A Cardinal Finish!

 My first finish of the year, Mr. Cardinal:

This pattern came from Cross Stitch Crazy, it was part of a series of birds.  I don't know the year, the issue, or the designer because at some point magazines stopped putting all that on the pages. I love all reds and the bird was backstitched in white, a first for me!  

In the meantime I've been loving all the rain we've been getting in California, it's great stitchy weather! I cued up Inspector Morse and got some more sky done on Age of Dinosuars:

  

More of the black outlining on Aliens:

Some of the corner on Autumn Meditation:

more of the top of Harvest Blessings:

and I got to the bottom of Zinnias:

First week down!

I've been kicking 2023's a#%  so far!  New Year's Eve we took our traditional sunset photo, we celebrate at sunset so we can go to bed haha.

We knew it was sunset because of the time, but some rain was rolling in.  

Kuna looks like she's not looking forward to this year - I thinks she could tell it was going to rain and she wanted us to get inside.  I love love love the rain and she has suffered through some wet walks with me!

My final TUSAL result for 2022:

This beautiful creature won the "Sweepstakes Award" for the most beautiful float! This is the float I worked on for the Rose Parade, in all her glory! Some of that yellow was made from flower petals cut by me, and I couldn't have been more proud that we'd won if I'd designed and built the whole float myself!

My stitching has been diligent! I got to the bottom of "Zinnias" from Leisure Arts Magazine, year unknown but I'm guessing the 90s.

Got a flower started in "Autumn Meditation":

Started the letters in "Harvest Blessings":

"Winter Cardinal" has a chest:

 

"Sistine Chapel" has some of the border - there are four colors in this space, believe it or not:

I have a picture of "Reversed Sampler" so I did something but I don't know what:

And I finally took a picture of Aliens:

I'm trying to stick with a finish every 11 days, so I'll probably be stitching Cardinal like crazy to finish him by the 11th - fingers crossed!