Gold & Green

This is a random photo of a small frog from my Grandmother's garden. I took it originally to prove to her that she really did have frogs in her garden because she's never seen any. You have to be sneaky about it and walk really softly up to the pond so they don't feel you coming. She obviously doesn't have the super sneakiness that I have because this little chap stayed for quite a while to let me photograph him. His friends all chickened out and jumped into the pond once I got close enough.
Anyway, I digress. The photo is in this post because the colours also match my green/gold themed topic for today. I love this time of year when you are driving through woodland and the sun is streaming down through the trees, tinging the green with gold. Coming back from the Kent County Show, I actually remembered to try and catch this beautiful phenomenon on camera.

I have been thinking about this inspiration for a while and for my last class at Closs & Hamblin in Tunbridge Wells, I had put together some quick little hoops to demonstrate ways of laying fabrics out and various compositions. One of these was with this green/gold in mind and I decided that for my show weekend, this was a perfect project to pop into my bag as Mrs Heggardy's Windmill is a little big for impromptu stitching.
On Thursday afternoon I started stitching in earnest, and by the evening had added some little golden beads to the piece, covering golden dots in the fabric piece. They appear randomly placed which I really like as it matches so well with the blurred photos above.
Over the course of the weekend, I added some metallic golden crochet yarn to the sides of the trees that I wanted to tinge with gold and I'm going to experiment with adding a sunburst behind the wider central tree with even more golden threads! Perhaps adding some chunky green french knots as well for additional leafage. It's going to be golden-tastic!!