Celtic Wolf - WIP post 22

Saturday's personal record breaking stitch count is something I'm still amazed I was able to do and certainly don't expect to be able to repeat any time soon. I was very happy to find that my body did not punish me for stitching so much as I didn't have any aches and pains in addition to the usual stuff. Needless to say I didn't stitch as much yesterday, but I did get a nice amount done. I started by continuing with the Kreinik Coptic Copper - such a lovely shiny colour! It reflects green and red sparkles as well as the copper - I love it! I am happy to report that not only was I able to complete ALL of the copper stitches but I still have some Kreinik left too!

Having done that the only area left to do now is the bit where I'd done the frog stitching as the area between the green and the bit I ripped from is going to be beaded. I decided to mentally prepare myself for some more ripping if I didn't like the colours and got out the 2 reds I'd planned to use: 814 dark red and 666 for the lighter red. However when I held the two together on my embroidery it was clear to me, even in artificial light, that the 666 was just too bright and in your face - you can see it to the left in the photo. So I decided to risk it and pulled out my other reds, in the end I went with 816 as it was different enough to hopefully be visible while not being too bright. I did a trial section using up 1 needle full of each colour and decided to leave it till I could evaluate the effect in daylight. In artificial light it looked like I had got it right as I could clearly see a difference. Now that I've seen it in daylight I'm really happy - it's subtle and muted enough not to take centre stage on the wolf too much but still clear enough that there is a pattern going on.

I have taken a moment to add up how many stitches I have left to do after taking off the area's I had initially planned to stitch but am now going to cover with beads instead - according to my calculations I still have 3320 stitches left to do, so if I manage to keep stitching around 500 stitches a day then I'll be finished with the cross stitching early next week. I also have 22 inches of XL backstitch to do and who knows how many beads. I am feeling a LOT more confident that I will be able to have this complete by the end of the month.

Stitches done: 537

Total stitches:  9500
Total backstitches: 42.76 inches

See you tomorrow, when I will have moved the hoop to do the next section...