Strawberry Sampler Sunday

Yesterday I headed to the thick of Northern Virginia to pick up some fibers (Au Ver a Soie) I ordered nearly six months ago (for Houses of Hawk Run Hollow). AVAS is always like that, apparently, whether mail-ordered or purchased in the LNS. The woman at the LNS admitted to me that it takes so long to get certain colors that they forget they've ordered them, so they keep reordering a particular color, and then they get a dozen of something when they really only needed two or four. In the meantime they run out of something else, place an order and wait for months. I'd like to go to France to the AVAS factory and investigate this and perhaps suggest ways they could automate their production process to eliminate this dead time when people who need 2516 for instance, wind up substituting fibers from one of their competitors. In the meantime, here's some progress on Procession which uses Soie Crystal by Caron.

Since one does not brave Northern Virginia traffic simply to pick up two skeins of fiber from In Stitches, I scoped out their new charts and came home with several new projects. Check this one out! It's called "Strawberry Fields Farm," by the Victoria Sampler. I loved it when I saw it, so I bought the chart, the wonderful Zweigart 28ct Olive Green Cashel Linen (not olive green really, but more a dusty spring green--so lovely), and the packaged bundle of fibers and beads containing Gloriana, Kreinik, Au ver a Soie, Needlepoint Inc., and Gentle Art fibers and a variety of SJ designs beads. Here are some pictures of the entire picture as well as close-ups of some of the panels. I found some other wonderful charts also, and will show those to you later.