Anglo - Saxon Brooch from St Augustine's Abbey Canterbury

We escaped the wrath of Hurricane Ophelia and enjoyed a couple of days up in Tewkesbury . I packed up a bit of 10th century embroidery to relax with in the evening .
 I am stitching the beautiful Anglo-Saxon brooch which is in the museum at St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury . I found the picture of it on the St Louis Community College website , an education site , who in turn got it from the St Augustine's Abbey museum . If I am not allowed to use this pic , let me know and I will remove it .

This Anglo - Saxon brooch has glass inlays , at first sight I saw it as being bold primary colours of blue , white , red , green and yellow....and pull these colours from my mighty hoard of wool ...but as I look closer I see many more subtle shades within it and end up with many more little bundles of crewel wool in my basket .

I begin by stem and crewel stitching , a mixture of both , around all of the design lines....I,m not all that happy about this dark brown....it might not work..but let's see how it goes .
 I try to always begin and finish on the front , so it is kept tidy with no knots or bumps on the reverse . ...if you can do this , then that is brilliant...keep on perfecting it !
......but as a beginner ,  I always did tie a knot and make a terrible mess on the back and if thats where you're at and you are having fun , then I say , you should just carry on having  fun  ! Knots , tangled threads, loops and all !
Dont worry about it !
 Dont block your beautiful imagination and fun ..the reverse wont be seen by anyone when you,ve finished it . I know there will be people who will disagree with me , but I think you should let your creative imagination flow and you can learn to perfect it later on , especially if you are a very young person .

      Here I am snipping the thread that I have woven through the stitches on the front .
                                   I cant wait to start throwing in some colours .

           Here is the reverse , not too bad , but there are a lot more stitches to come .
 I,m home in Cornwall again now ....they had a lot of rain here in Mullion , but the wind wasn't too bad . We didn't have any trees down and my greenhouse is still standing . Everyone is telling me how awesome the waves were !  I love to see the sea when it's wild  ! (from a safe distance)
   However ..there's more stormy weather coming in on Saturday ....and it is feeling colder now too ....sigh... haul in another basket full of split logs for the fire .
 I had my flu jab ....ouch !   It's Australian Flu this time ... it's going to be really bad they say .