Necessities

Today finally brought the UPS man with the new scroll rods that I need for the Richmond sampler.  I've been waiting for these for a month and last week I was convinced that they were in my neighbor's garage...crazy, I know, but I got a notice saying they would be shipped and when I saw the UPS guy dropping off a long, skinny box across the street and my neighbor tossing it in the corner of the garage without even looking at it, well, you know how it is.  A watched package is never delivered.  Thankfully I finally got a tracking number and realized that they had not even been shipped at that point, saving me from making a total fool of myself by going over and asking to see the package in the corner of their garage.  That was probably golf clubs, lol.

At any rate, now I can pick up again on Richmond, which I haven't touched for several weeks.  I was stitching in hand but it's huge and I don't enjoy stitching in hand.  I have not done any of the queen stitches because my tension isn't right unless my fabric is taut, so I broke down and ordered the new 30" scrolls.  Here you can see how long they are!

Here's my progress on Richmond so far - I have almost all of the flowers done across the top, but I have not finished the baskets since they are done in queen stitch.  Those will be next, along with filling in the queen stitch in the border (first I have to get it on the scroll bars, which I always find challenging with a piece this large).

Last, a close-up of some of the flowers.  This is a beautiful piece and now I am going to be switching back and forth between working on this and Maria.