Finally finished!

"The Newborn King"

I am quite a fan of cross-stitch and started when I was 10 years old and my grandmother gave me some money to buy myself a present with, and I got a big "Forever Friends" cross stitch, which I loved doing.
Since then I have done a couple of cross-stitch projects but I have been working on this latest one ("The Newborn King") on and off for the last 2 years (if not more!), whenever I get the chance. But this afternoon, I finally finished it!!

This is what the pattern on the instructions leaflet says it should look like:

but I put in a couple of my own "Antonia-modifications" (e.g. I felt Mary's robe was way too low and so I brought it up (hence the pen mark on Mary's shoulder on the pattern above!), and I put flowers in the border instead of the Holly leaves)

and so this is what my final cross-stitch looks like ( I have literally *just* finished so the fabric is still a bit crumpled):




And the sweetest part close-up:



Now that that is done, I don't have any more cross stitch patterns to do! When I was in Italy over the summer I looked everywhere in my hometown for a religious cross-stitch pattern but found nothing! (how ironic that I bought the one above in Saudi Arabia when I used to live there, but can't find one in an Italian town!!)

But my darling soon-to-be mother-in-law got me an awesome cross-stitch for Christmas; it is blank and you send in any photo or picture of your choice to the company, and they make a pattern and instructions based on the photo so that you can do a cross-stitch of your photo. How cool is that?! I think I will use a nice photo from my wedding day!