A FINISH!

Yep, you read that right...a week ahead of schedule, I finished Maleficent! I am SO proud of myself. I literally did almost 6000 stitches in two days. As you remember, I left off last week here:

I started her Jan 2, 2015. It's been a rough almost 9 years for sure and I had probably about a four year stitch break, although, when I did try to pick stitching back up, Maleficent was always the one I picked up first. It took a total of 879.13 hrs, there are 213,200 total stitches. About 10:30 last night I finished the final row:

And, despite all the melted glue from the tape strips on her backside, I did manage to get it off the scroll rods and here she is in whole:

She still needs to be washed and ironed, and of course, mounted to mat board. I think, now that we have a Michaels here, I'm going to take her there to get framed instead of Hobby Lobby. At least that will clear my conscious a bit. I do have major issues with Hobby Lobby's politics and business practices. I try not to give them my business, but sometimes it can't be helped. Now I have choices. I haven't actually stepped foot in there in years anyway (although, in honesty, I haven't stepped foot in any store in this town in years, so that's not off-brand). It at least gives me an excuse to go into Michaels, although it probably won't be anytime soon. I need to get up the courage first. I'm not even sure I have any mat board, so I may have to go to Michaels first to get some. But it probably won't be until after the first of the year.

I do still have two more weeks before the end of the year. Last night I started winding some bobbins of loose thread that had bit sitting around for a few years. I need to move my thread around in my big bobbin boxes before I can add back the leftover thread from Maleficent (because some rows are pretty tight in the three I have now, which is why I have a spare box...pictures to come soon), so I figured it was a good time to add the spare thread. I didn't think this project would take more than a day, but I think I might be wrong.

I was also thinking I might be able to either finish, or get close to finishing Happy Haunts, which I haven't touched since 2020. It's at least the closest candidate for a finish. I would say Tartan B, but that project is notorious for being hard to work on, so I'm not even going to attempt that giant B! Plus, Happy Haunts is another framed piece, so an easy FFO, Tartan B was originally meant to be a pillow (I can't sew and I don't know how to make a pillow, so I have no clue why I thought that was a good idea), but now I think I'm going to hoop finish it, but I'm not crafty in the slightest, so I have no clue how to hoop finish anything without watching numerous YouTube videos and buying supplies at Michaels. The B is just too much trouble (in more ways than one for such a so-called "simple" project).

Ironically though, Alice and the B's is actually the project that is calling to me. There is NO WAY I could finish it by the end of the year, but it's the one I'm wanting to work on next. If I try to work on Happy Haunts and my hearts not it in, there may be issues, but we'll see. If I could just get one more finish, I think I could feel a bit better about new starts, although, the more I think about new starts, the less I actually want to start them, and the more I just want to "think" about it, if that makes sense. If I can just keep that momentum going, maybe I can get some more bills paid down before spending money on cross stitch supplies.