Show and Tell

Because I am taking a short break right now from the confused state of mind the current embroidery project has me in, I decided I'll give you a bit of a view of what I'm talking about.

Here's a picture of what the finished project is supposed to look like.

When I finish the embroidery -if I survive it, I should say -it will then be placed on a piece of cork -stuck to it, glued to it, something like that. And that piece of cork has laminate of some kind around it then too. Not really sure as yet exactly how to process the finished product of the embroidery work to the cork piece but I'll cross that bridge when I eventually get there. And if I can't make heads or tails of the instructions -as often happens with me -I'll call my friend, Shirley, and ask her to walk me through the finishing steps.

Here now is a scan I did of the upper portion of the project -the area I am currently working on. The lower half is completed. I scanned this and then enlarged it to print it out, in hopes that seeing the graph in a slightly larger form will enable me to follow the graph a bit easier, make fewer mistakes too in the process.

Well, one can dream, ya know!

I think probably should have scanned the graph -in sections -and enlarged each section then too and maybe, just maybe, it would have made the following of the color codes on the graph a tad bit easier on the old eyeballs.

Maybe I wouldn't be running into places now where I have already stitched in a color and now find that some of those places should actually have been done in a totally different color.

No, I'm not going to rip out bunches and bunches of the stitches to correct for that error either. Nope! Not gonna happen as it took me over a week of working on this blasted thing to get to where I am now. I'm hoping that the colors I used won't make it all totally off-balance when I finally finish the darned thing.

When -if -I do get this sucker done, I'll take a picture of it and you can then compare the finished product to the picture of how it is supposed to look and see if those mistakes I've made -the ones I haven't corrected (I did rip some stitches out and lost a good bit of stitching time last night doing that -just to let you know I am not ALL that lazy, just sort of.) makes all that big a difference overall.

When I get the stuff I ordered the other day, in which I purchased two more small counted cross stitch projects, I'm going to take the chart and scan it, enlarge it then too, and try finding marker pencils/crayons in Maya's box of crayons (a huge, oversized shoe box that is filled with a kazillion crayons and markers, to do my own form of color coding rather than just depending on remembering what symbol on the chart stands for what color of floss I should be using.

I'm hoping that will make working on stuff like this a bit easier on my eyes, on my nerves too.

But one thing for sure, when I'm trying to follow these graphs, changing colors, etc., I think I'll wait to do this stuff more when two certain little kids are asleep!

Try concentrating on following a confusing graph (well it is to me anyway), making sure you have the right color going into the right stitch spot and all the while you are doing that, there is a three-year-old running back and forth across the room with a footstep that is so strong that it causes the floor to seem to shake a bit. Then, add to that a certain five-year-old who is back to playing the darned "Twenty Questions" game today only this time it centers on spelling certain words so rather than just give her the letter she is looking for, we try to make her "sound it out" which she frequently can do fairly well. But then, that also creates more questions for her silly question game then too!

Here's the graph of the project now too.


However, I just learned that I might actually get a little bit of peace and quiet here sometime in the near -very near -future, like this afternoon. It seems older daughter, Aunt Carrie, is coming up and is going to take Miss Maya -the verbal -very verbal -noisebox to her house to spend the night.

Hmmm. Mandy and I had to chuckle over this deal because Carrie's fiance tends to be a bit obsessive compulsive, speechwise, along with being more than a bit anal too about keeping everything in their house totally neat and tidy.

He may realize by tomorrow when Miss Maya returns home that he got just a slight dose of his own medicine as Maya will totally shower him with question after question after question and she also very much enjoys pulling out as many toys as possible, strewing them across the floor too, and then, very much dislikes -often refuses quite adamantly too -to pick them up.

Frustration, I'm sure, will abound!