Journey: Day 2

This is where I left off yesterday. With the kids home from school for the May holiday (yes I know... that's the Dutch for you hehe) I somehow don't get as much stitching done. I did however manage to finish the palm/date trees and I made a start on the mountains in the background. I wanted to try long and short stitch but needed to learn how first, so I consulted the web and YouTube and a few different tutorials and videos later I decided to have a go.

The line under the mountains is pretty straight, but I'm planning on adding another layer over the top so I decided i didn't need to worry about making uneven edges at the bottom. I noticed on photos (google images, pages upon pages of them) of desert mountains that they tend to be darker at the top rather than lighter so that's why I started with the lighter of the two shades of purplish brown. I used two threads at a time for this, all the instructions say to use one but that would take forever to do and I'm not *that* patient. Having done three lots of L3861 I decided to go a bit darker and am now using one strand of L3861 and one strand of L779.

Since the pencil line I'd drawn was so subtle I could barely see it I decided to go ahead and do the split stitch outline edge (that will be covered) now so that it would be easier to get the shape right, and not stitch right on over it and end up with a square.

That's all for today - see you tomorrow with the weekly freebie - this time something completely different, and possibly also a journey update.