Weekend Finishing Party!

Hi everyone and thanks for all your comments - they really make my day!
I hope that you had a great weekend. I did - not close to as much stitching progress as I would have wanted, but there is always next weekend, right?

On Saturday DH and I took a long very hot walk, in the arboretum here in town. It was pretty empty in the park, but I'd say that a 98 degree very damp heat does that...

On Sunday, my work-peep Hip^Hip^Happy came over to craft a bit. She has stitched up - not one - but two Tooth Fairy Pillows (this design is also by The Sweetheart Tree). One version was stitched with Hip^Hip's daughters in mind and the second was made for her niece and nephew. We were in a bit of a hurry since he oldest daughter has had a loose tooth for about two weeks now. In other words, it was high time to get everything whipped together.
Hip^Hip was a bit concerned about the finishing step, since she was a little intimidated about having to use a sewing machine. (She even said "no thanks" back when her mother offered to give her a machine... I know that most of you are going "Huh!? No she didn't" right about now... ;-))
Everything went really well and in just a few hours, she left with two finished pillows! She was a super-quick learner - she learned how to thread and use the sewing machine, to miter corners, to sew a simple pillow, why it is important to use pins and to looooove ironing! LOL! The first one we worked on together an she finished the second one completely on her own in about 1/3 of the time - very impressive!
Here is the proud stitcher (and now also seamstress) showing off both pillows. I added the close-ups, so that you can see how daring she was when she stitched the designs - she picked out threads and linen to be more personal and be to make sure that one of the pillows would make both a little boy and a little girl excited.

(Pardon the fuzzy pic at the end!)

Other than that, I have been working a bit on the Noel Quadrielle. As I suspected, this is a pretty stitch and only four floss colors are used. You can see that I have a little bit more back-stitching left. Oddly enough, I found that those remaining details is the most painful stitch on this entire design....
Once everything is stitched up, it is time to iron on a medium weight interfacing and then do the beading (the interfacing is supposed to increase the stabilization of the beads).
The piece is a lot larger than I thought, but now again, most designs I stitch seem to come out that way for some reason. Do you also tend to misjudge size from cover-photos, or is this something that I am especially bad at?

Finally I have to show you the most romantic gift I ever got. Last year on my birthday, after lunch, DH drove me out to an old over-grown property where we had taken a several months earlier in the year. During the walk, I showed him a passion flower that was growing wild across the ground and over the bushes. I told him that I have had a long-lived dream about having a passion flower vine in my garden.
So for my birthday, he remembered (insert bonus points right here!!!!) this conversation and he brought a bucket, a shovel, and some dirt and we dug up a couple of the vines that we transplanted into our garden. The transplanted vines did not make it, but luckily, I had picked up some of the fruits from the ground and I randomly planted them in various flower-beds. I could not believe our luck when we found that one of them made it! We were absolutely stunned (it took a while before we were convinced that it was an actual passion flower too...)
Now my birthday gift is growing like crazy. It has started to bloom and I will soon have to figure out how to encourage the vine not to grow across my rose bushes... It seems to produce one one-day flower each day and I just counted 11 buds waiting for their turn to burst!
Here are a couple of photos. Note how ecstatic this bee is about his yummy dinner!

Before I end today, I'd like to ask for advice - I know that this probably is a really silly question. A while ago, I bought a Brightneedle kit that came with everything included, except for the linen. I finally bought the linen cut to go with the kit and this is what I got in the mail today (sorry - I did not intentionally post the part of the receipt with the name of the store in question... I have cropped the pic to take care of that issue!):

Do you see the mark? To me, it looks like red marker and it goes all the way through the linen (the photos show both sides)... I think that I can lay out the design pieces so that the spot can be avoided. I am contemplating contacting the store anyway, so that they can improver the handling and inspection of their merchandise before shipping. Thoughts? Am I making a bigger deal out of things than needed? If you had a store, would you prefer to know about this type of error or would it be more annoying than helpful if your customers showed you the problem but at the same time informed you that it really wasn't going to be a problem. (Hope that this makes sense...)
For a while I was even thinking that maybe they sent me a piece that they knew was defective since the figured that I would be able to work around it. However, if this was the case, a note stating this would have been nice. Anyway - comments on this will be much appreciated! :-)

Well, time to get to bed. I am not doing bad today either - it is still before midnight here! ;-)
Tomorrow I am hoping to start a new, big project - I am very excited!!!

Talk with you in a bit and Happy Stitching!