Finishing vs. French Knots

I don't know which is worse ... Finishing, or French knots.  Both F words.  No surprise there.  

Last night I attempted to make 2 little colonial knots on my LHN Snow in Love ornament.  There are a total of 4 knots needed ... eyes for Mr. & Mrs. Snowman.  The designer suggests making French knots but you know I ain't gonna go there.  I've had dumb luck a time or two in the past with a random colonial knot so thought I'd give that a try.  I don't know ... maybe I was too sugared up from the big piece of cake I had after dinner or the treat plate of Milano cookies, flying saucers & mini gummy bears that followed.  Whatever the reason, disaster ensued.  As I performed my third eye-ectomy on Mrs. Snowman I decided that perhaps the night was cursed & I would have success giving sight to Bart & Beulah in the light of the following day (today).

I woke up & was greeted by a lovely morning. Cool, gray, overcast, windy ... one of those gifts from heaven you're presented with every now & then.  I came out of the bedroom, passed by my stitching table, saw Bart & Beulah & thought "They can't see me. They don't know I'm here."  I quietly made my way to the kitchen, made a cup of tea & went off to visit blog land.  After a while I took care of a few bits of housework, made a sandwich, watched an old Donna Reed show on DVD, & then felt the urge to go upstairs & do some finishing.  This is not normal for me.  I asked John to feel my forehead to see if I had a temperature.  I appeared to be fine.  I then dilly-dallied around for a while thinking the feeling would go away.  It didn't.  Therefore, filled with rare confidence & anticipation, I went upstairs to make a dent in the 52-plus. 

I began with a small ornament.  In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have attempted anything even remotely creative. As already stated, it was small.  I decided that because of its size, it would get lost in the branches of a Christmas tree, & I thought that enlarging it a bit by sewing a complimentary fabric border around the design was a good idea.  A good idea maybe if you don't have the finishing skills of a baboon!!!  The border itself didn't end up looking too bad but I couldn't leave well enough alone.  Before I knew it, I had cut a piece of the same complimentary fabric for the back & sewed the edges together to make it into a little pillow type ornament.   Nothing fancy, just a simple pillow finish.  I mean honestly, how could I mess it up?  Let's just say it's a good thing Bart & Beulah can't see the carnage.  

For some reason I kept on going.  Did I actually think I was going to improve?!?!?  I don't know what I was thinking.  I should've went downstairs, served myself up another treat plate & viewed another day in the idyllic life of Donna Stone, but instead I spent time finishing a prim pinkeep, "prim" being the key word.  If I messed it up, people would think I wanted it to look that way.  I decided to experiment.  I had mistakenly stitched 8 of this design instead of 4.  I wasn't keen on ruining anything but figured I wouldn't need to call the suicide hotline if I caused irreparable damage to one or two of them.  I won't go into all the different finishing techniques I tried on these 2 pinkeeps but let's just say I've created a new scheme in decorating ... beyond primitive.   

Nothing quite takes the wind out of your sails like spending a couple hours trying to finish 2 simple pinkeeps & an ornament & ending up with pinkeep/ornament Armageddon. 

"Oh no!  Shirlee's trying to finish her 

cross stitch projects again!"