And there was much rejoicing

I managed to get the Vanilla thread on the Cream background band stitched on Virgin Queen.

It was a beast to stitch. And you can barely see it, even in person.

Oh, and I finished the rest of this panel as well.

Usually, when I'm stitching a double running pattern, I figure out where the border stitches are and start working across them. When I come to a place where the inner bits of the design intersect, I meander off and do those parts of the motif, then return to the border stitches and go along until the next intersection.

On this pattern, that was not working. I was so totally lost I would have needed pebbles or bread crumbs or something to get me back to where I was supposed to be.

So, I did all the border stitches along the bottom border, both outbound and return trip. Then I went all the way across the top border and, on the return trip, filled in the squiggly bits in the middle. That way I had guidelines on both top and bottom as reference points.

That worked.

And this is not the section that Betsy says is the hardest to do in double running.

I'm not sure if this is going to build new neural pathways or destroy the ones I have.