Random stitches

I am still working on the crab canvas by Viola. You might remember from last week that it had an orange border painted across the top and bottom of the canvas. The orange just wasn't speaking to me. I knew I wanted to do something to the top and bottom of the canvas but I couldn't for the life of me decide WHAT to put there. I had about decided to take the safe way out and just extend the black background a few rows and call it a day. You can thank MJ for the change in plans. We met on Saturday morning to go to the Farmer's Market and then to have a morning of stitching. It didn't take her long to convince me that I needed to do a border of black cashmere stitches with mosaic dots. I loved the idea and immediately started in with my first batch of cashmeres and the first mosaic dot. Then I froze again. What color dot should I do next?? MJ talked me back down off of my panicky ledge and quietly said "Just do random dots of color. Don't worry about having a plan." Random dots??? Really?? Seriously?? Don't I need to get out my graph paper or open an excel spreadsheet to measure out and calculate what color goes where? Doesn't the bottom row have to be a mirror image of the top row? Random!!! Wow! I don't know if I can do random things. You laugh - this is serious stuff.

As it turned out - I couldn't do it randomly. I did have to come up with a plan. Yes, it is exactly the same on the top and the bottom and the order is the same going from right to left and from left to right. I can't help it - I am just a bit of an order freak. With all that said, I am very pleased with the way it looks. I am now going back and adding 5 rows of black basketweave all the way around the canvas so the finishing won't mess up my borders. Hope you like it. Thanks MJ for your guidance and attempts to make me relax and just go with the flow. Thanks also to B for your encouragement in the afternoon. It was a fun day.

Our trip to the Farmer's Market was also a success. I got a bag full of wonderfully fresh veggies and this lovely bundle of flowers.

I'm off to stitch some more on the crabs. Hopefully they will be finished by this time next week.
Happy stitching everyone.