Five of Diamonds

I've fished with my dad in the summer ever since I was a little girl. It was likely a dream come true for my dad when I married Trev, the former fishing guide, current fishing addict. In fact, Trev is ice fishing as I write this.

My dad's got all kinds of fishing toys, but he's not at all hardcore like Trev. (And in the grand scheme of things, Trev is blessedly not as hardcore as other people he/we know.) I think my dad just likes to buy said fishing toys, but he seems to often revert back to one lure. His go-to. His Five of Diamonds.

My parents are coming over for dinner tomorrow night (note to self: figure out what to feed them), and I figured I'd give them a tea towel for the island cottage (which has a decidedly fish/fishing-related theme). No occasion in particular - just because I felt like making it.

So I started to draw my best Five of Diamonds. Note the cell phone - I'm waiting to hear of more fish caught, though they may be out of range by now. Two big lake trout this morning for Trev though!

And, just like I got distracted right there by telling you about Trev's fishing, I got distracted while sketching out my design...

Back to work...

Sketch 1 was too small for the size of tea towel that I have. So this is no. 2.

Pause again while a certin someone distracts me with her ridiculous cuteness. Get that pen! Get it!

Ahem. Back to work...

The pattern is put on to tracing paper, and then taped to the window. I then traced it onto the towel itself. I must say, I'm a little underwhelmed at the quality of these tea towels. I thought the weave would be a little more dense than this... Oh well.

Success! Outline is done! I don't think I'm going to fill in this bad boy. I think a simple outline of the parts will look nice.

But my tracing job on the diamonds wasn't all that great. "That's okay," I thought, "I'll just free-hand the diamonds and ignore the wonky mess that came about from tracing."

No such luck. My brain wanted to follow those lines, try as I might. The diamonds got wonkier. So now I'm faced with undoing this section of it and trying again. I'm determined to finish this though. Even if I don't end up giving it to my parents. I will finish it.