The Return of the Scottish Swan

It all started so innocently. I was pawing through my stash the other day looking for something--I can't even remember what, now. I should mention that until this journey into the glittering city of Stashdom, I was quite content with my current projects and eagerly awaiting the new stuff from Market. I spied Janet Gibson's Scottish Swan Sampler project bag and opened it to look it over, sighing over the lovely chart as well as the hated fabric that derailed it, and noting that I had not, after all, managed to cannibalize the threads for another project. (I do that all the time. It makes me nuts.) That set the little wheels spinning--the little wheels, I should mention, that should be spinning thoughts for a paper due for one of my classes (Introduction to Fraud Examination--what a hilarious trip that class is, what with the skimmers, the scammers, the lappers and whatnot), but were then fully occupied in doing a mental inventory of my fabric holdings.
Here's Janet Gibson's chart. JG is by "Hope's Dwelling Place" aka "Whimsey & Wit," and it's sold by Homespunsamplar.com as well as ABCstitch.com. For those of you fond of A&E charts, the chart doesn't show it well, but note the ghostly Adam and Eve in this design! We have the orange A&E, the red A&E, and now we have the bleached A&E, both of whom presumably used SPF 50.

Here's my WIP with the hated fabric. I THINK it's the called for fabric--Meadow Rue, but it's a sickly green (hard to tell in this photo under lamplight). Worse, it's 32 count, so the 1 (NPI) over 2 looks anemic and skimpy. Even worse, the fabric is floppy.

So I restarted Janet Gibson this week on 40 count Lakeside pearled barley. The 40-count will make the over-1 a bit more difficult, but it's worth it (the "h" and the "a" in the verse are over one, as is the swan). Ahhhh--much better.
Oh, and speaking of Scottish samplers, I'm hoping for an opportunity in the next few weeks to visit the needlework of the Burrell collection in person--in one of my favorite non-North American cities. Does anyone know where I might be headed? BF is changing jobs, and I'm urging him to take a real vacation--our first in nearly five years--before he goes swimming in the "Too Busy for a Vacation" stream. We'll see. My passport is expired, I believe (although Travisa can get me a new one in about two days), and all the other hassles involved in such travel mean that we may stick to the U.S. Win-win, though. At this point, even a warm beach with a chair, my needlework and a fruity drink sounds good, since our snow STILL hasn't melted.

I found this in the stash dive also, and decided to start kitting it up when I dropped by the LNS yesterday to pick up some thread I'd ordered. It's called Sarah Owens 1839, and it's an Essamplaire chart I picked up a while back on Ebay. It also has some over-1, on the verse. I love the colors used in the design, which calls for AVAS threads. And the verse, which is "When death has snatched they fleeting soul away/And thy fair form is mouldred into clay/May this neat work with bloom unfading stand/To show the beauties of thy skillful hand."

I did some work on "Holy Moses" also.

Pink: "Instead of the big white swan in that sampler, you should stitch a big white, handsome rabbit!" Thanks, Pink!

Happy week ahead, all!