Cross-stitching work

I picked up this hobby a little while ago, and I'm having a lot of fun doing this. It's very relaxing, and you end up producing something that looks good. It is an expensive hobby, but not that bad - the smaller ones are almost affordable for once every few months. The larger one are more expensive, but you don't need to buy all the yarn at the same time - and the yarn tends to turn out very expensive itself.

To give you an idea - the newest large project I'm doing - I got a paper specifying all yarns and quantities required - they specify getting 140 yarns. At roughly R8 per yarn, it works out to R1,120 - that's just for the yarn! I've only got 73 at the moment - and this is after more than a year of owning this canvas, and checking, every time I get into a shop that sells yarn, for those I don't own yet. So the costs are spread out a bit. I have enough to continue, enough to last me at least this year. Do keep in mind though that this one is a really big canvas.

The smaller ones range from around R50 to R150, with the amount of yarn, at a guess, works out to slightly more than that. You could sell these when completed - and get your money back. I'm a bit possessive. I've spent a lot of hours on these, I want to keep them. I still need to have them framed though, and that tends to be rather expensive.

21x48cm, 16 colors. The first one I ever did. It doesn't look that good, the stitches aren't all the same direction, and I didn't do a row at a time (which I learned, from this one, to do - it looks much better). Perhaps a bit big for the beginner, if you're new to this I would seriously recommend getting something a little smaller. Completed 2005.
35x45cm, 15 colors. The second one I did, looks much better than the first, mainly because the stitches lines up properly, and I did a row at a time. This is a really beautiful piece. Completed 2007.
18x24cm, 11 colors. I actually started with the fourth one before this one, and kinda quot doing this for a while, due to various reasons. I got a smallish one to just get back into the game, before tackling the huge one again. Completed 2008 (4th June to be exact). Interesting to note I could not find any white (BLANC) or black (301) wool at any of the 4 shops I visit regularly to buy the wool. I ended up ordering a box of each (12 yarns per box) from Aladdin's Cave. I had these delivered, and completed the project - and still my regular shops doesn't have stock. Incidentally it cost less (even with the added shipping) ordering from these people than any of the shops. Next time I need yarn, I'm definately ordering from them.
106x67cm, 18 colors. Yes, it's more than 1 meter wide. It's huge, will take me a few years to complete. But it would look very nice when done. I've posted some pictures of the (limited) work I've done on this. This is a very expensive one - the canvas itself cost around R750.
Just a close-up of what details goes into making one of these, for those interested. This is the left eye of the second one I did.
One of the parts where I did a bit of progress on the new one.
The other part of progress.