More on Aethelflaed’s border

Aethelflaed’s border continues to make progress.

I’ve reversed the colours of the dog roses relative to William Marshall, making the outer edges of the petals white, with only a hint of pink towards the centre. The rose leaves have been heathered, pale and dark green in the needle together. I may decide they need a bit of the paler green around the edge to make the edges more obvious, but for now I think I’m content with them.

The next thing I wanted to do was to get the crosses in progress. I’m having quandaries about the skeps, and doing the crosses at East and West will give me some thinking time.

I remember with William that leaving the crosses until last left me a bit doubtful about them, and since I learned then that the crosses needed to be filled in, the only question, really, was How?

As I want to bring to mind the several crosses found in the Staffordshire Hoard, and some others of the period, they are obviously going to be gold and garnet – we got that far when I was doing the design work. However, How much detail of chasing (engraving) or embellishment with niello do I want to add? There’s the real gold of the background which is going to alter the balance of the whole piece, so I may need to add more, but for now, a single outline for each shape and a central garnet, and I think I have a reasonable version for my purposes.