Some Vine

I based the vine for my sample on a Douce Bible,

It’s shown here at Plate 25, from Cyril Davenport’s “English Embroidered Bookbindings”, http://www.archive.org/details/englishbookbindings00davenuoft and it (the Bible) was published in 1583

The vinework has been manipulated by me – a section in the middle doubled, with one side of it reflected (reversed) to give me more “nodes” to hang motifs from.
I’ve been working on the vine lately, as a nice simple task to do while I haven’t been feeling well.
I’ve now run out of bits I can do, without encroaching into un-motifed territory, and risking my DMC/silk thread catching on the Lurex.
I was pushing it a bit by doing one side of each of two ovals, which will contain spiral trellis stitch buds.
The Thistle Threads blog was talking about vine width vs width drawn on the ground the other day - http://thistle-threads.com.mytempweb.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/a-gauge-for-the-stitch/
I seem to have had the opposite problem to theirs– even tho I was “keeping within my drawn lines” the vine somehow ended up a bit wider than drawn. Notice how close the blue borage and the pansy are to the vine? They weren’t that close to the drawn vine (and I didn’t go outside the lines, promise!)
The solution is obviously to stay a bit within the vines if I, with my two lines of Heavy Chain Stitch, seen to be a bit close to a motif.
Everything is a bit close together in general, I think. I’ve carried “horror vacuii” a bit too far. They aren’t supposed to touch each other and often motifs/vines are, drat it.
In terms of spacing, the only one I think I’ve got really really right is the googly eyed bug, half way down the left side.
Now – that’s half of the vinework done. The other half is exactly the same, except reflected. 40 or 50 metres of Lurex so far– I’ve lost count.