Jolly Snowman with Silver Bell

Look at the hat first. Teal, knitted, pulled down low over a snowman's face, with a fat pom-pom on top and two pink cheeks showing underneath. The silver bell tied into his scarf is the smallest object in the whole picture, and it is the piece you will save for last.

Everything below the hat is warmth set against cold. A matching teal scarf finished with a bow, holly berries in cherry red scattered where the composition needs heat, and frosty blue running through the background where the snowflakes fall. The reds stay deep rather than bright. The whites are not one white at all but a stack of silvery grays and blue-tinged pales that only separate from each other once you have placed a few hundred of them.

Twenty-two DMC colors, 309 through 3865, and the pale end of that range is where the value sits. Snow subjects flatten when a kit hands you one white and calls it finished. This one gives you enough near-whites that the drifts and the falling flakes keep their own shapes.

The details

• 45 x 60 cm (approx. 18 x 24 in)
• Full coverage, round drills
• 22 DMC colors, DMC 309 to DMC 3865
• Adhesive canvas with printed symbols and color legend
• Sealed, numbered, DMC color-coded drill packets
• Stylus pen, grooved tray, wax refill and tweezers included
• Kit only, no frame included

Straight talk

Roughly 30 to 35 hours. That is five or six weeks of evenings for most people, so if it is meant to be on the wall before Christmas, start it well before December. Round drills are the forgiving kind and this is a fine second or third project, but 45 x 60 cm is a large canvas: work in sections and keep the film down over everything you are not on. It ships rolled and wants a night under something flat before you begin.

Then the bell goes on, you are finished, and he has been waiting under that hat the entire time.