Stitching Marathon Report

Dragon Dreams Compass Rose Dragon:  I have finished stitching this exactly as charted.  Now, normally I trust the designer's sense of perspective.  But, even allowing for the slight tilt of the dragon's head, it appears to me that the horns on the right side of the dragon's head are growing out of precisely the spot where his right eye ought to be.  Consequently, I haven't back stitched that area.  I am living with it for a while to see if I really want to frog the horns and move them a stitch or two to the right.  What do my readers think, I wonder!

And I started the second chart in the Dragon Dreams leaflet, Here Be Dragons.  Just the border and the point of a dragon's tail so far but it is a start.

The English Band Sampler:  I have stitched another 75 of the 160 eyelet stitches in Band 6, bringing the total up to 115.  Since each eyelet is made up of 16 smaller stitches, that's 1200 stitches, but who's counting?  Just another 45 eyelets to go before moving on to Band 7.  I am quite sure that once I start Band 7, I shall recover my enthusiasm for this piece.  But these endless eyelets are exhausting.  I need to stitch them outdoors in full daylight with a magnifier.  My town house only has windows front and back and no amount of artificial light alone seems to do when stitching on this ivory linen in very pale fawn floss.  I may not get back to this until Friday when I will be free to stitch on the patio again.  Please pray for pleasant weather.  Otherwise, I'll be moving furniture around in my living room so that I can stitch by a window.  This will annoy my husband no end because he will have to move his TV watching chair to accommodate me.

Cafe du Monde:  This is one of those pieces that, no matter how long you work on it, no discernible progress seems to be made.  And then, quite suddenly, it's done!  Well, it's not done yet and I am still at the no discernible progress stage.

Altogether, not bad for a two and a half day stitching marathon.