Sad days

Two weeks ago this past Saturday we had our sweet Chloe put to sleep, and I'm still at a loss without her. We had her for more than 14 years, which was actually a lot longer than we thought we would have her when she was diagnosed with a rare blood condition when she was 3, and we have treasured every one of those years.

For once even stitching hasn't provided the solace that it usually does, though I have been doing some off and on. I have a couple of Nora Corbett models that came in a few weeks ago that I need to get back to, but right now I don't really have the concentration for "work". Last night I spent several hours in the mindless task of cutting about 300 yards of silk into usable lengths. I had bought this hank from Silks4u about 4 years ago:

And now it is in about 300+ yard-long lengths ready to use:

I've been thinking about getting Long Dog Sampler's Death By Cross Stitch, and this might be the perfect floss to use with it.

It seems like a long time ago now, but I did get Lady Mirabilia back from the framer, and am very happy with how she came out:

Some of the stitching I have been doing is a Halloween bookmark SAL that was handed out in four parts in the Victoria Sampler Chat group on FB. Part 4 was released last Friday, and as with a lot of VS charts it had some Hardanger at the bottom; since I have yet to learn how to do that, I just added some other stitches and called it good:

I've also started a Bent Creek design called The Haunted House:

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week, and if you have a fur baby please give them a kiss or pet in memory of my precious Chloe.