Loveday crewelwork piece is begun!

I woke up early last weekend to frame up the linen for the Loveday crewelwork piece from Nicola Jarvis. I was so excited! Whenever I am beginning a new piece I have mixed feelings: I know it will take a while to frame it up and what I really want to do is get stitching, so I'm impatient. On the other hand, I enjoy being able to do every step of the process so, even though it does take a while, I like framing up a new piece.The background of the fabric for the Loveday piece is dyed a beautiful robin's egg blue and the areas to be stitched are left the natural color. This will be the first time in a while that I've stitched something on a coloured fabric and I'm already anticipating how pretty each colour will look next to the blue background as I work the piece! You can see all the colors that will be used in the piece - won't it be beautiful?!The piece itself is quite large - the fabric measures about 22" x 28" - I admit I didn't measure the length before I put it onto the frame but it's long enough that I had to roll the fabric around the top of the frame so it would fit. This was new for me - I hadn't rolled fabric around the top of the frame before although I knew it could be done. It worked a treat!I began with the tree trunk/stem. All of it is worked in stem stitch - fortunately one of my favourite stitches as I'll be doing a LOT of it! The brown shades look so rich next to the blue background don't they?These are the first stitches into the fabric! I wonder how many hours it will take? It's a large piece but some of the bits are very quick to stitch. Any guesses as to when I'll be finished?