Fighting Evil by Moonlight

This week I'm on break from my thesis (since I can't be expected to work if I don't know what everyone hates about it!) so I've started my Sailor Moon sampler.  From cross stitching the brooch on a piece of scrap fabric, I've learned that backstitching around the circle looks great, but that trying to backstitch the crescent moon is a terrible idea.

Anyway, I figured the top of my sampler needed a picture of Sailor Moon, so I grabbed this sprite from Sailor Moon Another Story which is probably the closest possible pixel image of Sailor Moon's "I'll punish you!" pose.

This is about 2-3 nights of cross stitching, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  I need to figure out some backstitching on her left hand, even though it's probably too late to make that crazy hand thing (or feasible at this size).  Looking at it now, I should probably do a backstitch outline around the bow.  I'm still undecided about doing the lines on the pigtails--I don't know if it'll add some dimension (the way the bangs turned out) or if it'll just be noisy.  I'm also going to try to put some "pleats" on the skirt.

Yes, I have included the crescent moon on the boot.  It's basically invisible, but it's there.  Because I care about details like Sailor Moon cares about eating cake.