Encrusted calico piece progress: 

I've made some progress with this over the last couple of days, although I did get a bit distracted yesterday trying out a wee macrame owl that I found a tutorial for online.  Which was fun, although frustrating as the measurements for the cords were off so I got 90% of the way through and then ran out of cord grrrr.  To be fair maybe my knots were a bit loose and the tutorial was fine.  Either way I will give it another go over the weekend this time using longer cord.

I have done a bit of unpicking and re-doing, I had initially just grabbed a pile of creamy natural colours, but the combination wasn't right.  Its weird that a pile of 'creams' wouldn't go together, but they didn't.  So instead I put my trust in the experts and picked the colours White through to 3787 on the DMC colour chart.   And to me that seems to be working better.

To date I've used French knots in varying sizes, by varying the strands of floss and just making some looser than others.  We've also got Raised Cup, Bullions, Drizzle, Picots, Buttonhole Wheel Cup, Whipped Wheels and just some wee straight stitch daisy's/stars.

I've been having a ferret through my jar of Mills Hills beads this morning and picked a few that I think will go.  I haven't really used beads in my embroidery to date so we'll see if I can find a way to incorporate them that doesn't result in me unpicking them and tossing them back in the jar.  (which is usually what happens)

I also haven't figured out what to do with those bone shaped buttons yet.  I might well regret sewing those on.😮

Learning Number 1:
That having all these lumpy bits as part of the fabric almost, does make some of the stitches harder to do because you keep bumping into one bit or another as you stitch.

Learning Number 2:
They also provide a bit of a challenge with the raised stitches too.  If they were felt you could get away with a bit of surface work to ease things along.  But its all part of the challenge, right?

This weeks TAST:

I haven't started on my TAST stitch for the week yet.  No inspiration has hit me yet with what to do with Herringbone Square.  (The link to Pintangles tutorial for this stitch is here.)  I've borrowed Sharons' photos of the two versions, the standard Herringbone Square and the Laced version.

Really not sure how to Chicken-ify those at this stage.  (and yes I know Chicken-ify isn't a real word, but then I just used it so it must be!)