The week of smalls

I am working on my friend Nancy's project for her friend. She's doing Sue Hillis' "A Good Friend is Like A Bra" pattern for her and couldn't get the wording spaced right. So I am working on that for her. I can understand why she was having issues. I make a mistake last night while I was working on it, and had to frog. BUGGER. BUGGER. BUGGER. It's going pretty quick. I should have it mostly finished by the end of the night tonight, then try to get it sent back to her by Saturday.


I guess it's a little nutso that I have two big, deadline projects to get done, and yet I am so wanting to do small things right now, but I do. I was cleaning up the other night in the sewing room and kept finding cute tinies. I want to do them, like crazy, but I have four months to the fair. Everything going in a frame must be in at my LNS for framing by June 20th, in order to get it done in time for the fair. That sounds like a long time ahead, but it's only 6 weeks, and that doesn't allow for a lot of wiggle room if they don't have the frame moulding readily available. And I tend to get a little, um, frantic, about deadlines. And in turn, that gives me a month and 20 days to get that lioness finished. She will become my May focus. I know I'll get her done, but, it's gonna be a kicking push.

But I have July 2nd through the 6th off, so that gives me time to work on those smalls I love.

I continue to teach SO about the rules of stitching. He's learning that "don't ask, don't tell" is a good policy, LOL. Yesterday, I surprised him by wearing a belly-dancing top one of my coworkers gave me (we're moving and cleaning out our desk--you should see what these people pulled out of their drawers). I told him I was going to wear it to work over a tank top. We compromised that I'll wear it to hand out candy on Halloween, but he did laugh in the good way. He told me I sounded like Christmas, LOL. So I took it off and ran it out to where my deep winter clothes are stored, and of course, found some more cross stitch charts, these were purchased, oh, January of 2007. So I brought them in to drool over.

He of course wanted to know why I have to look at stash when I have so many UFOs. He says, "That should be illegal til you get all the stuff you have started finished." I glared at him. He asked how many I had started. I told him probably 20 things. I don't know an exact figure, probably more like 60. Having stash spread between two houses makes for inaccurate record-keeping. And there's always the, "Should I count it if I haven't worked on it in 5 years?" ethical issue. I just opted to go with what was in my sewing room, not choosing to count the WIPs in the mancave (because it's manly), in the bedroom (because we sleep there, and counting WIPS is stressful, and I can't sleep thinking of all the WIPS in there), and in the garage (the garage is almost outside, and we don't count what is outside, or nearly so). I mean, we need limits, right? Are you with me? So then he asks if all cross stitchers are like me. I shook my head and said, "No . . . some are worse." BUT . . . I just realized that the deck has been an ongoing project for as long as I've known him and, til that's finished, I feel no shame (but I am not being smug, we can't fit the pool and the table on the existing deck at the same time, and we don't live that close to the beach, and it gets hot in Maryland in August, y'all. That deck will get finished before August, I know it.)So I better get hoppin.