YES, YES, YES!!!!!! Me happy!!!! Me got good mail yesterday evening!!!! LOL
Woops, I am at work at the moment and the boss is back. Can't write much more, will be back later!

Here I am again. Almost 10PM.
So, like I said, I had a good postie day yesterday. Finally the fabric arrived, together with some #28 needles, an empty plastic thread box I bought especially for the threads I have to use and a bobbin of Kreinik very fine braid #4.
I almost ripped the plastic bag and cardboard box it all came in as I was really curious to what 25 count fabric looks like. Might sound silly as I have been stitching since the end of 2003, but I had never seen 25 count fabric before. Remember I live in Belgium and it's the Middle Ages here when it comes to stitching.
I had a good look at the fabric and concluded it wasn't all that bad. I thought the little holes would be much closer together, I thought this would be rather easy to stitch on and my Night Queen would be made like a flash.... hmmmmmpppffffff....
So after having fed my cats and myself (different brand of food!), I sat down, took a needle, some tacking thread and started counting holes.... 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, make a blanket stitch, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 blanket stitch, and so on and so on. I managed to surround the whole border with that stitch so the fabric would stop from fraying. (Thanks again Paula for telling me about that stitch!) Must say by the time I finished it I saw holes everywhere :-)

Today I went to work and thought about the fabric the whole time.
I had the impression I had bought too small a piece!!!
So when I came home tonight, I showered, ate, fed the cats and grabbed the fabric to start sticking pins in. Yep, I was a voodoo queen for an hour or so, just counting and sticking pins in. Finally I realised the fabric was big enough, pfewww, and I started gridding it.
I still don't have the floss to make it all, but I have some full skeins of a couple of colours for this design so I took DMC # 823 (Dark Navy Blue) and started testing stitches. I had hoped to make this queen with a tent stitch using 2 threads. It's impossible though, you can still see the fabric in between the stitches. If I had bought some dark fabric it would be a different matter, but the bone colour I have makes it look bad.
So, it is going to be a cross stitch design instead and I started it tonight! I think I did some 50 stitches and that will be it for now. It's not as easy as I originally thought it would be. I use 2 threads and stitch up every hole, so it's 2 over 1 and the stitches are really, really very close up to each other. I'm glad this design is full of dark colours as you don't notice each separate stitch too much. If I used light colours you would certainly notice the stitches being irregular sometimes. That's why I usually stitch on 14 count aïda. My stitches remain regular all over the design. When I use a higher count fabric my stitches become a bit irregular and I don't like to see that. But the 50 stitches I made on my queen don't look too bad so far, you would need a magnifying glass to notice the details. I have no idea how it will evolve but I am happy with it at the moment. Must say I have had to cut some of the tacking thread I used for the grids. The thread gets tangled with the DMC floss and I don't want the basting to ruin the good stitches.
Going to watch a quiz on tv now and go to sleep after it's finished. I do hope tomorrow evening will come fast so I can get on with stitching this queen and start putting up some pictures.
Bye bye for now to all who read this and see you later alligator!