The best ever neck tie, or THE BEST EVER NECK TIE?

hooch is such a ladies' man.

Yes- look closely- yes, that IS  tie with silhouettes of naked ladies. YES IT IS.
Thrift stores are the best :D

Hatchbun.

For reference: a Prius C, the hatchback, will just fit three small animal Kong carriers.

Haha! I bought a car a few weeks ago, and while it won't likely fit Hooch, our big Mastiff, with any comfort, it's a bunny-sized car. Here they are on the way back from the vet after being spayed and neutered (we have two females and a male). They were pretty popular at the vet's office! So far the females seem to coexist peacefully but the male is still fairly aggressive. We're working on his manners around the gentle fluffy girl and the constantly-terrified brown girl. We're in the process of building them a sizeable outdoor hutch, and the male has a separating wall- it's removable, though, in case things change.

Photogenic phluff.

I meant to take pictures of all the three of the buns, but I forgot after Fluffybutt- she's just the most photogenic!

Thiiiiiis close.

My late MIL, who started this piece, must have miscounted in a few spots, because the "frame" is off. She stitched six too many red rows, and filled them in by just adding more rows of red, three on each side of the design.
She was an uneven three off on the columns, which might be WHY she put it down and never finished it. But I digress.
These extra six rows-coupled with the really thick, almost double sided way she made her stiches-made me a little nervous there was only about two strands of red left. One "badge" and one cross were completed with this red, so I figured it was important to keep those consistent with both sides of the pattern.
After filling in the added-on rows, I just had the cross left... I was so close...

And I ran out with, what, five stiches left? Not even five whole stiches. Five half stiches.
This isn't knitting. There's no gauge swatch to unravel, no tinking back and knitting tighter or decreasing sooner or pretending you totally meant to make it a 3/4 sleeve sweater, not a full length.

There is only madness and trying to match to a new skein.

Line by line.

I gridded the project roughly with black floss. In counted cross stitch, I minimize the counting!
However, I kept piercing through the floss. It didn't bother me to have to move the floss out of the way, but piercing through out would make it a bear to remove.
Off we went to the local sporting and outdoor goods store. I picked out some fishing line- it was the most fluorescent pink-orange and flexible like normal thread. Some kind of "bonded braid" used in ice fishing. Splurged a little because I liked the texture and color.
Oh, me.
Of course it was a terrible choice. It STAINED.
Seriously! A plastic fishing line! I had pulled out my first line a few times when I noticed bright neon pink-orange pin pricks on my white Aida. WHAAAAAT??
After a small and rather understandable freak out, I pulled out an unused Aida-banded hand towel, ran the offending thread through it a few times until it left marks, then left it to soak. I think it came out... But the hand towel is pale yellow, and ended up being soaked multiple times, then dunked in diluted bleach, then washed in the machine twice... because it had some dark mystery stains which, hmph, have NOT come out all the way.
I've decided to live with the faint remaining stains-after all, it's a towel, it's no good to me if it never gets used.
I couldn't live with the neon pinpricks in my white Aida heirloom, though, so off to another store for bright red stiff plastic monofilament. It works. No stain, easy to stitch around, very cheap ($4 for 1000 yards vs $8.50 for 50 yards of staining), but, as predicted, it's annoying to work with.
This isn't the project for "traditional Celtic with pops of neon", but I've still got the bonded line- I haven't written off that idea.

Coming along.

Admittedly I'm quite a bit further than this but pictures and posting have a bit of a lag time.
I'm filling in the gold bars of the knotwork with just half cross stiches for now... to give me an outline to fill in, then I'll go back and finish the gold. It's the easiest color in the pattern to follow, hopefully it means fewer miscounts.

This project, precious and frustrating... I suppose that's true of a lot of family members, right? Fitting :)