For some reason, I decided to drag out Mythical Dragon and work on it tonight. Joe said it must be an August thing…I started it March ’03 but only worked on it a little while before putting it away till last August. Then at the end of last August, I put it away again. I stopped working on it then because I had finished the top half of the dragon and decided to start on the border. I didn’t enjoy working on the border. I kept making counting mistakes. So I decided to just do the bottom half of the dragon for now.
I’m enjoying it so far (for the 2 hours I worked on it tonight) but the fractional stitches on Aida still aren’t much fun. They’re so hard to get right and most of my previous ones are kind of off-center. I know on light-colored fabric you can sometimes see where the strands of thread in the fabric are, but on this black you really can’t tell. You just have to poke and hope you get it right. It’s not very easy to poke through either.
Looking at the back of my stitching, I can see how far I’ve come in ability since last summer. My backs have always been fairly neat but now I have absolutely no loose threads hanging off or anything. I’ve learned how to end stitches better…I didn’t used to go under two to three stitches and then go back though the stitch I just went through. I would just go through several stitches and not go back under. I also had not cut the threads in half before and was working with really long strands. This doesn’t work very well when you’re working with blending filament that breaks easy. So I cut all the strands in half now.
