Seteais
I’ve been preparing the canvas from my Arraiolos kit - stitching up the edges and marking a grid. The graph is a bit odd in that the center of the design isn’t centered in the graph and it’s 8 squares per big block rather than 10.
I could have handled the problem by making a free cross stitch charting program in Konfabulator and recharting it properly, but instead I’m just following the weirdness as-is.
I also took all the wool from the board it came on and put it into skeins. There’s a lot of wool. The directions leave much to be desired - they show only the one horizontal stitch instead of the 4 horizontal varieties, the 4 vertical varieties, the 4 diagonals and the mitering stitch for the corners. Most of them just serve to make the back of the canvas neat, but the diagonal stitch might puzzle a beginner. Fortunately I have the elusive book.