One for DH (or maybe me!)

I have been hanging around the Heaven and Earth Designs group on Facebook recently, they do some awesome designs and have been struggling to decide on which one to do, some of the Randal Spangler Dragons look great fun, but as  they are so detailed I don't want to go ahead on something that I wouldn't love to work on for so many hours.

This led to me finding Tilton Charts designs and there two Lord of the Rings designs. One is huge (975 stitches by 810) and I am unlikely to ever do it, but it was a limited edition and I just had to have it. I had seen something similar a while back and didn't get it and was disappointed when it was then withdrawn from sale. The other is entitled One to Bind them All  and is only 350 x 230.

I started work on this before Christmas and have completed two pages. The is approximately 2 weeks work, admittedly when I had a lot of time to sit and sew so I doubt future progress will be as quick. It is a full cover design and I am doing it on 1 over 1 on 25 count (and to think I thought 18 count Aida was hard going)! I am doing full cross stitches, I did start doing it as 2 over 1 tent stitch as it would be quicker, but wasn't happy and thought the angle of the stitches was going to distort the fabric too much so I started over. And actually its not as bad as I had expected in spite of all the black. It has a nice balance of areas of one colour where you are just stitching and other sections that really take concentration, up so close you can't see the full picture and the colour changes don't necessarily make sense, but once you step back you get a better idea

I am enjoying it (so far) and going to try and fit some work on it each month along with the stitchalongs (and everything else).