Schools Out!

Whew! What a last week of school, busy busy busy. We've got our plane reservations all scheduled now, and DH's mother gets to see both her boys and her grandchild the same week this summer. I know she must be excited, I would be.

For my stitching report, I did manage to finish an ornament, see it here? It's Celestial Santa by Pat Thode, of HeartStrings/The Artists Collection and appeared in the 2004 Just Cross Stitch Ornament issue. I received materials for it from a club I was in several years ago, so some of the details are different. For starters, I ran out of the Buckeye Red fiber and had to do his hat in the Midnight blue. I rather think that gives him a more patriotic and less celestial look. When I was digging for fibers for the next ornament last night, guess what I found? Two more cards of Buckeye Red! Sheesh! Oh well, I placated myself, the dye lots would be different, right? And indeed, the other two cards are a bit darker than this one was.

I did manage to start a new larger project, The Old West by Little House Needleworks. I promise I'll post a picture of my progress soon. I am missing about half a dozen colors for it, and went to Walmart to gather them last weekend. Only to find that WM doesn't carry the newer 100 numbers (two of which I need for this project) and was out of the rest! I haven't decided what to do about that yet, my options are to 1) order online, which I hate to do when floss is all I need, 2) drive 100 miles to Tuscon and back to visit an LNS, which would cost more in gas than shipping, or 3) pull out my handy dandy DMC floss sample chart and get creative with some color changes.

I have a few more WIPs that I would like to work on so that I can clean the drawers out on my coffee table. That's where I keep the projects "in progress" so I don't have to keep digging through the guest room closet, LOL. I also would like to post some pictures of the projects I have going on here, perhaps that would motivate me to finish them! Some have just gotten too big to comfortably handle without a stand of some sort, and being a military family and moving around frequently, I (or rather, the movers) destroy stands. So I've decided not to purchase one again until we buy a retirement house. DH has 8 years left before retiring at 20, and several options containing many potential moves, so there's no telling where we'll end up or how long it will take us to get there, LOL.

marisa