A little trip to the land of cross-stitching

This morning I wrote that I received some books today. One is the emboiderie book called 
"rot - Kleine Stickideen" . It´s a nice little book, mostly with pictures and nearly no text or explanations but a lot of cross stitch and free embroidery pattern. It comes with a little piece of fabric, a needle and some thread so one can start immediatly.

First I´ve tried to stitch a squirrel with backstitching but it turned out terrible.

Than I remembered that in my youth I had a period when I loved to do cross stitching. I searched a nice motive and now I´m trying to make the russian doll. I´m using 2 strands of the thread and so far it is ok. I´m not sure if I will ever finish it but it seems to work much better than the back stitch and french knots and things like that.