A Finish, a Start and some WIPs

No excuse for not posting, not reading or not commenting, I just managed to stay away from the computer, except for work, for the last few weeks.  I filled in the time with reading, stitching and yard work.  There was some housework in there also, but I don't like to think of that too much.

As the title says, I had a finish!  Here is Just Nan's Christmas Soldiers

Now to get the fabric and get it finished-finished.  As I mentioned before, I am thinking of green for the backing and cording.  One stocking down, one to go.

While the recipient of the next stocking makes up her mind on a pattern, I started DNephew's wedding sampler:

This is To Have and To Hold Bridal Sampler by The Sweetheart Tree.  It is stitched on 28-count Platinum Cashel with DMC, WDW, Kreinik, perle cotton, and Mill Hill beads.  I did change the charted blues for purples to match the wedding colors.   As usual for a Sweetheart Tree there is a ton of backstitching, which is my least favorite stitch, but so far it's going well and I am excited to try all the different stitches in the sampler.

In addition to these two pieces, I worked on four other WIPs, It's About Time, Shakespearean Fantasy,  Christmas Presence, and The Sampler Life SAL.

I finished one column and one block of the next column of It's About Time.

 

The lines that are showing up in the picture do not show up in real life - not sure why they show up in this photo.

 

Next?  More black in Shakespearean Fantasy:

 

 



Slowly but surely moving along. 

A bit more on Christmas Presence:

I think I'm stitching paneling and curtains, but not completely sure.

I also added a few more stitches to Tiny Tiger on my The Sampler Life SAL piece:

The nice thing about such a small piece is that the focus shows up almost immediately (although the right ear looks a bit strange right now).

Hard to believe it's July already.  The really nice thing is that between office renovations (they're finally coming in to repair the damage from the 2011 earthquake and replace the 1970's era carpeting), a week long training and my vacation, I only have to go into the office four days this month.  I will also have a week's worth of telework in there, and it will be so nice to have that extra three hours of sleep each morning.  Oh and being home at 4:45 rather than 7:30 will be a treat too.