What Just Came Off My Frame

This is my favorite time of year.  I enjoy all the hustle and bustle of preparing for the holidays.  I love our little family traditions - baking and decorating and fixing Christmas Eve dinner.  We get out my Christmas dishes and every meal we eat seems a little more grand and festive.  But the best part for me is that I actually have time to do some rug hooking for myself.
I have been concentrating lately on hooking some antique adaptations.  I have several on my drawing board so far and this is the first to be completed:

 It sort of reminds me of a Christmas design, probably because of the red and faded green.  It has been steam-pressed and I'm ready to finish with a crochet edge.  I have a lot of antique black strips left over and what a better way to use them up.
This little mat is 24" square and hooked up pretty quick.  The most time consuming part was hooking those 20 little round circles!
I've already got another adaptation on my frame which has proved to be much more of a challenge.....