Balancing Leaves

I got the second leaf done this week. For some reason, this one took a bit longer than the first Both of them look a bit more ragged than I hoped. I'm not sure if it's because of the stitch she had us use as outline to make it look ragged-edged, or if it's just overall me not doing a good job. Ah, well. It's only my second or third crewel project in years and I've been doing this part in hand as she says to.

Ribbit.

I had to do some pretty extensive frogging on the left hand side this week. I was off by one stitch on one part and two on another. So, I ripped and redid. I still managed to have more stitches done at the end of the week than the beginning.

Midnight Blue

I've been filling in the middle some, this part with the dark blue scaffolding. There are, I think, a total of five different colors of blue in each of these. It feels like this one is going faster, but it's probably just because there's not that much regular cross stitching in the edge parts, since those are reserved for specialty stitches. Or maybe I'm speeding up, but I really doubt that one!

Ares Done

Last night I finished my backwards stitching. The ram is done and I'll be sending it out today. I found I was getting almost as fast stitching backwards (I was doing rows starting stitches from the bottom right corner and going across instead of the bottom left corner when working downwards) as I am stitching fowards. Besides learning this trick, I found out I absolutely hate working with DMC metallic thread. It splits horribly, unwinding at every opportunity. Much better to use Kreinik or Treasure Braid. This doesn't count toward my project challenge because none of the materials were mine. On the other hand, it's my first finish of 2008.

Getting Golder

The line keeps moving downward of done stitches. This week I added gold and one of the blues. In fact, the upper arm of that blue is now done. There is a lot of gold in each arm and I don't like cutting the treasure braid too long, so it's only halfway down the arm.

Back in the Rotation Again

The Midi is back in the rotation again, and more than halfway done with part three. The left side arch is done with cross stitches and the right is on its way. Finishing this is one of my goals for 2008, so I need to get working on it!

More Red, More Gray

This week I added more red and more gray to the flag side of the piece. Still pretty easy to stitch and without problems. This week is a low stitching time week because I have a -lot- to do. Eventually this will get to my highest priority, but not yet.