This project has so few stitches that the amount of time it spent in the naughty bin probably gives me a 2 stitch per year average.
Purchased in the fairy-loving years of my late teens, I thought it would be so pretty in my apartment. And I thought it would be so fast and easy.
Well, it should have been. There is no part of the image here that is created by the stitches. It’s only embellishment. It should have flown by.
And yet. I could. not. do it.
I had started with the lazy daisy crown. (I think these are the first of those stitches I ever did, and I was very proud of them.) Then I even did the iridescent filament backstitching on the wings.
But when I started on the nest, it clearly fell apart. A lot of it was just half stitches, but still I stopped.
I got it out of storage and proceeded to inspect it. I discovered that I had misplaced all of the dark green stitches. If I realized it at the time, the idea of fixing it would have been enough for my low attention span brain to set it aside. And never get around to it again…
And it was also boring and tedious to stitch.
Not only was there the fact that all of the dark green stitches had to be redone, but they were impossible to see. As bad as black on black. Even in the photos, they’re hard to make out. But now I had reason to persist. I was out to prove something to myself.
Finally, a finish! 20 years later!
I took the fresh-from-storage photo on April 21, and three days later it was done. Three days of obnoxiously impossible to see stitches, but it was done. It’s not a big finish, but I felt so accomplished. I had redeemed my 19-year-old self.
Candamar Designs
Embellished Cross Stitch
1997
Song of Enchantment
Mary Baxter St. Clair
Of course, the shame now is that I don’t have my fairy stuff anymore and it just does not go with my vintage goodies. But at least, if I ever get around to framing it, it included a mat.
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