A new start

I finished a model last Friday, and I was planning on getting back to The Moss Collector, but for some reason Nora Corbett's Wherefore Art Thou (WAT) has really been calling to me. I received the chart and threads from Casa Cenina back at the beginning of April, and picked out a fabric for it then, but I wanted to finish The Blossom Collector first. Long story short, I gave into temptation and stared WAT!

This was a 3-part mystery SAL, so there is no chart photo of the whole design. Here is a picture of the piece that Casa Cenina shared on their Facebook page:

When I chose a fabric, I wanted to get a "stone balcony in the moonlight" feeling, so I picked Silkweaver's Swirling Storms on Belfast linen:

When I was stitching this part on Saturday, I had strong flashbacks to my very first Mirabilia, Villa Mirabilia, as it also had an urn with greenery in the top left corner; 20 years later and I can still never get enough of these gorgeous designs!

Here it is as of last night:

Today I'll be stitching roses, and I'm looking forward to seeing them come to life.

I will mention that several people who have stitched (or are currently stitching) this have run out of a number of the threads; apparently the key does not have an accurate number of the skeins needed. This can, of course, cause problems with dye lots not matching at a later time; since I ordered mine from Italy a couple of months ago, it would be pretty unlikely that I'd get good matching skeins if I order more from a US shop now. So, I am once again going through my stash and playing with colors so I don't need to buy more floss. I'm pretty happy with what I've come up with, but won't know for sure until the floss is on the fabric.

Speaking of floss, I received the threads that I ended up ordering from Victoria Motto Sampler Shoppe (though I could still win a set, too!):

The colors are fabulous, and a great price for 20-yard skeins. I'm thinking these would be great for a Halloween Quaker design.

Nancy is having another great giveaway on her blog, this time for some Star-Spangled Banner floss:

I think I could definitely get addicted to her threads!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

ETA: It turns out that the WAT piece shared on Casa Cenina's FB page was stitched by LuLy, and you can see it and other gorgeous pieces on her blog. Thanks so much for letting me know that it was your finish LuLy!