Journey: Day 8

Having finished the roadworks on the left it was time to add that road on the right - or river as I mentioned yesterday. I had a think about things and it seemed to me that it would be more logical for the river to be dried up as this is a desert scene and if the river was a water filled one then there would be little point in having the choice of the oasis in the middle.
I first started by drawing out a more or less curvy river, I wanted it to have some irregular shapes going as no river is perfectly curvy all the way along. I then stitched the lines with split stitch using DMC Color Variations 4145 - which as it happens is a very close match to the fabric I'd dyed - exactly what I wanted for this!

The other thing I knew I wanted was a wooden dinghy in the dried up river bed - the type that had sunk before the river had gone dry so was also filled with mud. I used my nail file as a template to mark the fabric as the point has exactly the right shape for it. I stitched it in split stitch, using DMC L3790, added satin stitch seating and an oar.

I then used Cretan stitch using DMC Color Variations 4145 again to make the dried up mud - it was hard going for me to not make this line up all nice and tidy but to make it irregular instead, and I'm glad I did as it has the look I was going for. I started at the bottom with 2 strands and used smaller stitches and eventually just 1 thread as I got to the top. The flowers at the bottom kind of snuck on - they wanted to be there as it were. The larger ones are cross stitched 2 threads of blue (DMC L162) over 2 threads with a Algerian eye centre made with DMC L677 the smaller ones are stitched over 1 thread of the fabric, but with 2 threads still.

I think I'll make a couple more flowers - but not too many, this is a desert after all, and then I'm going to do some filling in of the area to the right of the river - I'm not yet sure how or what but that's the plan any way. So now we have the choice of dried river bed, oasis or the long road to the mountains - I wonder which our invisible traveller will choose!