Thinking that it might be nice to have snow falling behind the penguins of the Alexander and Issac stockings, I tried a blue and white mosaic strip as diagrammed below in blue and grey.

This was a “NO, NO!” The penguins got lost with the business of the background. I was back to the drawing board. And time to remove the unwanted stitches. (It is good to remember that removing stitches should be done in the reverse of LIFO (last in first out). Unless absolutely necessary, you don’t want to reuse thread, particularly when working with wool. )

I really liked the stitch. It covered the canvas well and was quick to do.  And the added bonus was that the white was easy to take out.

By changing the white in the photo, to a slightly lighter blue on the Isaac stocking’s large penguin, I got a background that gave some depths and movement.

For the Alexander’s little penguin, I reversed the direction of the stitches (i.e., rotated the diagram 90 degrees) and used a darker blue for the grey stitches.

My fingers were flying and ready of Isaac’s Santa. Santa got a variegated blue sky, the puffy snow for his airplane’s exhaust, and a shiny propeller (more about metallic threads in my next blog).