Stitch progress

Last week wasn't a good stitch week. I had three days of not touching a needle because of the usual reason...the lump in my brain causing waves of almost intolerable pain followed by bouts of drug-induced napping which caused many a sleepless night leading to more pain, and round and round it went. Needle Club was pretty much out of the question and A Rainy Wedding got left by the wayside for yet another week. So much for its quick finish.

But after three days of a steroid pack and a day of quality time with my bestie on Saturday, I'm finally getting my composure back and managed to hit three separate projects today alone. Throughout the week, I did briefly touch A Summer Ball, but it was mostly white thread, so the progress doesn't look like much. I left it off here:

and got to here:


Tartan B went from here:

to here:


Alice and the Bouguereau Princesses went from here:

to here at 13.5 hrs:


And Maleficent went from here:

to here at 24.03 hrs:


I thought that the myriad of different projects scattered around the house would drive me nuts, but it's nice to know that when one project gets on my nerves and I'm not ready to stop stitching, I have options. I still REALLY hate working on A Summer Ball though. Had I not managed to get so far already, I would have burned it in effigy. I don't know how I can ever finish it in this state. But I do wonder if I haven't "hated it up" so much in my mind, that I've made it much worse than it actually is. I've only ever hated gifted projects, mainly because the patterns picked for the recipients aren't to my taste, but to theirs...even after all these years I still have nightmares about the giant Jesus head. Maybe it's a clue that I need to gift A Summer Ball, although I'm not sure to who. Then again, I might stick with the original plan to frame it and take it to work so that I can be constantly reminded never to force myself through a hated piece again. Guess I'll have to finish it first and then decide its fate.

I did learn a valuable lesson this week...don't ever try to frame with a migraine. I ended up being too rough and broke the first frame, shattering glass and all, which tore some threads. The piece had to be unmounted, re-stitched in areas where it was tore by the glass, remounted, and reframed, but she's finally done and ready to go to work tomorrow to settle into her new home:


Still four more days of the steroid pack and hopefully it will cull my headaches for a while...they usually do. Besides, I'm sure the ice covering the roads right now is going to keep things "interesting" for at least the first part of the week. I don't know how much stitching will get done next week either but I would at least like to get to the next color on Maleficent...the navy checkerboard is driving me mad!