I Guess it Does Need Black

I'm in a groove here. I almost don't want to do anything else but finish this. And to think I didn't work on it for over a month and a half because I screwed up the original colors.

I like how the bottle turned out. The subtle blocks of color give the bottle an almost dimensional quality. It was difficult to keep the colors in the right places, but that highlighting trick I found has helped tremendously. I have cross-stitch Christmas stockings I've always wanted to try to make but the details have had me questioning my sanity for years. Maybe now is the time to attempt one.

I've always been kind of frugal with my floss too. If the next stitches to do were more than 3 squares away, I would tie off the floss and then tie it back on, instead of just intertwining the floss through already done stitches. This project has made me see that it's just floss. The bottle, in particular the white and gray which give the bottle some dimension, did not always have stitches next to one another. Having a whole bunch of little knots where the floss was tied off and then added again, gives the project a bumpy feeling. Plus, it occurred to me that I'm using as much floss in tying off and tying on as I would if I just wove it behind already stitched areas. I remember a friend who did counted cross-stitch Christmas stockings for all her grand kids said that she just left the colors dangle off the back. It was dumb to do one stitch because it was, say, an eye of a teddy bear, and tie it off, when, as she worked her way through the design, she'd need that color in about 10 stitches. (If you don't cross-stitch, none of this probably means anything to you, but bear with me.) This project, with the miscues and the one stitch here and then needing the same color over 8 blocks has given me tricks that other stitchers probably know, but I had to learn.

I finished the design on the bottle last night.

It looks very nice. I debated about the glasses. The design shows them outlined in black. I didn't read through the instructions very thoroughly. Black floss is only used in outlining and I don't have that in the package I keep next to the recliner. At first, I was just going to use the same color as the bottle label. But the more I looked at the original design, the more I decided that I should stick to the original colors. Tonight, I'll pull black from the floss caddies.

I'm itching to finish this. It will have to wait until payday to be framed but there is a possibility I can get it to the recipient by Christmas. I'm rather proud of myself for that.

And no. I haven't considered what I'll be doing after I finish this. One project at a ... Ooooh! Look at that!

Beverage:  Edinburgh's Finest tea

Deb