New Cross Stitch Piece

Something else I received for Christmas this year were gift certificates to a cross-stitch store I love to shop at. They are in the same town as my DH's family, so I try to coordinate visits with them so I can fit in a shopping trip, too. So, I had some money to spend and I knew exactly what I wanted to get with it.

You see, DH spotted this lovely piece a while ago, and asked if I would stitch it for him. Since he doesn't ask for this very often, I try to accomodate him when I can. Plus, it helped that I liked the piece, too :) However, I needed a piece of fabric large enough to stitch it - 28" X 39" to be exact! It also calls for something like 25 skeins of black (who would have thunk that, with all the green in the picture) - and I prefer Anchor black over DMC. So, with those 2 items, I figured I was pretty close to my gift certificate amount.

I put in my order and spoke with a very lovely woman named Linda. She was very patient with me and we got everything worked out. I then told her that if there was anything left on the gift certificates after shipping costs were included, to just throw something in the bag and surprise me. Well, apparently that threw her for a loop, because when I called to thank her for this:

A very lovely stitch picker (which I don't have any of yet!), I was told that she labored over what to put in as my surprise. I think she did a fantastic job of choosing! I absolutely love this store and will recommend it to everyone I know that stitches. It's House of Stitches in LaPorte, IN.

So, I spent some time going through my floss drawer pulling the threads for my new project. Could you believe that of all the floss you see below, I was still missing 37 different colors? Yeah, I know, crazy.

Now, my next decision will be to grid the fabric or not. This is a large piece and I don't want to spend a lot of time frogging mistakes, but I'm not a big fan of gridding, either. Hmm...decisions, decisions...