I haven't had much time for working on the Kannon panel. The top picture shows how it looked before I left Denman on Sunday. But I have completed a lot of the koi outlines -
and done about 50% of the willow leaves. I've adapted the traditional hitomezashi (one stitch sashiko) design hishizashi (diamond sashiko) and made it look more leaf shaped by leaving off the two outer rows. Realised I didn't have enough of the lovely Stef Francis thread left and was very annoyed with myself for having used some of it to make little leaf coasters - then spotted that about 50% of the thread length was very close to the rainbow thread used on the ribbon detail, so I used some of that, being careful to cut it so green & blue appear next to the pinkish colours in the stitch. While the greenest and reddest leaves obviously look different, in the middle of the colour range it is actually hard to tell which thread is used in the leaf, so I think it works. I had to deal with the leaves before I could finish off the fish tail, which goes behind.
A note on the other threads - the fish outline is persimmon medium Olympus 40m & the fin detail is yellow gold fine Kinkame, both from Euro Japan Links. The cream/white/ice blue threads are all from Euro Japan Links too. The fish scale outlines are another thread from Stef Francis.
