As far as I can go--for now

Little Humpty Dumpty is finished--just shy of popping in some initials when my neighbor's new granddaughter is born at the end of August.

I decided to work the tulips with DMC floss #891, the same coral as his mouth, instead of the yellow as I'd originally painted the canvas. The coral provides an additional spot of color against the wall and ties the top and bottom of the design together. The tulip leaves were worked with tent and straight stitches with two strands of Wildflowers "Evergreen."

The centers of the tall flowers on the left used the same DMC floss #444 as the pants, but were pretty much covered over by the French knot petals worked with DMC floss #826. This shade of blue is the intermediate value between the darkest shade of the sky and Humpty's jacket. The leaves for these flowers, again in tent and straight stitches, were worked with two strands of Wildflowers "Moss." I like the effect created by mixing yellow-greens and blue-greens together in a canvas, since it mimics the variety of greens found in nature.

The "2010" was stitched with the same Kreinik #12 tapestry braid #221 as Humpty's buttons and belt buckle, and I'll use this again on the bottom left when the new parents decide what the baby's initials will be. The grass was worked in a diagonal mosaic stitch--providing a little texture but easy to compensate around numbers and letters--with one strand of Sheep's Silk "Green Leaves Dark."

Why did I stop work on the grass where I did? Based on the alphabet I'll be using, I figured the worst-case scenario would be if the new baby were named "Wendy Marie," for instance--M and W being the widest letters in the alphabet. So I counted over 19 threads from the left, allowing for my margin, and put a tiny dot where the outside of the last letter would fall. I know, I know--stitch painters are always counting!