A Blue and White Rug

In December of  2019, I began stitching one of my blue and white rug patterns.  This one is the Sonja rug and though it comes with several different shades included in the pattern, I wanted to do the blue and white one to eventually go into my Beachfront Mansion that I am in the process of building.  This photo was taken on December 10th about 2 days after I started stitching it.  There are 5 shades of blue and a winter white in this pattern.
As you can see, there is no pencil grid on this pattern either.  I have become confident enough that I don't need the grid anymore.  Although the grid was very useful, I wasn't very pleased having to wash it all out and stretch the rug back into shape.  It was very time consuming and not something I wish to repeat.  This time I only marked the bottom of the rug on the foam core by measuring the distance from the center along the bottom edge and along the sides.  This gave me a rough idea where to start stitching.  I knew I had plenty of room around the sides in case I was a stitch or so of center. 
This rug will be 5" x 7" when it is finished and I have left lots of room for a fringe.  I am stitching it on 40 count silk gauze.