Dusting off the keyboard
It’s been a month since I’ve blogged?! Oh crap. Hey, I’ve been busy.
For about 3 months prior to my grandmother’s 80th birthday (the first weekend of May), I’ve been cross-stitching a gift for her. And not cross-stitching from a pattern, mind you, but an original design I put together myself. (NEVER do that! The math alone — and I say this as a person who likes math — was aggravating to the nth degree. Ohmigawd, what a huge pain.) I finished it a whopping 15 hours before the start of her birthday party, only to discover that the frame I’d purchased for it was broken upon removing it from the packaging. Since it was 11-freaking-pm, I had no choice but to dash back to the store as soon as it opened the morning of the party and exchange the frame. Then I remembered why I hadn’t done cross-stitch in years (about 10 years, actually…) — framing that stuff is a stone bitch. (This was, most unfortunately, before I discovered a nifty product called “peel & stick mounting board,” which I will use for my next needlepoint project.)
Anyway, here’s the finished product, which is approximately 11″x13″ (forgive the lousy pic, it was taken in a hurry under less-than-ideal conditions):
All I can say is 18-count Aida fabric can BITE ME. That’s 18 itty-bitty cross-stitches per inch of fabric! Only certifiably crazy people use anything smaller than 14-count. (Thank the gods I didn’t try 22-count. I tremble in fear just thinking about it.)
In other craft-related news, there are 6 (SIX, gah!) projects that I have partly finished, and 2 more in the works that I really need to get started on as soon as possible (which means “after the wedding”). The partly-finished include an afghan for Anxiety, an open-work tunic-style sweater for Angst, a cap-sleeved summer pullover for myself, an artsy wall decoration that I keep forgetting to finish up, and some other stuff I’m keeping under wraps for the time being.
And now for something completely TMI…























