almost on vacation :-)

Here is my progress on Stripes. If I had done this flower first, I doubt the other two would ever get finished! :-) It's so unflower like so far and since I'm working from a copy and have put away the color chart, I'm not even sure what it's going to look like when it's finished. But I'm about a third of the way done so almost to the home stretch. I'd like to get about a half of the way done before I have to put it up on Friday to work on a couple of last minute (second!) Christmas gifts. I have a little stitching to do yet and I have to do some quilting. I'll be busy this weekend for sure. Tomorrow is my last day working until January 2nd. Yeah!

Thanks for all your warm wishes for Summer. She still has her eye stitched closed and it will remain that way for two weeks. Right now she has a 50/50 chance of keeping her sight.

I'm thinking about goals for next year. I want to complete a couple of my WIPS - well, all of them actually. :-) The one that is crying out the most is Marquoir ABC. I have not worked on it in eight months and I actually dated it 2007. I got to the half way point and just put it aside. And it's such a pretty piece it deserves to be finished. I also want to finish St. Reatham in time next year to enter it into the Silkweaver's Stitchers Showcase contest (I managed to enter 12 pieces this year). The other three on my WIP list are all totally doable and I plan on having all three done before winter is over. They are: Sampler of Stitches from the Drawn Thread, Toccata II also from the Drawn Thread and Quaker Study from CHS.

I also want to do several items from my waiting in the wings list, most notably, Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. I'm pretty sure I got a $50 dollar gift certificate for Neeldecraft Corner from my sister for Christmas and that will go a long way toward buying all the NPI silk I need. I would also like to do my Cirque des Cercles from Ink Circles. I had to have been one of the first people to purchase this chart and I haven't even put a stitch in it yet. Also high on my list is Celtic Band Sampler by Homespun Samplar - that one is all ready to go. Most of the others are smallish pieces and I should have not much problems getting to most of them.