A Good Morning for a Hanging!

 Several months ago I managed to get a very precious slot at the local picture framers and I took three pieces of cross stitch in to be framed. Some of these had been languishing unframed for literally years and I still have a backlog of finished pieces, not to mention all the ones that are yet to be finished - or even started! However, let's not dwell on the negative. 

Just before Christmas I got a call to say they were ready to be collected. I pointed out, quite genially, that it was the wrong time of year, because I knew it was going to be expensive, but there you go. We went in and picked them up and waved the contactless card at the machine and came home with these 

So this one I remember working on on  a train going to see a friend in Edinburgh. Our younger son would have been about 3 or 4 and he's now 33. I think it was already finished before we moved to Orkney in 2005, but I cold be misremembering. 

This is the youngest of the three as I bought it as a kit by mail order after one of our trips to Australia. This is the waratah, which is the state flower of New South Wales. At the time I had grand visions of doing a complete set of the state flowers which would have been seven in all.  That's obviously not happening, I love this one now it's finished though. 

This one was partly completed when we moved here in 2005 and hung about until I had the courage to chart 'Orkney' to replace the 'Country' which was on the original chart. After I finished it it hung about again waiting to be framed. 

We didn't hang these up as soon as we brought them home because in this house pictures get taken down to make way for Christmas decorations so putting up new ones was out of the question. However we had a relatively smooth time this morning getting them hung. I say relatively smooth because we didn't  enter into any interminable arguments about what should go where. And here they all are in situ. 

We also replaced a battery in  wall clock that's needed done for years as well and I filled a box with stuff for the charity shop. A good morning's work.