Out of Sorts? Birds Of All Sorts

There's a story here - a long sad tale of forgetfulness and general ineptness!  Take a close look at the photograph above - my stitching progress on "Free Bird".  Siobhan (who has stitched this piece), has probably looked at it and thought, "Hmm, what's she after doing?"...or something charmingly Irish like that!  Well friends and readers, "Free Bird" has just three colors, not thirteen, not thirty-three, just three!  You might be forgiven for thinking that a long-time stitcher could keep straight three colors / three symbols - but NO!  Starting with the peacock I reversed the red and the navy - and then I proceeded to stitch all the alphabet letters in navy instead of the called for red. 

So what to do?  After some thought, and reference to the chart and photograph, I decided that the piece was "too red" for my taste.  So I'm going to alternate the alphabet - A in navy, B in red, and so forth.  As for the peacock, as I continue to stitch anew, I will slowly frog him out, and make the corrections - navy becoming red, red becoming navy, and all will be well in Stitchland.

Stitching is always a humbling experience!  The funny thing is after discovering my big old mess-up, I never got out of sorts, or felt angry, or frustrated.  I was just amused - mostly!  I'm still loving stitching this, and I think that my version will work out well in the end.

As to other birds...      

           

Sometimes when I take a photo, it turns out to be more interesting than I'd anticipated.  I love the colors of the glass ornament in the background softly glowing next to the Hummingbird.

And in this photo I like the contrast of the "dirty yellow" of the goldfinch with the purple garden tuteur.   

The goldfinches have begun nest-building.  They like to use strands of my father's hammock. 

They also use thistle "fluff".

The Quail families continue to grow apace!

I love this photo of the little one trotting behind his father. 

The Barn Swallows are done with their nest remodelling and are sitting on their 2nd clutch of eggs.

I even have a bird or two amongst my plants as Garden Art pieces!