A door monster from via Brera to scare away the bad spirits for 2013

Whew! That was quite a stretch of intense, but intensely satisfying, work, wasn't it?

Here's a scary door Gorgon monster from...More...... ...via Brera in Milan to frighten away the bad spirits from your Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.

It would make a great rectangular pillow, or--if you're ambitious and ready to confront it in all its unaltered glory--a chair back, or fire screen. (As usual, if you find the design too complex, print it, use a felt-tipped pen to outline the main areas, and use only 3 or 4 hues to achieve a great effect. It's easy, and will help you realize how you, too, can do your own designs...it's so much more fun!)

I uploaded the image, which I snapped only a few days ago, into Stitchpainter. A bit of fussing with the positioning and size, and voila'!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to you all! Enjoy!

Happy Birthday to me! (to my blog, anyway)

Hello there! Were you wondering where I was? I'm here, just workin' like a dawg, but couldn't miss sharing the joy of my blog's second anniversary with you.

To celebrate, here's an adorable little gargoyle-like stone decoration on Via Boscovich in Milan.

Want to know more about it? See my blog dedicated to Milan, "My Milan (Italy)": http://mymilanitaly.blogspot.it/2012/02/neo-romanesque-fun-on-via-boscovich.html

Enjoy! (confetti thrown here!)

The call of the Siren (Milan Monday 02)

I love it when my current interests synchronize over the miles with the writers of my favorite blogs, and it happened, again, these last few days.

A recent post on the "Italian Needlework" blog talks about sirens in, well, Italian needlework: http://italian-needlework.blogspot.com/2010/08/la-sirena-siren.html.

Mid July I took photos of the little historic bridge with sirens in the park behind the Sforza castle. In honor of that post and my recent trip to the bridge, I posted one of the photos on my Milan blog, today: http://mymilanitaly.blogspot.com/2010/08/siren-call-in-sempione-park.html.

Such fun! (Though, when hearing about my blogs, my husband burst out, yesterday, with something politely translated from Italian as "How incredibly dull!")

The needlework patterns can be adapted for needlepoint, but keep in mind those tricky diagonals.