Chelsea's Gift and Window

Hi all and welcome to my new followers!  Thanks for the great comments on my last post!

I didn't manage to get a better pic up of my part of Chelsea's Gift last week, but I remembered to take a better pic just now and here it is.  

Ineke asked if we all stitched parts of the same chart and the answer is yes.  Chelsea commissioned the artist Hannah Lynn to paint this picture to commemorate her heart and double lung transplant and asked Heaven and Earth Designs to convert the artwork to cross stitch.  You can see the octopus has them as her gift.  I think she started stitching but Chelsea didn't survive long enough to finish.

I've made pretty good progress with Window.  This is page 9 as of Thursday.  I've gotten all the black done on page 10 and am planning on filling in the red today.  But I need some opinions.  I'm thinking of adding another color for the very center...maybe a bright yellow to be able to stand up against the blue and red?  What do you think?  Leave me a comment.

I'm also contemplating a new start.  So much so that I've kitted her up and dyed some fabric.  Would you imagine that when you go through your stash, you only need to go out and buy 16 colors out of  90?  Amazing!  (note sarcasm)  I really need to pull for stash more often!

Anyway, please meet Nightshade.  I couldn't face stitching 78 (or even 39 since I stitch 1 over 1 on 28 ct) skeins of 310  thus the fabric I hand dyed. 

Here's my floss toss for Nightshade.  It's not all the colors since the wound skeins stayed in their box because I didn't want to have to reorganize them.  I think it will work.  If she doesn't pop enough, I can always go back with some black and stitch one stitch of black all the way around her.  And I cut down the number of pages by about half!  

I'm also contemplating a new start.  

Next month, we're going on vacation.  Yay!  We're going to New Mexico to stay for a week.  Only drawback is DH has invited his mom to come.  Not sure how that's going to play out yet.  But I was wondering if anyone knows of any good LNSs anywhere near Angel Fire.  Let me know!

Now, I've got to hang some laundry and fill in some red.   Later!