WIPocalyse April Check In

So I completely missed March check in, sorry about that! It fell on my husband's birthday and the following week we were off to New York and Washington so I'd didn't have much time for stitching and blogging. Here's one of my favourite photos from the trip:

In the past two months I have worked on my Chatelaine a little more, and the Joan Elliott Faces SAL, plus I started a new project to take with me on our trip. This is the Chickadees design by Jody Bergsma for Dimensions, and this is where I am with it so far:

It has been really enjoyable to stitch, and I love the way the black fabric shows up the colours.

Here is the latest on Tuscany Town Mandala by Chatelaine:

And Joan Elliott's faces SAL:

I also have some good news in that I have a finish, but some bad news in that I can't actually show it yet! It is my 'gift project 1' and I'm not putting up a picture just in case the intended recipient should find this blog. I should be able to post it in a couple of months time when it will no longer be a secret.

Now, onto this month's topic, which is 'Which speciality stitches do you love doing on projects? Which do you dread?'

I don't dread any stitches at the moment. There was a time when I would have said French knots, but I've made my peace with them after foolishly decided to fill a whole section with French knots on one of my wedding centrepiece projects. I really enjoy all the speciality stitches on my Chatelaine, and I think my favourite so far are these Jessica stitches(I just did these ones last night). They are the round stitches with the bronze coloured beads above:

I also like the Rhodes stitches, although it took me a while to get the hang of doing the right variation (dense vs. normal ones etc.)