Cleared for take-off

I am just finishing up a month of 6 day, 50 hour work weeks. The result is that I haven't had much time for stitching so far in March. My last day-off, Friday the 11th, was consumed with banking, grocery shopping, errand running, a brief visit with my youngest son and reading. I find reading more relaxing than stitching during really stress filled weeks. Still, I have managed to get a wee bit of stitching done in the past few days.

The dragon takes flight! I have finished stitching the body, have worked the second wing and am now working on the background. I made a few changes to the right wing, though. It was charted as having a center patch made up of doubled over blending filament in the same colors as the #4VFB used for the scales, tail and claws. Now, I can always find a use for VFB but rarely use blending filament anymore. So, I saw absolutlely no reason to buy a spool of blending filament that I would use for a mere 40 stitches. Instead, I just filled in the area with the VFB. I wasn't sure that I would enjoy using the recommended half stitches for much of the background but I have decided that I rather like the effect ... not my usual take on half stitches ... but somehow, it looks right on this piece. I can sense another Crazy January Challenge finish coming soon. Which is good since I am beginning to get a bit of an inferiority complex about the few CJC finishes I have had thus far compared with my blogging buddies. However, I tell myself that, having chosen large and complex projects as opposed to smalls for 11 out of 15 of my challenge pieces, I have given myself a genuine challenge. I haven't stacked the deck in my own favor. Does that sound like an arrogant bit of self-justification from an A-type person who just can't stand to lose any sort of a competition or lag behind in any sort of race? Well, as the Ancients say, "Know thyself" and "To thine own self be true."