I wasn’t here for some times just because my daughter came back home for Christmas, so we spent some lovely days together. I hope your Christmas was full of joy and that you got a lot of gifts you’ve been dreaming about 🙂

I still have a break at work so I can return to my cross stitching I’ve put down due to the lack of time. Firstly, I’ve completed 10th part of East Asian Inspirations Sal – a Fish, which I suppose, is a Carp – a symbol of luck and successe in Chinese culture.

Then I’ve completed 11th part of the Sal – beautiful and delicate landscape. Here I’d like to show you how back stitch brings stitching to life: on the first photo you can see only ome colourful spots, and on the second – specific details: flowers and birds. This is the magic of back stitch.

After that I decided to change back stitch on the 9th part – on a Dragon, because white back stitch on navy coloured thread looks like separate pieces, not the steam that comes out of the dragon’s mouth, or whatever everyone can imagine here. East Asian Dragon is a symbol of power, strenght and good luck for people who are worthly of it. I have to rip or “frogg” all the back stitch and stitch it agan with “couching technique”,  in which one strand of thread is laid across the surface of the stitched area and fastened in place with small stitches of the same thread. So using this technique you need two needles with one strand of thread in each of them, and, of course, two hands. You can find a lot of films on Youtube about couching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X4LC8FGAsM

Here is the result :

I think it was worth changing. What is your opinion on this image?

Now the biggest part of the Sal is ready, only last – 12th part and a border left. I’m going to stitch them on other days off, but I’m not sure I complete it this year, so the story to be continued.