Successful IHSW and DH's Progress

Happy Monday everyone!! I trust you've all had a relaxing and successful stitching weekend and were able to enjoy IHSW to the fullest extent. This is the first one I've 'officially' participated in (by that, I mean the first one that I made a conscious effort to use as a reason to sit home all weekend and stitch guilt-free, lol). I worked on Wisteria Fairy, as that is my rotation project this week. Since my rotations run from Friday to Friday, my whole weekend was focused on this one project. And it worked out well for me. Here is where Wisteria Fairy was left after her initial CJC start back on 1/6/13:

Progress on 1/6/13

And here's where she is after a long, relaxing weekend of stitch after stitch after stitch...

Progress as of 1/20/13

The middle section above, between the green leaf and the blue swath, is probably the coolest looking stitching I've ever done. This section gets its rainbow appearance through the use of a Kreinik BF called Starburst. When it came in my order of BF's and beads that I got prior to the CJC, I just couldn't imagine how it would look as part of the design. Now I know...and I Love It!! Here is what the spool looks like:

Kreinik Blending Filament 095 - Starburst

How Cool!! I can see me adding this to future projects or using it as a replacement for a single color of filament. With as many fairies and fantasy projects as I stitch, I should probably order some of these in bulk, lol! I'm imagining fairy wings, dragon wings, skirt panels, clouds, etc. all infused with this awesome coloration. Can you tell I find it exciting?! :)

Lastly, I wanted to show you DH's progress on his Accidental Bookmark. I'm pretty impressed with how he's moving along...especially considering he works 6 days a week and usually chooses video games over all else when it comes to his down time (which is very minimal after family/kids time, time for us, and various household errands/chores/repairs). Here are before and after pics to show his progress:

The Accidental Bookmark before

...and after!

I hope everyone is off to a great start this week! I'll be continuing progress on Wisteria Fairy through Friday, although I don't expect anything like what I got done this weekend. DD has 3 volleyball games this week (2 are about an hour away, so those will be late returns home), my mom hasn't been feeling well, and I spent so much time stitching this weekend that nothing got done around the house besides the laundry, so...there's that. Maybe I'll manage to get a few stitches in on my lunch break at work.

Regardless, I'll be back with another update, and a 'before' pic of my next rotation piece, on Thursday. Happy Stitching, Y'all!!