I Wish I Drank

Although alcohol does not make a person's problems go away & in fact sometimes creates more, I sure do wish I had a bottle of something right now.

As I described in my last post, I had a bit of a problem with HE's Along for the Ride.  I had placed 2 stitches between the snowman's back & the reindeer's tail when there should have been only one.  This made the reindeer longer than it was supposed to be ... a rather wiener dog effect.  I had also missed dropping a stitch before I started the last row of the reindeer where his legs hang down.  This is akin to the Chinese water torture to an OCD person.  Even though no one would've really noticed these errors unless I pointed them out, I knew they were there.  As one thing so often leads to another, these stitching errors in the reindeer threw off my placement of the house & everything else underneath him so I had to fudge the smoke plume coming out of the right chimney to make it line up.  Add to all this the fact that the suggested color of floss for the reindeer & the suggested color of the linen were very similar & I was thinking that I should've stitched the reindeer in a darker shade.  (I was also thinking some thoughts about HE's designing of this ornament but I think it's best for me not to share those thoughts in polite company.)

I decided to put this project aside & work on something else for a while.  I stitched a Stacy Nash bell ornament design which I shared with you in my last post, & then I went on to stitch her SNOW stocking ornament design.  I stitched 2 of them actually since I had enough room for 2 on the piece of linen I had chosen to use.

Okay ... so I stitched the bell & I stitched the 2 stockings, but I couldn't stop thinking about Along for the Ride.  I'm not a "stitch more than one thing at a time" person & I knew I had to break down & work on Along for the Ride if I wanted to give myself any peace.  I took a look at it & considered my options which were (A) leave it as it is & continue on, (B) unstitch the reindeer & stitch him correctly but still have him & the snowman & the moon lined up one row of squares too much to the right, or (C) unstitch the reindeer, the snowman, the moon, & the plume of smoke coming out of the right chimney & make everything line up the way it should be.  It took a lot of strength on my part but I decided I could live with just unstitching the reindeer & restitching him correctly, leaving the snowman, the moon, & the plume as is.  

After unstitching the reindeer I was faced with the similarity between the color of the floss & the color of the linen.  I decided to replace the suggested floss color for the reindeer with one a shade darker.  I then began to stitch & got a few rows in before I decided the darker floss color ... even just one shade darker ... did not look good.  I unstitched again.  Once again I took the floss suggested by the designer & began stitching the reindeer.  

I worked carefully to avoid making any stitching errors.  It seemed the second skein of suggested floss was a tad darker than the first one I had used so the similarity of the reindeer's color & the background fabric was not glaring out at me.  I finished my stitching & I was pleased.  

If you take a close look at the space between the snowman's back & the reindeer's tail here, & then compare it to this area as previously stitched & shown in my last post, you will see that just the one stitch is now there, as it should be, instead of two.

I sat back in my recliner with a look on my face that I'm sure matched that of Mona Lisa.  I felt quite pleased & that all was right with the world as I started to back stitch the reindeer's antlers.  Instead of the black brown (or brown black) suggested by the designer, which seemed too stark in contrast in my opinion, I decided to use a chestnut sort of brown.  You can see it in the above photo.  I began back stitching the antlers but quickly realized that something wasn't right, but what?  I looked & looked & looked some more & there it was.  When I stitched the snowman, I missed stitching a whole line!!!!!  Because of that, the antlers are going to be way off the mark if I leave Frosty as is.  I don't believe this!!!!!  I could've gone ahead & unstitched the snowman & the reindeer & the moon & the plume coming out of the right chimney & stitched them all over again, matching them all up as they should be to the house & everything else below!!!!! Now, after having restitched the reindeer, I have to unstitch Frosty & restitch him & everything is still going to be off by one!!!!!  

Upon discovering this, I felt the urge to do two things.  The first was to grab my scissors & plunge them through the center of the design, scissoring frantically as my maniacal laughter frightened Sophie into hiding.  The second was to fling the Q-Snap, with that design cursed by the devil himself still clamped into it, across the room ... possibly then getting up & jumping up & down on it & then opening the front door & kicking it out into what is a very dark, windy, & rainy night.  It took every ounce of self control I have to not do either of these things.  Instead I just sat there in my recliner, shed a few tears, & wondered if maybe picking my nose & making snot sculptures would be a better crafting choice for me.