The Breaking Point

I thought it might be a good idea for me to explain what finally caused 9 nights of stitching, unstitching, & restitching to go from a little bit beyond this,

to this.

If you have read my posts chronicling my stitching of this design,

January 23

January 24

January 27

January 29

then you know I was standing at a crossroads when I discovered that I had missed stitching an entire row of stitches making up the snowman's body.  Because this error caused the reindeer's antlers to be out of place, I decided to unstitch the snowman & restitch him.  This occurred the evening of January 30.  Here's what happened last night ... the evening of January 31.

1.   Feeling proud of myself for not giving up on this design, I next stitched the reindeer's antlers after which I noticed that I did not quite get the stitches to meet in one area. How that happened is beyond me, but it happened, & I dutifully picked out all the antler stitches & stitched the antlers once again, this time with success.  

2.   The reindeer needed a colonial knot eye. I made the eye but I really wasn't thrilled with it.  However, I decided to leave it as it was as I moved forward with the design.  My thoughts were that I would continue with all the other stitching & if the eye still did not look good to me when that was finished, I would simply redo it.

3.   I next stitched the railings alongside the house.  This was accomplished relatively easily with just one restitch when I discovered upon making the first vertical rail on the left side that I had positioned one of the horizontal rails incorrectly.  An easy fix, & I thought the finished stitching of both rails looked quite nice.

4.   There was a particular reason that caused me to purchase this chart.  It was not the snowman, nor was it the general look of the design itself.  What prompted me to purchase this chart was the inclusion of the 2 cows in front of the house.  In the past I had a love affair with cows.  I had cow things everywhere.  I still have a soft spot for cows & I thought how wonderful it was to have these 2 little cows in this design! Imagine my disappointment when I discovered they were sheep ... & not simple cross stitched sheep, mind you.  No, they were sheep made with upteen colonial knots ... that hellish contribution to the stitching world from satan himself.  However, by this time I felt rather feisty & decided to give them a go.  I made several attempts knotting the sheep on the right until I got the knots to look sort of nice all bunched together. (There must be a secret to bunching up knots but I don't give a care what it might be because I am never going to try to bunch them again.) I actually completed knotting that first sheep & it sort of looked okay, but I wasn't sure.  Also, I made a knot or two before the last one which looked rather wonky.  I wasn't happy with this but was it worth cutting out all the other knots & starting again?  I tried to fix it by sort of pulling it down into the mass of other knots & it looked a little better, but not much.  Like the reindeer's eye, I decided that I would decide what to do about it if it was still bothering me after I completed the rest of the stitching.  I then moved on to knotting sheep #2.

5.  The knotting of sheep #2 was not going well at all.  Sometimes the knots looked okay, sometimes not, but no matter how many times I tried knotting that sheep, it looked bad.  It was at this point that I decided it was time to give up on having knotted sheep. I cut out the knots made on sheep #2 & then went back to sheep #1 & cut out those knots as well.  I decided I would just stitch the sheep with cross stitches & try to get them to look more like cows which, as already stated above, I thought they were in the first place.

6.  I cross stitched the cow on the left, added the legs & then the ears.  Now here's a pet peeve of mine.  Okay, one of my pet peeves.  Why do designers want you to make a half cross stitch on top of an already completed cross stitch?  It always splits the 2 threads of the top of the cross in two, & sometimes the bottom 2 threads as well, & it looks really sloppy & stupid.  This is how  the designer of this chart designed the placement of the sheeps' (now cows') ears. After trying a time or two to follow the designer's ear stitch placement, even though I knew what the outcome would be, I adjusted the placement of the ears but they still did not look good.  In fact, after completing the ears on the cow on the left, its head look more like the head of an elephant with a skinny ear pointing up at the top & a skinny trunk hanging down.  Once again I thought "maybe this will grow on me" & I decided to start stitching cow #2.  

7.   As I began stitching cow #2, I thought maybe these 2 critters would look more cow like if I stitched a tail on them.  At this point I had stitched the top row of cross stitches on this cow & I decided to stitch her ears right away rather than waiting to add them when I was done stitching her body as I had done with cow #1.  However, I could not for the life of me get this cow's bottom ear to lay nicely.  

It was at this point that an immense loathing of this design sprang up in me.  Initially I thought it was a nice design, even when I discovered the cows were sheep & even when I discovered the designer had included well over 70 colonial knots.  But at this point in time ... after 9 nights of stitching, unstitching, & restitching ... I knew I would never want to look at this design again, even if I were to complete it to my satisfaction.  I sat there in my recliner, stitching in hand, grabbed my scissors, & did this.

However, it wasn't enough ... it wasn't enough at all ... &, well, you know the rest.  

I think I may have stitching PTSD after this experience.  I have a file full of HE designs but I fear I may never be able to stitch any of them.  The joy of stitching anything has actually escaped me for the moment.  I'm sure I'll stitch again.  However, I will take a very careful look at any charts I have, & if this, or any other designer, includes these stupid half cross stitches on top of already completed cross stitches, or more than a few colonial knots, that chart will immediately go in my sale/trade pile.