Stash Delivery and a Small Finishes

My order from 123stitch arrived and here are a few photos of my new acquisitions:

First, the charts: Cross-Eyed Cricket's Thanksgiving Circle from which I will be extracting motifs for my remaining Thanksgiving ornaments this year and Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie which I ordered just because I wanted it.

Next, some lovely fabrics needed for upcoming projects: more 28ct Glasgow raw linen for the Bride's Tree SAL ornaments, some Laguna for the flip side of the Peacock biscornu [from my UFO-WIP list], and finally some beige 10ct tula for Shepherd's Bush Be A Witch from the Attitudes series. And finally some fibers: some GAST Maple Syrup I had hoped to use to finish my PS Harvest Time Turkey ornament ... alas, none of them work ... and ... some Kreinik Silk Mori needed for my Cornucopia Thanksgiving ornament. Unfortunately, the Valdani overdyed floss I ordered just because I was curious about it when I read about it in the New Arrivals section of Joanne's 123stitch newsletter is on backorder as is one of the Silk Mori skeins for my cornucopia ornament. I really had wanted to see the Valdani as I had never heard of it but am always up for trying a new fiber. Indeed, I think I tend to accumulate more fiber, dollar for dollar and unit for unit, than I ever accumulate charts. Just call me a fiber junkie.

I have finished the front of my Bride's Tree SAL May Ornament for which I used aury's Quaker Bird in a Nest and stitched in Belle Soie Silks Chocolat, Fern Frond, and Chester Blue. I still need to stitch the back with monogram and the word Security indicating what the front symbolizes. I'll be using the same fringed pillow finish on this as I have on all the other ornaments I have stitched for this series. I am looking forward to using these ornaments on next year's tree ... they have been a lot of fun to stitch and are a nice way of representing the German side of my husband's heritage in my holiday decorating.

I also finished the top for the pink cupcake pincushion. I choose a floral wreath with initial from BH&G's 2001 Cross Stitch Motifs and stitched it using Belle Soie silks in Ocean Tide, Creme de Menthe, Rose of Sharon and Cake and GAST Tea Rose. Since there were so many tiny flowers in this chart, I found myself using the pin stitch start quite often ... it's an excellent way to get a secure start on a motif that has too few stitches under which to run beginning and ending threads. I used the pin stitch start for all the yellow centers of the smaller flowers as well. Given the rather loose weave of the DMC linen I used for this piece, I really didn't want to have any travelling threads as they would have been glaringly obvious. I have all the materials need to assemble it and hope to do the final finish this weekend.