My Wide Cut Shadow Girl

Oh my, it is taking me a long time to hook this mere 20 x 24 hooked piece.  Reason is that I'm too close to the subject matter (my dearly departed girl Shadow) and can only take the angst for short periods of time.  I mean, rug hooking is supposed to be fun, right?  So I would hook on Shadow in the early morning when I'm fresh and then put it aside to hook on my comforting antique adaptation Lollipop Bouquet in the afternoon and evening. 

Well, my comfort rug is all hooked and I've nothing else comforting to hook in the evening. Guess that will force me to rather enjoy binding a rug as comfort instead of the dread.

Anyway here is what my girl looks like now and needed to take her off the frame to look at her on the computer to see what loops I feel the need to take out now.  This is a picture without a flash

And the same picture with a flash.  To me the neck under the chin really needs to be reigned in.  It looks like a goiter instead of a neck.... but then in looking at the photo I'm not sure what the problem is.

This is Shadow as she looked when we had the rug show on Thursday afternoon and similar when I returned home from camp.  And while there I hooked on Shadow during class and my trusty primitive antique adaptation at night for comfort.  That is why there doesn't seem to be much done on her from 5 days of camp.

 

But between those photos I've removed the darkest wool from under the eye on the right, and a few other minor details which bugged me. 

Adding to the self-induced stress I had these two photos I've been working with and have spent a lot of time flipping between checking real color and the position of my girl.  I wanted to capture the shape of Shadow listening to me and twisting her head.  She was adorable when she did that and I'd always burst out in laughter.  But the flash of my camera is altering her true colors.

But then here is a picture of her true colors.  In the printed picture taken at camp the colors showed up even darker. 

For those of you who may have missed my previous post about Shadow, I am hooking her in #8 strips.  I've hooked my departed Rotties in #3 and achieved a great likeness to them but did not want to hook in #3 again.  So believe me when I say that hooking Shadow in #3 would have only added to my stress level. 

For sure I'll be pleased to have a hooked piece of my girl when I'm done.  She and I talked at length (uh, I talked at length) that she was going to be a 'wide cut' sorta gal just like her mum.