Here's the Project

I'm stitching my carousel horse on 25-count mushroom Lugana.  I would have liked to do it on something 28-count, but I didn't have anything suitable or the right size in my stash.  I have a piece of ivory coloured 32-count Jobelan, but I thought that for my first project back I should choose something a little easier on my old eyes.  *LOL*

I'm also using a size 26 mini needle to stitch.  I don't know if you can see it in this pic...  It's on the magnet near the bottom next to a regular length neede.  And this is my chart.  It's the hand drawn one - I may end up buying the online pattern when I get to doing more backstitching, but we'll see.  I don't usually have a problem with the hand drawing.

So this is my progress so far, after what... 4 days, I think?  I've done the two rows of full stitches of the outside of the border all the way around and am now working on the golds with the fractionals and the blends and all that good TW stuff.  :)  

Now, for some reason, I can't get this picture to upload in the proper direction.  *SIGH*   It's standing on one end.  In reality, it's wider than it is high.

One thing I discovered was that if I did the little quarter stitches that are blue and fairly regular around the border, they gave me something to 'navigate' with, because with all the quarter stitches and the so-close-in-shade gold of the inner border, things get awfully confusing sometimes.  All that gold?  That's 3 different symbols with 6 different gold/beige blends.  

So, that's the beginning of my project.  I'm going to try and post regularly in here.  *crossing fingers* 

And I need to find a name for the horse!