A Peacock, A Badger and A Unicorn

Funny/weird how this has worked out. For probably the last year, I’ve been seeing stitchers working on A Peacock, A Badger and A Unicorn. It’s one of those pieces that’s beautiful when finished but when I look at the chart, I say “no way would I ever stitch that”. As charted, the entire background is stitched so it’s pretty much full coverage.

Within the last four months or so, I’ve had this chart and floss in and out of my cart at least half a dozen times. Last week I told myself . . when a flosstuber starts talking about this chart, I’m changing the channel. I was chatting with my friends online Tuesday and one of them was stitching on this and I thought . . that’s it. I’m getting it. I asked my friend, Laura from Tropical Stitches if she would dye me a piece of linen that’s dark green so I don’t have to do all that background stitching. I had the chart and the DMC in my cart and was trying to think if there were other things I needed to order before hitting the “buy” button.

Last night I was looking for something (a ceramic dish that holds scented oil) upstairs. You can guess where this is going. I thought the dish was in the cabinet by the chair where I sat when I stitched upstairs before we got Oscar. I didn’t find the dish but I found three project bags and one of them had the chart for A Peacock, A Badger and A unicorn, along with all of the DMC floss. I really do not remember ordering this chart but I’m very glad I didn’t order another chart and all the floss and then find it. I checked on Instagram and the first photos of stitching on this chart were a little over three years old so I probably ordered it when I first got back into stitching and didn’t know better.

What convinced me to go ahead and start it is that I’m thinking this may be the only chart I will ever stitch that Chad and Nicole or Addie might be interested in keeping.

I knew I wanted to stitch with silks because I enjoy stitching with Vikki Clayton’s silks but the silk packet for this floss was $114. I felt like that was a bit much for one chart. I also felt like I could not buy the 6 bobbins of dark green since I wasn’t stitching the background and that would have brought the price down to a bit less than $100 but since I have a lot of Vikki’s silk floss, I decided to dig out the called for colors/conversions and use some from the stash and order what I didn’t have. I had about half and ordered the rest. NOTE: There’s nothing wrong with using DMC. I think it stitches up just fine but I LOVE stitching with the silks.

I doubt I start this right way – once the linen arrives, but I may. Anyone want to stitch along with me?