I couldn't resist. My sister's 60th bday will be in February and I realized that while I have stitched things for my niece and nephew I have never given her anything for herself (stitchy wise I mean). So I just got this today:

and am going to try to do it on 28 ct tent stitch. I'll have to put my others to the side (and I have made good progress on Dragon Riders but will post that later on). I don't know that I can do this in 3mts (her birthday is the 22nd), but I'm going to try to get a bunch done. If the tent stitch on 28 ct doesn't work, I guess I'll order some 25ct jobelan or something like that, but I have the 28ct that I ed from my first TOS attempt and think that will work good, Worth a try anyway. Wish me luck. Another new thing for me. A whole piece in tent stitch or sort of tent stitch anyway. Who says you can't teach an old cat new tricks. (Had to revise the sentence of course). Off to kit this up.

Carole

Cool - I'm looking forward to following this as I have my birthstone, Opal in both sizes and am anxious to see what your mini looks like stitched up so I know which one of mine to do... Wish they had come out with minis a long time ago, I'm sure my stash would look a lot different now...

What a beautiful design!! I definitely wish you the best of luck completing this by Feb 22nd !!

Lovely design and best of luck

what a lovely design I love the colour good luck

good luck and i cant wait to see how it turns out, if done in time it may well be the first mini fully done to be shown.
To get it done on time you will need to do around 570 stitches a day, so i wish you all the luck, it is doable but with such a busy time of year ahead things can get sidetracked easily.

Good luck and i look farward to watching this project

That's lovely and such a gorgeous colour. I'll look forward to your speedy stitching on this one

Totally love the rich colours of this design! Even the grey looks warm.

Was waiting to see when someone would do one of the minis! It will be great following your progress!

I too am excited to be able to see what a mini will look like stitched up. I have been looking at them but I am unsure of how they will look compared to the normal charts. A gorgeous design you have picked

I'm so excited to watch your progress on this, I really would love to see how this stitches up and good luck with getting her finished on time

Thanks everyone for the encouragement. I have decided to do this on 25 ct evenweave. Trying to grid 28ct was way more than my eyes could deal with. and I hate magnifying glasses. I tested it and I think that 2 over 1 tent will look fine as long as I don't pull my stitches too tightly (habit that I have). I'm in the process of gridding and hope to get started tonight. I couldn't see a lot of differences between the mini and the regular on the HAED website though I know there are just because there are only 50 colors in this one and I would guess the full design would be like the others that have at least 90 colors and a lot have more even I am sure. It will be interesting. There are 6 full pages of charts, 3 half pages and then 3 pages that barely have a few rows on them.

Plus I want to thank Nina for posting about her work on the Birthstones, otherwise I would never have thought to look for this one. Thank you Nina.

Carole

Lovely project!

Good luck Carole!! I'm sure you can do it!

You got me curious so I looked at the floss usage chart on the full sized pattern, looks to be about 50 colors, too! So I don't think you'll be losing much detail! So interested to see a mini stitched up, I think we will all be eager to see your progress!

She's going to love it
Faith

Oh my. I love the colours in this one. Looking forward to seeing you stitch her.

A lovely design! Good luck meeting your goal, I'm sure your sister will love it

I would like ya'll's opinion about the coverage. As I said, I am doing tent/half stitches 2 over 1 on 25 ct evenweave. the 28ct was just too small for me to grid properly and the counting was not going to be fun. I like the 25 ct and the coverage is okay. It actually looks a bit better in the photo so I think maybe I am just looking at it too close. If, the coverage should be better I could do it on 22 ct but would do full stitches. Would take a little longer but I might do it in time. If not, it would be late, but not that late and I would get my sister a little something for the day also so she has a gift on her birthday. Laveren actually prefers afghan cloth and isn't around as much for this as she is for the others, but doesn't completly neglect her duties.
helping to grid:

helping to stitch (you can tell she thinks this isn't fun):

and what I have done so far (not bad for 2 days I think). The color is really off though and I'm not sure why. I will take better photos in more daylight I guess later. If you click on the photo you can get more of a close up (at least I do on my computer)


thank you for your opinions.

Carole

Your coverage is looking great to me!!! Very nice start!!

As for Laverne--she is such a hoot!!! I love seeing pictures of her--she definitely wants to be a part of what you are doing!!!