Even more balcony!

The end is in sight--just need to stitch the bottom of the balcony, finish up the border and add a few more beads:

I was doing some beading yesterday, and I had attached the hand-painted bead from Italy that was made for this design:

It is an absolutely beautiful bead and I love the way it looks, but I'm afraid that it's just too big. I always have my Miras framed with glass, and the only way that that will work with this piece is if most of the piece extends pretty far out the back of the frame. So I removed the bead, and am thinking about what I want to do. Right now I'm leaning towards making a bead loop similar to the one in the picture, with a teardrop crystal in place of the large bead, but I'll make the decision when everything else is finished.

I have extra incentive to get this finished now, as this past week I found out that I've been accepted as a model stitcher by Wichelt Imports, and will be stitching Mirabilia/Nora Corbett designs for them! So I need to finish this piece and get to work on the Rosewood Manor model currently waiting in the wings so I can be ready when I receive my first model for Wichelt.

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

So...much...balcony!

I know that it will be worth it in the end, but right now I am not enjoying that darn balcony! So I work on it for a while, and then I spend some time on Juliet. I'm starting to think that I can finish this up right around the end of the month. Here's my progress as of last night:

This past Saturday I got a great surprise package in the mail: a member on the 123Stitch MB was giving away some embellishment packs from Mill Hill kits to the first person who emailed her. Unfortunately, I missed being the first by about a minute, but she said she had some other kits to go through, so she would send some to me after she did that. I figured she'd send a few packs of beads, so I was blown away by what I received:

Since I like to change things up on designs, it's nice to have a variety of embellishments around to play with, and these will certainly be put to good use!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

One month in

Today marks one month since I started Wherefore Art Thou, and even though it sometimes feels like I'm hardly making any progress, I guess I must be!

The bottom half of the chart has quite a bit more stitching than the top half, so it will probably take another few weeks to finish. The summer is definitely flying right by!

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!

Halfway point

I think I'm about half done with Wherefore Art Thou, which seems to be a bit larger than it first appeared. Most of the past week was spent filling in the balcony, and then last night I started with some of her purple cape:

Considering that the whole thing consists of little Xs, it's funny how much more I like working on Juliet than I do the background. The background, in this design especially, adds a lot to a design, but I just love working on pretty faces and dresses! But, there's quite a bit of balcony in the lower half, so I'll just have to soldier through it.

Hope those in the US have a happy Fourth of July, and to everyone a great stitchy week!