This is exciting!  I've actually started stitching one of the birds.  I've decided to go with the Acorn Woodpecker for several reasons.

#1  They often are on the shed.  This means I can squeeze another bird into the scene.


#2  They have very bold, clearly defined markings.  This means I do not have to do long and short shading.  Which is great, because I am not very good (yet) at that kind of shading.


The colors were easy.  I needed black, white, red and yellow/creamy color.  I usually (by which I mean, in all 2 of my previous projects) work in silk, but I do not want to buy a $4 skein of silk for 2 strands, so sometimes I will be using bits of cotton floss from my stash, and that yellow creamy color was a good example.

I bought the white and the black from City Needleworks in San Mateo, I love her silks and her palette, very nice to work with.  I knew I would need a lot of those colors, so silk made sense.

The white is City Needleworks #1, the black is City Needleworks #3.


For the red I am using some Soie d'Alger left over from the Hummingbird and Honeysuckle project.  #915

The yellow creamy color for the throat was a little harder.  Since it was a very small area, and none of the other birds would need it, I did not want to buy a whole skein of silk.  So, I rummaged through my collection and settled on the yellowish bits of a varigated thread from Weeks Dye Works...Eucalyptus.

Very satisfying, and somehow irrevocable to have actually started stitching.