Acorn: first stitches

The first stitches were quite exciting! As the long, smooth laid stitches running vertically across the first dark green leaf filled the area, I again recalled why I love crewel work - it's the wool. I just love stitching with wool.Part 1 in the instructions are for filling the leaf with laid work or Bayeux stitch. The directions stress the importance of working around the small circles that will be the berries and leave a 2mm channel for the stems. This was fun! I loved stitching a filling while leaving a void. As I go along it looks like someone has taken a large hole punch and punched out the circles. Stitching while leaving a void also makes what could be quite dull work - one laid stitch after the other - more interesting.Just to make sure that my stitches were as straight a possible, I drew 1 cm lines inside the shape, ensuring that they were parallel to one another. Whenever I do laid and couched work it's really, really important to me to get everything as square as I can. It drives me nuts when the stitches are out of kilter!The photo below was taken after about 20 minutes of stitching - maybe a bit less. That wool fills up the space quickly compared to the silk and gold on Trevelyon's Cap! I like this! The lines I drew were helpful and I won't try to stitch any of the piece that contains laid filling without some kind of guide.In addition to a detailed stitch drawing, Nicola has provided 5 pages of instructions. Combined with the drawing, there will be no problem understanding what the end result should be. I just hope my stitching is up to snuff! Some of the others who are stitching for her are far more experienced embroiderers!As I work on this piece, I'll be including in a small photo of the area of the drawing that I'm stitching at the end of each post. That way you can see the artwork become embroidery.