Having decided to use the Gumnut stranded silk for cross stitch designs, I found I kept thinking of using it for Hardanger too, if only as an experiment. Gumnut used to do variegated shades as well (they are still on their site, but not made at the moment, I believe) and in my stash I have a perle in Dark Garnet and a stranded silk in Medium Garnet. I decided on a 36ct Edinburgh linen to get enough coverage in the Kloster blocks, and set out to stitch my small experiment motif.
It was certainly interesting to try – the unevenness of the linen made the coverage a bit uneven as well, and this was not helped by the fact that I only noticed some of the perle thread had stripped (and so I was stitching with a thinner thread) when I was half-way through. Even so, coverage looked OK when all the Kloster blocks had been stitched. But then came the time to cut.
Cutting 36ct linen, even using squissors, is a daunting task, and poking the cut ends in proved to be quite tricky too, but eventually I got it done (though they kept poking back out again). I then decided to duplicate the experiment on 36ct Fabric Flair evenweave, a cotton/modal mix and much more regular; also a bit more open, so it was just that little bit easier to cut. I might use this combination, of #8 perle and stranded silk or cotton on 36ct fabric, again some time, but I must remember to do the cutting by daylight! (You can click on the thumbnails for more detailed pictures.)

To give you an idea of the size, here is a picture of one of the 36ct experiments side by side with the same motif on my usual 25ct: