Shazam!

I betcha you didn’t believe me when I said I was working to overcome a very serious desire to lay down the stitching and maybe let it drift into obscurity for a while.  I really want to take a break from this.  I got a bunch of new books, patterns, and supplies over Christmas and they are calling the siren song of destruction—destruction of the will to finish.  And I know what will happen if I put it down.  I think we all know what will happen if I put it down.  Should I let it rest for a while (a cooling off period if you will), it would likely join the ranks of the teddy bear (which need limbs knitted), the baby blanket (only 8 more rows required to complete, 8!), and a host of few other projects that are getting a bit long in the tooth. 

But I’m not going to lie.  I found an adorable cross stitch growth chart.  And I’m going to make it, as soon as I buy it, which I’m trying to hold off doing, and I might be able to hold out--until at least this afternoon.  

Dipping a toe into 2012

It's 2012, has been for nearly 24 hours.  I thought about resolution post but was bored by the concept before I even typed the first word.  So instead I'll give you a hint at what I didn't do for the last week.  Stitch.  I set Vi's stocking down Christmas Eve with a slightly white chocolate flavored taste of defeat in my mouth.  I thought I was going to make it until the evil cold knocked me flat.  No stitching for 3 days.  I don't think I have to tell you that was a game changer killer.  Let's face it, this project and I were barely on speaking terms to start with.  The sting of failure didn't help and well, we need some time apart.  But I've picked it back up.  I wouldn't say we're reconciling, but we're tolerating each other--for the kid's sake.

Thwarted

You win this round, Time.  But next year...game on.

Eat your heart out Stephen Hawking

I stitched over the weekend.  I stitched a lot over the weekend, maybe to the point where one eye was twitching slightly and Shawn started using that tone of voice.  The soothing one you use on crazy irrational people.  The one that by the way husbands of crafters at Christmas time all over the world, tends to incite aforementioned crafter to even more fury and crazed eye twitching.  If the soothing tone is accompanied by suggestions that it would be ok if such handcrafted acts of love were not completed on time and that (brace yourselves) a substitute stand in of a store bought (insert crafted item here) were to be purchased it would be ok, then may God have mercy on your soul because your crafter will likely rise up and smite you.  Christmas is not the time for the bitter gall of failure.  Christmas is the time for hope.  Hope that I will master the time continuum and worm holes and all that.  That's right.  It's not going to be Stephen Hawking or some such smarty pants physicists that masters that stuff.  It's going to be a crafter with a Christmas deadline.

Yeah, it's totally going to be fine.

I have been stitching in a caffeine induced frenzy.  Every night, after Vi goes to bed, I have about 1 hour of free time before I fall asleep on the couch with my mouth hanging open go to bed.  So I stitch.  I also stitched in the car on the way to Oak Ridge for Thanksgiving (which was lovely.  Vi got to meet her great-grandmother for whom she is named for the very first time) and on the way back.  I was didn’t think I could make the cross stitch in the car thing work being that cross stitch is so pattern intensive and thread heavy.  It certainly isn’t knitting portable where you can memorize a 16 row repeat in no time and as long as you have a fresh ball, it is have needles will travel.  This is where I’m at.  

This is what completed will look like.  I am totally screwed can totally do this.

Parenting crisis? Crafting crisis?

 

It is less than 6 weeks until Christmas.  This is Vi's stocking. I think I might hate it.  The thread is wretched.  Literally, no sooner than I thread the needle, the thread twists and kinks into a knot.  And it does that over and over.  I spend more time unknotting and when that isn't possible, clipping, running the tail end under, rethreading, and securing the new tail.  It is of the devil, I'm sure of it. 

Zzzzzzz

I've been working in fits and starts on Vi's stocking.  5 stitches in the evening before I pass out on the couch and commence to drooling on myself and getting a crick in my neck, is about all I can manage these nights.  I've made some progress.  You can at least tell what I'm working on.

Whoo-hoo! Something new!

With 2 projects completed and off to the frame shop (which might be my new profession after I saw how much it was going to cost me), I wasted no time queuing up another project for Vi.  I picked Dimensions Cute Carolers Stocking.  It's a kit, which I hate, but there really aren't any choices for stocking that aren't kits.  As soon as I ripped into the packaging I was delighted to see that the colors were presorted and labeled.  That's awesome.  As anyone who has ever sorted cross stitch kit thread has experienced, thread sorting is like trying to identify cafeteria mystery meat. ( Is this the expresso brown thread or the very dark brown thread?)  It's a major pain.  So I happily wrapped the presorted thread onto my floss bobbins in record time.  That was the plus side.  But I quickly racked up some major cons to this kit.  First of all, the thread is all proprietary--so my design will match the original artwork as closely as possible the packaging says.  Um, let's call this what it is-- BULL.  They don't want you to be able to reuse the design without rebuying the kit.  And that kind of crap makes me want to march myself to the craft store, park it in the DMC thread aisle, and sit there comparing colors until I can identify substitutes for everything (which I will do and post results for later).  I paid $20 for this kit and let's be honest, the thread and fabric aren't even $5 of that.  So don't deny me the ability to reuse the pattern.  I mean I'm not doing it for profit, so I should be able to stitch it as many times as I want.  :P  Secondly, the actual pattern is tiny.  I'm not old and I don't need glasses.  But I'm probably going to have to take this and blow up the pattern to be able to read it.  Thirdly, the legend is not printed next to the pattern.  Instead it is on the back of one side of the pattern.  The back?  Do these people use patterns?  Every time I'm ready to change thread colors I have to hold my place marker in place and flip the pattern over to figure out what comes next.  That's a lot flipping when there are as many color changes as are in this design.  

F I N A L L Y!

Right off finish-

And then there is this one.  I had this 90% completed for a friend but ended up giving her something else.  I think her kid was nearing the 1 year mark.  So bonus for me!  It matches Vi's nursery perfectly.

So with some trepidation (I always think this will be the time that the project disintegrates when it hits the water), I put them in warm soapy water.

 And ironed them dry-

And now they are ready for framing!

Weekend Update

1.  Last week, we came to a disturbing realization that we were out of jelly.  So while Shawn watched Vi, I dusted off the supplies and got to work.  Voila!

 8 cups of plum jelly.  Of course 8 cups of jelly won't last very long, so I'm planning a batch of strawberry jam as soon as I get a chance.

2.  I finished picking the green beans this weekend and got another 4 1/2 pints put away, bringing me to 10 pints thus far.  

3.  I'm just a few good stitching days away from being to the back stitching on the cross-stitch, which is good since Vi's stocking came in and needs to be started.