At last, I feel like I can see some progress tonight on the fourth corner - all the gold is done and two of the shades of turquoise too - four more shades to go, then eyelets and rhodes stitches. I hope you can bear with me for another day or two and then Medieval Town Mandala can disappear off of my blog for at least a week (or so....) LOL! I know you really must be as sick of it as I am!
I am totally hooked on stitching the Papillon Creations Mystery Sampler, so of course I worked on it some more today. It was wonderful to see so many comments and emails from stitchers who are now beginning to see how lovely this sampler is :-) I hope you all will order up these pretty silks from Vikki Clayton and stitch this one too! (The DMC conversion on the chart looks really dull compared to the VC silks). I am almost done with Part 1, as I don't plan to stitch any of the partial motifs until the parts come in that show the other halves of them... some of these silks are a bit variegated, and for the sake of color consistency, I want to stitch each motif in its entirety. There is an asterisk (*) symbol on the chart for the bird's eye, but there is no fiber listed for that symbol and no notation in the directions as to what to use. So, I am going to use a snip of black NPI silk from my Medieval Town Mandala kit to stitch the eye... I wonder what other stitchers are doing for the eye... (***If you want to stitch this sampler and have not yet subscribed to The Gift of Stitching, you will need to subscribe as soon as you can - on March 1st this issue will no longer be available and the next issue, with Part 2 of the sampler in it, will be loaded onto the website... act fast!! LOL) Anyhow, I am so enamored by this little sampler and this designer that I ordered Three Little Words :-)

I haven't posted a stash report in the longest time, and since Mike took me to Colonial Needleworks tonight, I figured it was time to do my sharing. We had dinner in Bedford tonight - how convenient that the needlework shop was only five minutes away from the restaurant, and that it was their night to be open late!! Here is my stash take from the last couple of weeks or so.... one item, the Silkweaver Sandcastle belfast, is not shown as I am already using it for the Papillon Creations Mystery Sampler. Also, a skein of Holly Berry GAST is not shown - it fell on the floor when I was gathering my goodies together... But I can show you two new UK magazines (Quick & Easy, and Mary Hickmott's New Stitches), Long Dog Samplers' Time and Tide (this was on my wishlist forever!), Blue Ribbon Designs' True Love and Grace (for which I needed the Holly Berry GAST), Blackbird Designs' Strawberry Garden with R&R Creme Brulee linen (had to get this once I saw it - the colors are amazing, but I shall need to watch for the next SB&B sale to get all the Crescent Colours floss for it), a fat quarter of Dragon Myst belfast by Heaven Lee Creations (hmmm, they never sent a FOTM invoice this month - not very strange, they are so disorganized!!), a fat quarter of Sugar Maple Fabrics Iris 28 ct Annabelle, the three skeins of Vikki Clayton silk needed to finish Garden Spot Sampler (gift from Vikki), the VC silk set for Sampler Cove's Bordeaux (mystery) Sampler - (got the first pdf file for that this week too - going to use the pretty 36 ct linen Bea gave me for Christmas for this one!), a skein of Gold Weeks Dye Works for my Neighborhood RR block, and a pack of size 26 Piecemakers (I am always buying size 28's now, and realized a day or two ago that I am about out of size 26 - LOL)....and I think that is it??!!

Stitched on today: Papillon Creations Mystery Sampler and Medieval Town Mandala