Progress!

After finishing the keeper's house and tower, I moved on to the aky, stitched in basketweave with four plies of DMC cotton floss #3755. Then the mailman arrived, with a care package! In it was a skein of Sheep's Silk "Leaf Green Dark"--perfect for the grassy bluff in a Nobuko stitch.

The water proved to be a bit trickier. A lot of folks like the light, airy look of a painted canvas that's been stitched in a weight of thread that doesn't quite cover the canvas itself. Others like to use a stitch which leaves part of the canvas exposed. Somehow, I just can't see either of those treatments used for a small lighthouse design. Chalk it up to personal preference!

I wanted the visual effect of movement which can be achieved with the "Water Stitch" developed by David McCaskill, but I didn't want to have any exposed canvas or use metallic to highlight the ripples in the water. So I experimented and came up with a very modified Water Stitch--needle-blending again! This time I used DMC floss #322 and #312--darker shades in the same blue family as the sky--with two plies of each. Just like the original Water Stitch, I placed gobelin stitches--over three threads wide and one thread high--alternating the angle every other row. But I overlapped the stitches to eliminate the exposed canvas intersections. The impression of movement is still there, but the canvas is completely covered.

The rocks at the water's edge were worked in a satin stitch, using four different tan/gray shades of DMC floss. Next up--trying to tell the forest from the trees!