Honestly I've never gridded before so can't help you there, but hopefully someone has some tips! Looks like a much less involved pattern this time round, that must be a nice break. My guess is some kind of llama pattern?

Anyway, I'm breaking with tradition today. No cross stitch whatever from me all week. BUT, in the spirit of Halloween I decided to face my great crafting fear, and am trying my first ever hand embroidery piece!

So far it's a bit wonky and also my fingers really hurt, but I'm very proud of sticking with it! This is for a video so I'm not posting it anywhere else cos it's secret. But you won't tell anyone, right? 🤫

Suggestions for accurate gridding:

If you have access to a 3d printer, you can print these gridding rulers, which have made my life way easier since I discovered them.

If you don't have access to a 3d printer, you could cut a small scrap of aida in the same count as your working fabric and essentially create a ruler for yourself. You'd still have to manually count out and mark the ruler, but you'd only have to do it once. Then you can just transfer the lines to your working fabric each time you start a new project.

Note that there is some variance in sizing, stretchiness, and whatnot between fabrics though, even if they're all the same count. So you may still want to do a quick double check against the ruler before gridding the entire fabric.