Bead Blanket Sampler progress

Before I forget, thanks to everyone who's left comments lately! I do read and appreciate each one.

I'm slowly plugging away at the Bead Blanket Sampler from Indigo Rose. In case you're not familiar with this piece, it will work up like a needlebook, but instead of felt in the middle, there will be a piece of velour blanketing. Velour is perfect for holding beads as you're stitching. The plush keeps the beads from escaping as you're trying to get them on your needle!

The part I'm working on now will be the back of the book. This piece is small, but it's not working up very quickly. While over-1 stitching always looks great, I find it pretty tedious.

See how the border isn't done on the back? That's because I ran out of the green thread in the kit. One of the readers here, known as "samplerstitcher", very generously offered to send me a length of the Waterlilies silk needed to finish the border. Isn't the internet community of stitchers great? Thank you, samplerstitcher!

This morning I'm heading out to Barnes & Noble to wrap gifts. Our local EGA & ANG chapters volunteered to do this to promote both organizations and to let the community know the chapters exist, just in case there are any lone stitchers out there!