May WIPocalypse

It may be May but from the temperature outside you'd never know it! Today is the perfect day for stitching.... overcast and cold. With any luck I'll have a few minutes to put needle to thread. 

I concentrated on 3 pieces this month one of which I can't show yet since it's for my ornament SAL.
The other two are both larger pieces and I'm happy to say that I had a finish with one!

Viktor & Irina are complete and aren't they sweet? I adore them and can't wait until I can get this framed and on my walls. I love the whimsy and fun of PSS designs, so much so that I moved from this one back to my PSS Fruit of the Spirit. When I last left this one I had only started the first house and wasn't finished stitched the bricking or roof on it.

Here's where is stands at the end of this month:

I love the colours in this design and as I get along further in it you'll see a lot more. However I didn't realize that there was a fair amount of over one stitching. I picked up on the robin but didn't notice the other birds, the flower and tiny strawberry,the star on the door, or the people in the house window who are stitched over one as well.
Don't you just love that little strawberry? Even stitching over one, PSS designs always make me smile!

I'm so proud of myself for getting these done and done fairly well too! You see, this fabric was marked as 32 ct but I now realize that it is actually 36 ct. This piece will be a little smaller when finished than what I expected. I'm stitching it with Vicky Clayton silks and since there is some confetti stitching, mainly on the bricks, I found that the silks were working their way out even when I'd run the threads through previous stitches. Has anyone else ever had this problem using silks?
Most of this stitching, including Viktor, was all done during the past week. Next I'm going to spend part of the day choosing a new start. I have some new birthday stash which arrived this week including Stacy Nash Summer Sampler (scroll down about halfway through the page),  BBD Agnes Platt's Strawberry Sampler and With Thy Needle & Thread Strawberry Hill Sampler.  I also won on ebay a discontinued pattern by The Goode Huswife called Sampler Farm. I could only find a link to this one through someone who had already stitched it. Then to further complicate the decision, I pulled out Midsummer Night Designs Garden Angels, Birds of a Feather Bitter Flower Sampler and Blackbird Designs Summer House. The latter is another design that it's difficult to find a pic of. 
What's a girl to do? I think I sense a theme here, lol! Do you have a favourite in the bunch?

The sun has just made an appearance so perhaps things will warm up after all!

Edited: I forgot one other choice of new start. It's by Shakespeare's Peddler and is called Weeds Make Haste. This is another favourite I've been debating over so we'll add it to the above list of choices.