You learn something new every day

I made good progress on Betsy Morgan's Swan Bower set this week:

There are a couple of changes to the original design.

The eggs in the nest that Betsy stitched and charted are sort of a dark green/gray. I asked Dearly Beloved, who is my authority on all things wildlife, if swans have dark eggs. Amazingly, this is one question that he could not answer.

So, Google to the rescue!

It turns out that swans lay eggs in a variety of colors, from whitish to beige-ish to blue to greenish to grayish. There was a photograph of a nest that had mostly whitish eggs, with one that was close to the shade of the thread that Betsy used. However, the caption for the picture said that the egg turned that color after the nest became wet.

I decided my swan parents built their nest close enough to a body of water to be safe but high enough to avoid flooding. Besides, I thought, given the light and airy effect of the stitching, white would look a little better. So my eggs are white.

I also did plain cross stitch instead of long-arm cross on the multicolor bands above and below the woven ribbons. This was not a conscious decision. This was a mistake. Somehow I missed the line in the instructions that told me to work those bands in long-arm cross.  I decided to leave them as they are, since who would ever know?

Other than the people who read my blog, of course.