TAST - Zig Zag Coral

Chicken Little number 95!! Ninety FIVE chickens.  Only 5 more stitches to go in this current round of TAST.  Although it sounds like Sharon is cooking up some new challenges for next year - yay!

The zig zag coral is the peachy pink zig zag on the kite if you were wondering.  Apparently its also really useful to use as a couching stitch.

Here's the link to all 95.
Thanks Rose for pointing out I had missed adding the last couple of stitches to the album. 😁

Tree Progress

I've been making a lot of progress on the tree project.  I'll be SO over French knots by the time this project is done haha.  The weather is awful here today so the photo isn't too good, colour-wise.

As you can see the puckering seems to be getting worse.  The fabric just won't sit right in this frame.  I'm sure this is due to the larger frame and the add-on fabric to make it fit, sigh.  Well fingers crossed most of them will stretch out once its done.  

I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo, but when you look at the flowers they look quite textured. Not in a French knot texture kind of way, but more that it looks like the French knots are layered on top of each other, or some are larger making them pop out from the fabric more.  But no they're not, it must be from the changes in colour, because when you look across the fabric they're all the same size and height.  

I almost don't want to post this picture because the colours are all wrong, its so dark here today.  But an update is an update right? 😀

What Next?

How did we ever survive before the internet?  For small countries like ours we were so limited in the sharing of new ideas for craft etc.  But the internet, oh how I love thee.  And I'm sure I'm not the only one that loses hours... and hours... and hours to Pinterest.  Although I sure do get frustrated at times with it as well.  But Blackwork... I'm curious about blackwork in particular the shading side of things.  I've found some amazing patterns out there.  There are plenty of sites out there with various 'patterns' for free but I'm yet to find a good one about the shading side of things.  Anyway I think thats where I'll head next for a bit, although I'm not a big fan of counted work I've spotted an amazing ladybird picture in black work that I'm just in love with.  So we'll see... you never know which direction Pinterest will take me in next week haha.

Here's the picture thats got me all hot and bothered about black work.  I know its not strictly blackwork, what with the bright red ladybug and all.  But I love it.  Its terribly intricate looking at the detail but such a simple design overall.  (The links to the patterns are below the photos if you're interested.)

https://www.ajisaipress.com/product/blackwork-cross-stitch-design-ladybug-and-daisy/

The site appears to have some beautiful patterns, check out this Blue Jay

https://www.ajisaipress.com/product/cross-stitch-and-blackwork-designs-blue-birds-berries/

And would life be complete without a chicken of some kind? I think not.  I had a bit of trouble finding where to buy this one.  It almost looks like he was a free pattern from a magazine? not sure.

Anyway thats it from me today.