I wasn't able to finish the long tail of our goldfish last night, but it is 2/3 done and I've stitched the dorsal fin on his back (If you don't read the comments, you didn't hear that the designer Gail Hendrix says the goldfish is male-that's why he is so colorful) and the front fins under his chin.
You can't see how the silk shines in the photo but I must say the packed outline stitch I used looks very good in silks. I used one ply of my Splendor silk (the darkest rose is Bella Silk) in the same colors as the Melissa Shirley Asian girls I just finished.
I started at one end of an area and worked a color at a time, slowly filling out the side and moving towards the middle and then to the other edge. I discovered that it's ok to not completely pack the stitches. You can always go back and fill in a bit here and there where it looks skimpy. I think that's better than putting in too many stitches. I also discovered that the darker colors were often overwhelmed by the lighter colors (How odd is that!?) and I needed to put another stitch or two in of the darkest rose so it wasn't just a tiny line.
I like how this is developing. Wish you could see him in person!
Tonight I'll finish the tail and hopefully start work on the water.
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
