Still Stitching Through The Staycation

This Prairie Schooler  promo card for To All A Good Night served its purpose, relaxing my tired eyes and weary brain after tackling the final beading of The Dragon of the Winter Moon and working some of the fiddly borders of The English Band Sampler.  I stitched it on 32ct blue linen [called Meditation], using silks instead of the charted DMC.  I didn't try to approximate the DMC colors.  Rather, I just selected colors I decided went well together.  I used Belle Soie Beanstalk for the green, Belle Soie Pecan for the tarnished gold,. Belle Soie Oatmeal Scone for the white, a tiny remnant of a Splendour silk for the flesh tones and Vikki Clayton hand dyed fiber's Dragon's Blood for the red.  It seems I can't escape the dragons even when I stop stitching them.  I did stitch the stars or snowflakes in Kreinik VFB 032 to give a little shine to the piece.  The background is supposed to be solidly stitched in brown/black.  I may or may not stitch the background.  But if I do, I'll probably use a very dark blue.  Having used a 32 ct linen, the finished stitched size is rather small.  To make it into a reasonably sized Christmas ornament, I may finish it up as an open sack with a cord hanger, using some nice Christmas fabric to fo a sort of log cabin quilt effect around the Santa..

I returned to my sampler refreshed and renewed.  And, since I picked up the missing DMC 3834 Tuesday, I was able to finish the flower on the lower left.and start stitching its mirror image as well as getting a bit more of the border done.  I do regret not making an enlarged working copy of this chart.  For one thing my copy of this issue of SANQ is getting rather ragged what with all the flipping back and forth through the pages.  The chart for Band 7 is in four graphs.  Next time I have a situation like this, I am definitely going to enlarge, copy and cut and paste multiple graphs into one easy to read chart.