What would be wrong with a blue snowman?

This is the question I asked myself earlier tonight as I hung up the phone after talking with Selma, the staff counselor who answered my call when I dialed the suicide prevention hotline.  As you may have already guessed I dialed their number after having another visit with Frosty.

I was sure Frosty had learned his lesson after me giving him the silent treatment for a few days.  I have had other things on my mind this week which for some reason prevented me from stitching.  Okay, my FOFS (Fear of Frosty Syndrome) is what prevented me.  However, tonight I decided to be brave & meet with him again.

I have, of course, been blaming Frosty for my inability to happily stitch him.  I told myself it was Frosty's fault that my white threads weren't full & lustrous like the colored threads but instead thin as strands of hair.  It was Frosty's fault when these threads knotted & twisted.  It was Frosty's fault when I began my stitching in the wrong place & had to go back & rip it all out.  It was Frosty's fault when I saw colors on the white threads that shouldn't be there.

The colors on the white threads especially bothered me.  At first I thought I was picking up floss lint from Frosty's green scarf which I had decided to stitch before starting the body.  I lost count of how many times I went back & took out rows of stitching, certain that the green shading I was seeing mixed in with my white floss was appearing from my white floss brushing against the green floss, picking up green floss lint as it did & carrying it through my white stitches.  After several rips & restarts I decided to rip out the green floss & begin the body area with nothing but the white.  After two attempts at this & still seeing that green hue amongst the white threads I decided that green floss lint must be hiding in the holes of the linen & adhering to the white threads ... & here's where I felt I was really on to something!  I took a piece of tape & gently tapped around the areas where the green floss had been prior to my taking it out.  Loading my needle with virgin white floss I then began to stitch Frosty's body anew but then wait ... what did I see?  You guessed it ... green shading in the white stitches.  Rip-rip-rip ... tape-tape-tape ... begin again & then ARGH!!!  Green shading in the white stitches again & again & again!!!

Now ... Frosty's head gave me no trouble whatsoever.  I was happy with it my first time stitching it.  No odd color shading amongst the white fibers.  Frosty's head is, well, white as snow!  I then looked at the white floss itself.  It's what the designer calls for ... GAST Shaker White.  The word "shaker" got my attention & I did some research, & in my research I discovered that the English word "shaker" is taken from the Latin word "shaker" which, interesting enough, means to shake colored paint dust over white embroidery floss in order to have it show colors that shouldn't be there.  Okay ... I didn't really find that information in my research but I bet it's true nonetheless!  What other possible explanation can there be?  GAST floss is a 6-ply floss which has been precut into 36" lengths.  Each card of floss consists of 5 of these lengths.  Apparently the floss I used for Frosty's head ... & the snowflakes as well ... must have somehow been placed on my card before being shaken upon.

So we now return to my original question ... what would be wrong with a blue snowman?  There can be blue snow ... or what appears to our eyes to be blue snow ... because of the snow reflecting more of the blue light from the sun's white light.  So again I ask ... what would be wrong with a blue snowman?  Or a brown one for that matter ... a primitive looking snow dude!  A snowman could be yellow after being visited by a pack of dogs but I don't think I'd want to stitch that picture.  Why not a gray snowman?  When I was a little girl growing up in Pittsburgh in the late 50s/early 60s ... long before the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency ... we had black snow from time to time.  I think it had something to do with the pollution from the multitude of steel mills mixing with those big, fat, fluffy flakes of Prozac that I love so much & thus we ended up with black snow.  I don't know this for a fact but it sounds plausible to me & it could certainly back up my decision to stitch a black snowman.

I have decided to continue stitching Frosty tomorrow even though his white body is going to have this funky green hue here & there & people are going to think I'm a pathetic stitcher who doesn't know diddly squat about keeping colored floss fibers out of white floss.  Ah well ... we'll know the truth, won't we   : )