Tiger Stitch-a-Long, part 1

Hi everyone! Hope you and yours are safe and well. I am thrilled to report that I have a FINISH on my Golden Lily cross stitch!

I really loved the fact that this DMC kit was designed to be displayed in a hoop -- which was included. It's not a big piece -- the hoop is just under 8 inches across -- but it looks nice in it. Of course, I don't really have a place to display it, but I'll find a little nook for it. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

And speaking of being happy, I've had another MRI and something called an MRV, that looks at blood flow in the veins. The MRI shows that the clot has shrunk, while the MRV shows that blood flow has started up again in the vein that was blocked. Hope this isn't too graphic ... but here's a look at the veins in my brain. The thick vein in the lower left is normal, that skinny little one on the lower right is, at least, flowing again. 

It's not back to normal, and as there's still a clot I'm still on blood thinners and such, but things are moving in the right direction. I'll have another scan in November and hopefully things will look even better.

The next challenge I had was deciding what project to work on next. Would I tackle a large cross stitch kit? Or perhaps another sashiko kit? Or finally dive in to an older needlepoint kit -- the oldest "never started" kit in my collection?

I had advice to put all three names in a hat and pull one out -- which would at least let me know whether I really wanted to work on it. And I had advice to do the oldest project. I thought for a while and realized that I would like to wait until spring to work on the sashiko kit I had chosen for a potential "next", which meant I could easily take it out of the running. And then I realized that I have some other projects I want to work on before Christmas, and the big cross stitch was quite ambitious, I think. So that left this lovely Bengal Tiger kit, which I bought at Liberty in London in 2002.

For some reason, after I bought it, it felt too complicated, too scary. No idea why. So I opened it up, read the instructions again, and sorted the wools.

It's interesting in that it's a printed kit, but has a detailed chart available. (Perhaps that's why it felt complicated???). I have decided that I'll stitch for the most part using the printed picture, but refer to the chart to make sure I can discern the colors if needed -- perhaps on the greenery. 

I put it on my trusty roller frame -- though I needed to visit my local hardware store, because I couldn't get the screws to tighten enough -- and got to work. So far I've stitched the black stripes on the tiger, and have just started to fill in the orange color. 

Again, I think this is the sort of project that, because of the vibrant printing, it's almost difficult to tell what has been stitched! But you can see the black and the lighter orange in this close-up:

My goal for next time is to finish stitching the tiger and start in on the leaves -- lots of stitching, but no counting!

Our next check in is on September 13. Till then, check out all the great projects that the other stitchers in this stitch-a-long are working on:

Avis, Claire, Gun, Carole, Sue, Constanze, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Cindy, Heidi, Jackie, Hayley, Megan, Deborah, Mary Margaret, Renee, Carmela, Sharon, Daisy, Anne, Connie, AJ, Jenny, Laura, Cathie, Linda, and Helen.