Look at this precious little goody!

I participated in Becky's February pin pillow exchange, with the pillows flying fast and furious all around the world to meet the April 1st deadline, and this is the stunning little pillow that my exchange partner stitched up for me:

(PLEASE click for original size to catch all the details!!!)

It's called a 'Pagoda' pin keep (by Gift of Stitching) and it's so delicious and such a charmer I'm absolutely floored by it. I can only imagine the trickiness of getting that top piece on so neatly in the corners............that takes a lot of skill and patience to make it look so effortless, let me tell you! (Sadly, the stitcher in question, Rafaella, does not have a blog so I can't link to her.) I just love love love it to death. It will definitely be appreciated and displayed for a long, long time to come.

I haven't been stitching myself too much the last few weeks (except for the pin pillow *I* finished for my secret person) but I did manage to finish up this old little goodie:

It's a Blacksheep kit (called, crazily enough, "Rose Topiary") that has been sitting in my stash for, ohhhhhhh, since 2002 or so. I originally pulled it out as a possible contender for the pin pillow thing but the dimensions were a little bigger than I wanted for that. I love that the 'roses' look just like the ones I do in glass though so I decided to just finish it up while I had it out. (Because otherwise we could be looking at ANOTHER 8 years before I got it done. lol) I did switch up the colors on it though. I switched out the super pale pink for something a little darker and ditched the heavy heavy black border for one using the green/fuschia instead. It seemed more fitting for springtime and my mind set right now. The black works but I wasn't feeling it right *now*. Now I just need to get the hubby to make me a frame for it. :)