Stitch By Stitch: Beginning the Border

I haven’t stitched much this month.

Mostly, I’ve been staring at the pattern trying to decide where to start with the background, and then, whether to include the outer border as I go or leave it to the end. It’s just as well I felt that I needed to have made some progress for this month’s Stitch by Stitch, or I’d probably still be deciding.

In the end, I chose to start in the bottom left corner, with a tree, and to stitch the outer border as I go. I think that will be the most efficient use of my stitching time, especially doing the back-stitching in the border. Then, at the end, I should just be left with the long, straight back-stitching. I hope.

Having spent so long in the deciding, I’ve only managed the tree and about half of this section of the border. But now I have a direction, I expect (hope) it’ll be smoother stitching.

We’ll see. The border feels like it’ll be a long slog, both the images and the outer frame, which is probably also why it took me so many weeks to decide where to start with it, and why I’m still trying to summon the sufficient energy to really get going.  

I’m also beginning to think that my dreams of completing the map this year might have been overly optimistic, the rate I’m going. At least I’m making progress, though. Right?