Vintage Crewel Kit: Squirrel 5

Ugh. This guy. Driving me nuts. The tail was going to be a good time, but right off the bat it was giving me grief. The directions said to fill in the tail in stem stitches, but the photo on the box showed long and short stitches:

Going around the curves was harder than anticipated, so after tearing the whole thing out, drawing directional guides with pencil helped tremendously.

The brown section was much easier to stitch, although I'm not sure that these are technically "long and short" stitches. The outer edge is lined in stem stitches:

There's also a line of grey stitches along the cream section, but it's barely visible. I didn't follow the lines closely, and I'm not going to lose sleep over that.

In the next thrilling installment, his tail will be gloriously full and luxurious. Which is important, because without the tail, he'd be a rat.