Productivity

As proof that I did some of the work that I was supposed to do last night. Here is some of my test stitching. I'm still not entirely happy with the color combinations, so today I'm playing with them on the computer. Also, DH stole the lamp last night, so there was a limit to what I could do.

I also got a load of laundry done! Amazing!

Now back to my stitching story, since it appears that I have to write it myself. First, for posterity, here is a picture of the first major project I ever stitched. There are three major errors in this project. Do you see them?

1. I started stitching way too close to the top of the fabric. There's about 5 rows from the top of the stitching to the top of the fabric. Someday I'll finish this off as a bellpull, so it is really not that big of a deal. 2. The top plane has at least one incorrect color due to reading the chart wrong. Obviously I wasn't a perfectionist in middle school, so I didn't fix it. 3. I was still learning when I started stitching this, so there are a few (a very few) stitches where the top part of the stitch goes the wrong way. But you can't see that in this picture.

Here is the first original design I ever did. The lettering is taken from a book of alphabets, but I charted the constellations from an astronomy book. This won a prize at the state Latin Convention, but I can't remember if it placed at the National Convention.

Ok, stitch snobs, quick avert your eyes before looking at the following picture. Everyone else, just remember that I was probably in eigth grade when I did the following and didn't know any better.

On the other hand, it has held up remarkably well as a finishing job - there is absolutely no discoloration on the front of the piece in about 20 years of being held together with duct tape.

Needless to say, I don't use duct tape anymore. I still remember working on that first chart, though. I didn't have any graph paper small enough, so I took my regular 4 squares/inch paper and simply divided all the squares in half where the stiches would be.

Shortly after entering into high school, I started a crochet phase. This coincided with someone teaching me to crochet and a fascination with scarves. The fascination with scarves arose from watching way too much Doctor Who on PBS. I did attempt to teach myself to knit, but it didn't work out well, so I crocheted a 30 foot Doctor Who scarf. I came back to the cross-stitch fold when I happened to be looking through the pattern books in Michaels and found one full of space designs. It had Voyager and the planets, the moon and "The Eagle has Landed" with and eagle in front. It was very cool for cross-stitch patterns to an 11th grader. But it was different from everything else I has ever gotten before. It wasn't a kit. And so I learned to collect stash. I figured out how to buy DMC skeins, put them on bobbins and store them, how to buy fabric. Then I bought other patterns. I stitched a bunch of the patterns from that space book, and let me tell you, there is a lot of grey when you stitch the moon!

In college, I was lucky enough to find a friend who also liked cross stitch. Together we were luck enough to find a stitching store (my first LNS experience). Between this store and a Teresa Wentzler kit I was doing for a friend, I somehow crossed over from Aida to evenweave/linen fabrics. I also bought "The Castle" pattern by Teresa Wentzler, but remeber not liking the placement of one of the feet and wondering how hard it would be to change. I never got around to stitching it. I eventually designed several dragons while in college because there just weren't enough dragons to stitch.

Luckily, today there are far more dragons out there for people to stitch. And it is neat to see the variety of dragons that come out of people's imaginations. I really enjoy designing when the creativity comes, and sometimes it just comes, and sometimes it has to be coaxed. Even if I wasn't designing, I'd be stitching, or crafting in some way. So I say to everyone "Stitch on!"