Ethel Makes an Appearance (or I Couldn't Face the Stars)

Happy Valentine's Day!  In honor of the day I had this sudden inspiration just now to give you hearts, but someone's photo files are inaccessible.  But I muddled around and found these offerings, and you know I think they are perfect reminders of looking for little bits of happiness where you can --

That's my shop's laying tool collection in the beautiful, hand-made wooden heart that the owner's son (a custom carpenter) made.

And this is fond proof that some of my co-workers love me.....

.... and shouldn't be left alone with glitter paints.   And, yes, that banana was part of my lunch I'd left on my desk.  You should have seen what they did to my monitor!  hee heee   It *is* fun to work with these folks.

Ok, back to today's title.  I couldn't face the stars of doom on the flag.  So I hauled out Ethel and completed ... a duck!   See, So Many Books, I am making progress on your Ethel.

Now for a little thinking, I have a face dilemma.  Here are the faces without stitching:

Here's a face fully stitched with one threads:

And here's a face partially stitched with 2 threads (the stitched part is on an angle from the upper right of the face down to the nose-- it doesn't cover the end of the nose of the mouth.):

I am leaning to the one-thread version.  The 2-thread one seems to obscure a lot.  I'm worried that it will make the mouth disappear and the nose just look like dirty thread.  The one-thread canvas is less stripey than it seems in the picture because it isn't so enlarged when you just look at the canvas.  So, what do you think?

Ok, I promise to do stars AND stripes this weekend.  I should have a nice, long time to stitch since the powers that be are closing my local freeway which really eliminates traveling to the shop or Auxiliary Family events this weekend. Now if I can just focus and actually stitch rather than piling everything on the bed and staring at it.   I will keep chanting Olympics-stitching-Olympics-stitching........   maybe I'll get the idea.

Have a wonderful Valentine's and a great weekend!

{Edited note:  Oh crud.  I've been blog visiting and now I'm obsessed with the "need" to stitch a heart.  Anyone want to lay odds on the likelihood of me holding out against a new start????}