Random Monday

It's mid-August and time to start working on worrying about stitched Christmas gifts.  I thought this year I might make sets of tea towels, stitched with botanical charts, herbs for the most part.  I am also in need of something a little easier on the eyes than my two current projects.  So tea towels with 14 ct Aida inserts are the perfect interim projects when the sampler and the stocking get a little wearisome.  In any case, I pulled some tea towels out of stash and a few herbal charts and started on one today. The charts I am using are from a Cross My Heart booklet called A Sampling of Herbs.   The chart I am using is actually a sampler with 12 blocks, each featuring a different herb.  I am using six of  the single blocks for the tea towels.  I didn't care for the charted border, a sketchy pseudo Greek back-stitched cross and reverse cross sort of affair.  So I stitched it as a solid border using two blues from the rest of the piece.  And since these will be tea towels, I replaced all the gold beads with floss.  I still need to stitch two more sprigs of rosemary to complete this towel

At least, this is a productive sort of startitis since I'll have a few Christmas gifts as a result.  I tend to get antsy when my rotation slips down to 2 or 3 pieces.  And it is currently at 1. what with my steadfast concentration of the The English Band Sampler.  Here's a photo of my progress on the sampler over the past few days.  As you can see, I am still working on pansies.  I want to stitch all the floral motifs in the left section of the band before finishing the spiral border.

I know I have to get back working on Piper's stocking if I am to have it done this year but the mere thought of facing all that pink is daunting.