New SAL with Katrina: Earth Threads' Violet and Lace Sampler

Tonight I started a new project :-) I don't feel badly about this - I managed to stitch the first 10 of only 21 bands just in the one sitting. I figure it will be such a quick stitch that it should not interfere with my huge list of WIPS, right?? I am stitching Violet and Lace Sampler as a SAL with Katrina, and we had decided to do this one together several months ago. Now we finally started it! I don't know how to pace myself with this one as I have not yet seen Katrina's progress. But, knowing her turbo needles, we are probably at about the same point - LOL!! The sampler is being stitched on olive green belfast, but the scanner makes it look more like natural or summer khaki belfast. The colors in this sampler are amazing. I know this has been in my stash since at least 1998. When it came out, TG Silk 'n Colors were not easy to find in shops - and the internet was not a great place for needlework shopping yet. So, I had written to Betsy Stinner, the designer, asking her for help with finding a resource to buy the silks. She sent me plenty of two of the colors for the sampler - I guess I had been able to find a skein of one of the colors before I wrote to her. How sweet is she?? (I adore Betsy and have taken three classes with her at Celebration of Needlework in Nashua, NH - I am sure I will take more, as long as Betsy keeps teaching). The postmark on the envelope with the silks is March 23, 1998. I guess it really is finally time that I stitched this sampler!

I found out something interesting yesterday. My landlady at my new office in Haverhill, MA was talking to me, and I made a comment about how lovely the reception area is in the building. The building is a beautiful old blue Victorian house - a huge, huge house that was clearly built for a rich family. Lucy, my landlady, made some comment about the gorgeous spiral staircase outside of my office, and said, "that leads up to the bedroom suite where she was killed." My jaw dropped - "What??" Apparently, there was some relatively famous (at least for the area) murder in the room above my office at some point. My client arrived and I couldn't get more details from Lucy. I hope to get more from her when I go there tomorrow. She said it was the "Haverhill Claw Hammer Murder," but I couldn't find anything on the internet... help Lucy, I am dying to know more!
Daylily: Tom Wise

Stitched on today: Blessings Be Thine (finally making progress now, but am about to run out of GAST Dried Thyme - the chart calls for one skein, but the project really calls for very close to two skeins - will have to pick up another this weekend at the LNS!!) and Violet and Lace Sampler (second sampler down on the website)