have been a blur of cooking, dishes, guests and poor sleep.

And to cap it off I had to reverse stitch almost everything I did on Christmas Eve and have been busy this afternoon repairing the damage.   The HD3QBEM laughed and told me I shouldn't have made a new start when I was so busy with everything else.   But at this time of year I invariably get enthusiastic about Christmas and having completed the stitching on two other projects a new start was legitimate.   Mary Beale's Christmas Wreath seemed perfect.
Tomorrow when the shops open again I will need to go to the LNS for a DMC 3345.   Otherwise everything is from stash.

Reverse stitching was so unappealing, I searched for another small project and found this little Adam and Eve Sampler that Phyllis from Austin sent me some years ago.   I stitched it over one thread of 24 count fabric so it has come out really tiny and is therefore likely to find a home in my curio cabinet which is getting rather full;-)

Our Christmas weather was perfect and together with Little Brother and his wife we went to the beach on the 26th.   Little Brother's wife has a sea kayak and she went off on her adventures while the rest of us relaxed on shore.

The Pohutukawa blooms red along the northern coastal beaches this time of year and is aptly named our New Zealand Christmas Tree.   Very pretty.