…black and white…

Sewalongs, stitchalongs, block of the month, crochetalongs, heck, even a good old-fashioned blogalong…none of these are my strong point. (Thank you Captain Obvious, I can hear all my long time readers say, this is not new information). With a move pending, and with it, a rapid downsize of my craft room, when a 2020 stitchalong was proposed, I resisted the lure. For once in my life, I acknowledged my limitations and convinced myself that my lack of follow-through-ability should win over my famously non-existent self-control, and I declined to join in.

This resolve lasted a personal best of 12 days before I started to crack. Once the first crack appeared, thought, I went from “I could be convinced to join you” to “where do I find the pattern?” inside of 10 minutes, and “Do I have any Aida that I haven’t packed” another 14 minutes later. See? I told you self-control is a foreign concept around here.

The project in question? A 52 week blackwork stitchalong by Peppermint Purple. A trip to BigW had me hooked up with some Aida, and before long I had it cut to size and ready to stitch…but box packing called. Specifically, book box packing. And the rest of the craft room. I thought cleaning the craft room was the worst job in the world, but I was wrong. Packing up the craft room and trying to work out what to store and what to keep out is the worst job in the world. In between all that, along with day to day life and school holiday activities for the kids, there was very few opportunities to actually sit and stitch.

By the end of January, life was back to normal, and it was stitching time. For the first row, I did the right thing and added the black box borders as I went, but borders are one of my least favourite embroidery tasks, so I decided I would do them at the end. A plan that worked well right up until the square under the first full width row, when I mucked up the number of spaces I needed to leave. In frustration, I left the next weeks block aside, while I worked on my other cross-stitches. Then in the way of these things, the following week got ignored as well, and another, until I was 10 weeks behind and had all my other cross-stitches done, and needed a school table project.

A block a day, and within three weeks I was all caught up, including the borders…at which point I realised I’d made a mistake bigger than a row’s worth of miscounting a single block. I had, my friends, managed to MISCUT MY FABRIC. And not in a good way. I was out of space by an entire row. One of my more spectacular fails. 

For now, I’m ignoring the problem. I’ll decide on a plan of attack at the end once I can see the total effect. I’ll either leave it as is and pretend I can’t see it, or I will unpick the top row, to maintain vertical symmetry. That can be December’s problem. For now, I’m just pottering along, filling in a box each week, and enjoying the rainbow slowly appearing.