One week in...

After a week's work on my Panda Collage cross stitch it's not looking as different to last week as I'd hoped. I've managed a few hours on it, spread over the week, but the section I'm working on has so many different shades of brown that I feel like I've spent most of my time changing colours.

The most frustrating part has been the confusing nature of some of the symbols on the chart. Some of the symbols are not as they appear in the key, and so I've had to guess which colour they're supposed to represent. Then, to make matters worse, two very similar shades of brown have very similar symbols too! I've lost count of the number of stitches I've had to unpick because I've used the wrong shade - grrrr!

Still, I'm loving how it's looking, with it being such a densely stitched design. It almost ends up like a stitched carpet of colours.

Here's where I'm up to now (excuse the poor lighting)...

I haven't made any progress on my birth sampler this week as I wanted to get a good start on the collage. However, I think next week my stitching time will be more evenly split between the two projects. After all, I only have until New Year to get the birth sampler complete and framed - eek!