Buckling down for the good of all...

Well my last post must have been a bit cathartic because I buckled down and finished the cursed piece. It's not like there was much left to do, but it was all annoying because there were various corners that needed five or six stitches only. If they'd needed twenty stitches I wouldn't mind but a mere five or six is just...frustrating.

I even worked on it while hanging out with my sweet and maddeningly adorable nephew Benjamin. He's two years old and very into letters and numbers. He knows the whole alphabet and numbers up to twelve (and a few random teen number and maybe twenty, I forget) and whenever he sees words or numbers he likes to point them out. It makes it dangerous to do cross-stitch around him, given that toddlers are well-known to often have sticky, messy fingers, but I risked it. The phrase "This is a no-touch item," was oft repeated.

Of course, I may have rushed into this a little too heedlessly. Now all I have on the books is the big, complex Roman mosaic - a piece which alternately frightens and enlivens me. I am excited to do it, but I'm so scared of messing it up to the point where it must be scrapped.

The other day I made a Felix the Cat cross-stitch pattern and I'd like to do a Tintin piece for my nephew. My sister has a mug with Captain Haddock on it and a little picture of Tintin on the bottom, this has led young Benjamin to point to the bottom of all dishware, and pretty much anything he can pick up, and say "Tintin!" He has a dutch Tintin counting book which he absolutely adores.

As this is the formerly-cursed piece, I do absolutely love how it turned out. While the border was fussy and frustrating I think it looks wonderful and the greens are close enough in shade to not distract from the text yet distinct enough to make the mosaic pattern shine. Again, I adore my little snakes and mice, especially the mice, and I believe I'll try to work the basic design into a blackwork sampler featuring various animals.

Babies and Garden Pests: Are they really so different?

Though I had done some embroidery before my sister became pregnant with her first baby it was that event which really propelled me into regular embroidery and from there into cross-stitch and blackwork.

My sister is my best friend, and has been since I was seventeen years old. She is five years older than me or I'm sure we would have been best friends even sooner than that. Of my eight nieces and nephews (this time next year it will be ten!), her son Benjamin (often called Bunny) is the only one I see regularly. I don't want kids myself and I've never been a baby-person, but the Bunny is the light of my life. He is two years old, and the happiest toddler I've known (knock on wood). He recognizes me and gives me unsolicited kisses, and I appreciate that.

Before he was born I embroidered a number of white onesies for him and just kept doing it as he grew. Now I've got three pieces that just kept being forgotten until he grew out of them, but luckily my sister is pregnant again so these, along with the smaller sizes, will be passed on to the new baby. I feel a little guilty since two of them are the best I've done, but Bunny got two sweaters I knit just for him and the new baby is unlikely to get a new sweater from me (sorry honey, hand-me-downs will be the name of the game for your whole life).

Here you find my favorite original embroidery pattern to date, a green and brown snail sliming along. I love the way the slime trail turned out with the two close shades of green and two stitch styles. What I will eventually add is a thicker line of darker brown next to the light brown of the shell, as it is too thin compared to the body. Otherwise, I love it! If I make another copy on regular fabric I will probably use metallic thread for the lighter green of the slime trail.