Splints

It's a bit weird that I strain my thumb joint working on something that is supposed to be helping my thumb joint, I know. Actually, however, it started to feel a bit better most of the time and I took enough breaks to not make it any worse. Maybe I'm learning after all, who knows?

I'm talking about the splints I got. I don't like wearing them, but if I have to wear them at night, they might as well look nice ... because who's asleep at night. Maybe it's just the feeling they are different.
It's funny, I chose black ones because they are the least flashy and then I suddenly decide they need some color, a lot of it.

I just learned fly stitch, but you can't see much of it here as I had so many shorter floss leftovers and couldn't stop myself. I wish I could grow flowers like that for real 😉
At the time I hadn't planned to embroider the strap as well or I would have tried to make it match a bit better.
The length of the strap obviously asked for some kind of vines or rambling roses, though, (even if they are rambling sideways), and still being obsessed with French knots and having acquainted myself with the feather stitch as well, the roses sounded perfect.
These actually used up all the colorful leftovers I had so far - you have to keep in mind I only just began this journey quite recently - and thus my Swabian heart was very happy 😂

I definitely wanted something different for the second splint, though, and since the splints are not specifically for the right and left hand, the strap on the right hand is mostly on my palm, so I had to come up with something that would work with the other side. Of course I can still embroider the second side of each splint if I should ever feel the urge for it.

Are you surprised that my mind went to cats right away? It's possible that des Dekan's funny little bunny feet were an additional inspiration.

What do we love about cat feet? Beans!

It was a good thing that I gave the one on the left a few black spots because that way it wasn't a problem to give it two more - after poking my finger with the needle for the third time without noticing before I had already bled on the paw!
Can you believe I actually wondered why there were two different pinks (the red had lightened to a dark pink on the floss) on the paw? 😂

Then I needed something for the part of the strap that's showing - another cat of course!
That one was really tough to do, especially the parts where I stitched over stitches over difficult background, so she's by no means perfect, but it was good practice and I think she's still rather cute.
If you wonder why the eyes are a bit shifty, sigh, what can I say - more blood I had to hide, but this time I pretty much ran out of the dark grey floss of which I only had half the usual length. I like to think kitty is winking at me.

I'll let you know if I ever do something to the other sides, but I have to admit that it was tough as this isn't exactly an easy surface to embroider onto, so I don't see myself doing it very soon if at all. There were all the little black bits sticking up, some parts were padded too thickly to even get through at all, some were a bit hard to get to or I could only get through using pliers.
Also there are so many other things to do!