Nutcrackers and WIP

I thought I'd put my collection of Nutcrackers on my blog for my Sister. She went to the Ballet on the weekend and enjoyed it as she had never seen it before. I have been slowly collection nutcrackers for a little while. I have a few more but these are my good ones. I always wish that when I went to Germany many many years ago that I had bought one in this little village that we went to. There were 2 shops selling just Christmas things that were really lovely. I bought a collection of small wooden ornaments that look lovely on a tree, but unfortunately I haven't enough room to put one up. I usually put these on our wood heater so the black thing that you can see in the background is the chimney. Unfortunately our fire doesn't have a mantle piece, which at this time of the year would be lovely, but thats another story.
This is my progress on Margaret Gibson. I am currently doing the biblical saying which is over one on 40ct. Takes a while to do.
I find that this saying is very hard to read as it just flows all together. In case you are wonder what it is, it is from Isiah 55 and is:-

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,
and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat;
yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and
without price.

I think that these biblical sayings are part of the charm of antique samplers.

The last picture is another one from my collection of samplers. I did this one earlier in the year to replace the samplers that my son took with him when he moved out.

I'm sure you all know what this one is. It is worked on 32ct linen with just my favourite DMC threads.

Its still raining in the mountains and the last couple of days have been quite cool. A lot of my neighbours have had their log fires going. Crazy for Summer. By looking at the Weather Channel we still have a lot more rain coming for December. Hopefully all this rain is going into the dams down in Sydney. The Blue Mountains are a feeder source for one of the main dams.