Days 12 and 13

Day 12, oh Day 12, how I grumbled at myself. I spent most of the evenings available stitching time gridding. And not just ANY gridding, but gridding on a spot of fabric that doesn't have any stitching on it! Oh how foolish I felt. BUT the good thing is, I learned a lesson from it. I won't be doing that again. Yes, I do try to learn from my mistakes. I try to learn from others mistakes too, cuz I know I won't live long enough to make them all myself. :)

So once I discovered my big waste of time, I was pretty deflated and demoralized and figured the best thing I could do was put a few stitches in and put it up for the night, I'd come back to it later when its number came up again. These are my few stitches, at the top of the area that will get stitching. "Ah well, live and learn", as the hubby says.







This is what I got done on the next stitching session. Not too bad, huh? I started at the center where the quilt is located. When I get back to it, I'll try to put some of the blues in, just for a bit of contrast.

I bought this pattern about a million years ago. Ok so I exaggerate, it WAS about 10 years ago though, before I took my long vacation from stitching. I even bought the major colors in the pattern, so I'd have all the same dye lot. I just didn't have the fabric for it, and I couldn't find it. Not really sure I looked very hard for the fabric either. The pattern was quite intimidating to me, but I really loved it. So now that I have been introduced to Mystic Stitch and HAED patterns I am not so intimidated by this one. It doesn't have nearly the amount of confetti as the others and not full coverage of the cloth. It's also got fairly large blocks of color to make it faster.



Day 13 was another evening spent in frustration. I had planned on doing one of my sea otter patterns.

The chart for this looks like it was hand drawn and very small and dark. I have a scanner that is "supposed" to be able to enlarge areas, but I couldn't seem to make it work this night. Oh how I struggled with it. So I tried another one of the sea otter patterns that I have, no pic of it, sorry. The chart for that one also was hand drawn in appearance, but it was larger, and I could actually see it to try it out. Well the fabric I was going to do this one is a 20 count Lugana. I'm NOT a linen stitcher. I have always used Aida and I've never had a problem with tension or stitches laying well. OMG is linen different! Apparently my style of stitching is NOT meant for linen. So I frogged all of what I managed to put in the linen. Bailed on the idea of doing the really detailed version of my sea otter and quit for the night.


Not one to give in and completely give up, on day 16 I had a Day 13 Redux.

I found some hand dyed Aida fabric, from one of my stitchy friends on the 2012 Cross Stitch Crazy Challenge group, and my Endangered Young 'Uns booklet that I bought to work on for a charity quilt, and started again. I didn't do a whole lot due to time constraints, but I did finally give day 13 a proper start.

My friends and family chose 13 in one of my random number requests, so I worked on it again the next night and got a bit more done. So I am FINALLY working on an otter piece for myself. Yay!!









Later this evening, I'll post more progress pics from the bass and treble clefs. Thanks for playing along with me on this journey.