Dunnottar Castle Project

This project will be a gift for my mother. Dunnottar Castle is a ruined castle on the northeastern coast of Scotland. When I was growing up, my dad had the opportunity to move to Scotland for his work, so we lived there for 3 1/2 years. Dunnotar Castle was about 30 minutes away from where we lived, and we frequently visited it. Whenever any family or friends came to visit us we would take them there. It quickly became my mom's favorite spot. So I found a great picture of the castle, and sent it in to a website to have it turned into a cross stitch pattern. Here is the original photo:

The pattern is 308w x 196h (60,368 total stitches) and contains 150 colors. I chose to stitch this on 36 count Antique White linen, 2 threads over 2, and am using DMC threads. I used a water-soluable fabric pen to grid the fabric prior to stitching since this is such a large project. I started this in January 2010 - I have a feeling this one won't be done until next year for my mom's birthday :) So far I am about 18,000 stitches in, and here is my latest progress: