Lately we have been sidetracked by trying to move out of our apartment and into a real house. Unfortunately all the places we have seen either had some sort of weird landlord situation, was next to the freeway, small and/or gross, or all of the above.

Just as we had lost the will to keep looking, we found our dream house. To buy. Eeeeeek! Being just on the verge of completing the sale of our house back in the UK, it was even theoretically possible that we could do it too…. but we missed out to our rivals who weren’t at the mercy of the whims of irritating buyers.

So we are staying put. Somewhat disappointing.

Anyhow, I finally finished off this collection of little stitches. The pattern was designed by Diane Machin and published in the Summer 2016 issue of CrossStitcher Magazine, and I took all the supplies to stitch it with me to the UK in September. The majority was done while relaxing on a Narrowboat.

Once the stitching was complete, they sat unfinished and unmounted for about 2 months, until I finally got round to doing something with them this week.

Part of the reason they were unfinished, was that I had half an idea to add a little bit of extra interest to the background. The ducks were stitched on a few leftover pieces of blue evenweave, so I grabbed a bit of white paint and a brush, and added some wispy clouds using just a light touch of paint. I’m not sure that it comes out that well in the pictures above, but I am happy with them, even with my limited artistic skills.

They are of course a slightly cuter version of that most classy of all wall decorations. Flying Ducks.