Work in Progress Wednesday - on Thursday 22 May 2014!!

Yup, I'm late with my WIPW update again today.  However, there's a good reason this time.  I took this first photo a couple of days ago after having done some more on the right hand section of the shawl, but then Sir borrowed my camera on Monday for his research trip and only got back after dark last night (Wednesday).  He needed a reliable camera and his both drains batteries at an unacceptable speed for someone who needed to take a lot of shots and the on switch is dodgy.  I tried to use it myself to get this second shot yesterday, but I couldn't persuade it to work at all, so I gave it up as a bad job and decided to wait until this morning instead.=)  I too need a reliable camera...  As you can see, I added in quite a bit more since the previous photo stage and I really wanted to share that progress, so that's the why of being late this week!

As you can see, I've now totally finished the shawl and also added in the rear, veil-like section of the headdress, so that means the cross stitch is complete.

What's left now is the beading, the filling in of the skirt and jewel gaps with satin stitch and the petit point for the skin areas.  I deliberately worked around the face and neck in a certain way so as to make the petit point work well, but I now can't remember how, so I need to do a few trials on a scrap of 14ct Aida or something like that.  I also need to trial the number of strands as I'm really not sure.  Ah, no, I can't use Aida - you can't work petit point on Aida, (pity, 'cos I've a few scrap ends that would have been perfect otherwise).  Right, so an off-cut of some type of evenweave then.  So, that's to do soon.

I'll be glad to get this piece finished very soon as I'm ready to move on now and, when I do my occasional blog reviews (that is, I look at my blog as if I were a new reader to see how it looks and so on), I'm tired of seeing more or less the same photo all the time!!!  So, time to move this forward ASAP and get something new going, methinks.  That's why I got quite a bit done.  That and that I did stitch in bed again.  In case that sounds odd, I have to go to bed about 8.30pm, so it's not late.  I can't sleep straight away, but am more rested reading or stitching in bed than I would be sitting up etc.  So, I sometimes do some counted thread work - the light isn't good enough for freestyle.

So, that's my progress for the last week.  If you want to see how others in the current Work in Progress Wednesdays cohort are getting along, hop on over to Pintangle!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014