Finish #2 for 2025

Winter Kaleidoscope - Modern Folk Embroidery.  Finish #2 for 2025.  Oh, that seems really sad.  Started it in Sept of 2024, finished April 2025.  The goal was two pages a month, 20 pages total.  I finished it in 8 months, not ten months.  Do I wanna stitch it again?  Nope.  It is just over 13.5 inches square.  I used EXACTLY 11 skeins of dmc 498.  On 28 count antique white jobelan, one over one.  I do mean I used right down to the last thread of the skein.  I was totally convinced I was gonna need to pull another length from a next skein, which would have been fine.  I still had 5 skeins.  But as it slowly filled in, I got down to the last eight stitches, and I had inches to spare.  Not a lot of inches, but it was fine.  I never had an huge counting mistakes that I had to pull out several threads.  I had a few where I had to pull out maybe a couple dozen stitches.  Nothing that would make me say, oh, just get 11 skeins, you'll be fine.  Nope.  In all my years of stitching, I can't remember it being that exact.  It's lovely.  Why dmc 498 ?  It was just a red that some store had a bunch in the same dyelot, so I bought them, and stashed them.  It was a nice stitch.  Originally I liked the deer on this pattern.  He had a few others with that same deer that I have considered buying over the years.  But stitching this - funny thing was - the deer are what I hated stitching.  So those other patterns are not gonna suddenly show up in my stash.  They aren't hard to stitch deer, or fussy, but after the first deer, I was over the idea of liking to stitch the deer.  Or doing more deer.  It's a lovely pattern.  I have stitched a few of his other designs.  It was a nice one to finish and be able to move onto something else. 

Almost....

  Rose Quaker - Stickideen von der Wiehenburg.  This is where I got to before switching back to the red design.  It was time to do the next to pages on the red one.  But it was a good time for a break from this one.

Winter Kaleidoscope - Modern Folk Embroidery.  I just started filling in the frames to complete frames.  Which was me trying to keep going in the last few pages.  

Two of the frames were finished...

Completed that center area, which just leaves the outer frame, and that inner frame.  This is where it is as of this morning.  I'm hoping to finish it yet in April.  The quaker one is sitting near me ready to be picked up again. 

On the health side of things, I donated blood.  Whole blood - and just when I think that nothing new that is weird can happen....  it does.  Skipping the details, I can usually donate a pint in 6 minutes.  From needle in, to needle out.  This time was about 4.5 minutes.  They told me to stay seated, they worry about you being light headed, or getting the blood to stop flowing.  I asked why I was bleeding so fast.  She had simply gotten the needle in the perfect stab, at the perfect angle.  I had drank more water the two days before, last time I did not have enough water in me, so I tried harder this time.  But I have donated 65 times with just this place, and several gallons at other places over the years.  I would donate blood for free, and I have.  But for this donation, I got a $40 gift card.  Every region is different.  But you can go every 56 days, 8 weeks.