I have stitched two more ornaments , and started a third. I still have some beads to add, as well as the finishing into ornaments. They will be Christmas gifts for three delightful Irish-Aussie sisters, children of one of my sister's friends.
And the bad news. The moral here is 'pride goeth before a fall'. I am talking of my progress on HAED Christmas Dreams (chart, fabric, and most of the floss bought with birthday money). I was steaming ahead on Christmas Dreams, till disaster struck. Here is the story:
This is where I was last month. Row 2 finished (12 pages complete).
I had met my stitching target for the year, but decided to keep stitching. By the first week of this month I had almost 15 pages completed, and was feeling very pleased with myself.
And then I noticed that the top of page 3 wasn't matching the bottom of page 2. Major panic, and an hour of counting stitches, and checking charts, and some questionable language and hair pulling. Then the penny dropped - I had repeated the last three stitches on each page in the third row of pages - so I was now 6 stitches out - and it did matter! In my defense, I will point out that because I am stitching sideways, the shaded area on each page, indicating the repeated stitches, didn't coincide with the actual stitches repeated. But I got it right when stitching the first 2 rows of charts - so why would I then forget when stitching row 3! (Hint: advancing age and receding memory.) So, for the past 2 weeks, I have been unpicking my work, Very chastened. I still have about 1/6 of a page to go.
Today it looks like this:
You can see the unpicked area (it looks dirty). When it is all unpicked, I will have just the first 30 rows on page 3 stitched (the first page being a partial page). So, in the end some progress - but not reflective of my stitching (+ unpicking) time, or the angst it caused me! I am afraid this is the final appearance of Christmas Dreams for this year. He is going upstairs for a rest until 2017 - just as soon as I have gone through all the chart pages, and cut off the 'repeated' rows - to make sure that I can't make the same mistake next year.
I hope everyone else had a less stressful stitching time in the past month! And if you have any hints for cleaning up the unpicked area, please pass them on to me.
3 comments:
Oh how awful. I am currently working on a huge project also with no major mistakes so far. Since this is my first truly large project I am really fearful of having to pick out stitches. I really feel for you. The ornaments are really pretty. Good luck getting back on track.
Firstly, thank for taking part in GG this month with your lovely ornies.
Secondly - OUCH! I can really feel your pain, you were doing so well with this design too.
Page overlaps can be very tricky. I made a minor mistake on my Little Snap Dragon but luckily it was just his tail and should be easily fixed.
o no, how awful to pick out all that! I would not worry about the dirty area since it will be re-covered. If it really bothers you though, I have used painters tape to remove the omnipresent cat hairs from my stitching; perhaps it would work for the fuzzies?
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