"The flamingo is ridiculous looking bird."

So it's been awhile since I've posted here. Time just has a way of getting away from you, doesn't it?

Quite a lot has changed since that last update. My old haunt, Needlewoman East, has shifted almost entirely towards needlepoint. They still carry a good selection of specialty threads, but from a cross stitch charts and fabric perspective, I'll have to look elsewhere. Scarlet Thread moved from Vienna to Great Falls and sadly will be closing next month. There a few stores left in the Northern Virginia area, but not a lot of them are public transportation friendly.

The latest scan is a Quaker-inspired flamingo created by Aury. She publishes some lovely freebies of different animals and they're very easy to stitch up. The blog is bilingual in Spanish and English. For threads, I used a Vikki Clayton mystery spool. When I saw the color initially, I couldn't imagine what I'd use it for. I tend towards more muted colors. But this color seemed perfect for this particular bird of paradise. West Wing fan that I am, she's nicknamed "Claudia Jane".

Hope to post some of the older updates, including my Olympic stitching, my first needlework class, Stitch N Pitch and continuing trials of the Book of Ink Circles. I'm back-dating those posts and marking them "flashback" in the tags, so readers can find them easily. I tried doing them as new posts, but that was going to get confusing fast.

Saturday stash shopping

So I went needlework shopping today. Now that I've identified new projects I want to work on, then I obviously need the fabric and threads and bits and bobs now. I also have an upcoming trip at the end of the month, so I hope to get some stitching done then.

My LNS is Needlewoman East, a lovely little shop in the middle of Falls Church. I'm enough of a regular there for them to recognize me. The one lady commented that they hadn't seen me in there in awhile and it was true. The shop is heavily geared towards the needlepointers, rather than cross-stitchers, but they're still a fun group.

I bought two pieces of 28 ct fabric for the two new Mirabilia WIPs "Winter Queen" (Off-white) and "Rose of Sharon" (Mushroom). Both were stitched on 32ct, but the store's supply of 32ct fabric in the evenweave wasn't much. I suppose I could have done them on linen, but I suspect those projects might have been more frustrating than relaxing.

I also bought yet another Mirabilia "Stargazer". Really, I can stop myself any time. But I've seen a couple WIPs of this piece online and couldn't resist getting this pattern.

Unfortunately their building hadn't turned on the a/c yet, so on this spring day, it was sweltering, even with the windows open. I can only imagine having to work in those conditions.

I bought some floss at Michaels/JoAnns. Michaels has completely reorganized. I almost didn't recognize the place when I walked in. Unfortunately they've put the DMC floss in these weird individual display trays. Even looking at the notices of which floss ranges were where wasn't always a help. I should have waited until they were having one of their sales, but I can't guarantee it'll be before my trip.

As usual I didn't find all the colors. I'm a little worried because I didn't see trays for some of these colors. I need to see if DMC has discontinued any colors. And hope mine weren't the ones...