you gotta know when to hold em.... know when to fold em...

Know when to walk away.... know when to run...

Great song -- even greater advice really.

Just over 7 years ago Andy and I were in Christchurch, Dorset, England. It's a beautiful place -- I loved it from the first moment I saw it. It had special walking paths along a stream that were just magical in the moonlight and even prettier in the sunlight. The cathedral was stunning and the town was quaint and the people friendly. If we'd ever had to move within England -- that'd have been among my top 5 choices.

While in this beautiful place -- it became my hobby to find the local needlework shop and browse the patterns, threads etc. because I decided that during our first bit of marriage I wouldn't get a job right away -- I would get acclimated to the country, the weather, the people etc. I also decided that I really missed doing cross stitch.

So in the local shop in Christchurch, I found a beautiful kit (I never buy kits as a rule -- and guess what -- should have stuck to my rule!!) of a map of Britain. It was marked 55.00 pounds (i think?) but looked a little worn for wear -- many many ladies had picked it up, looked at it, flipped it over to see the back, tried to peek inside the packaging to what was inside... etc. Also the front cover belied the fact that it had at one point been in the front window and exposed to the sun. I spoke to Andy about purchasing it. He (smartly) asked me if I thought I would really finish it. I insisted vehemently that I would. And at that point (and up to about 2 hours ago) I really believed I would!!

So I got a scroll frame big enough to do it, and in the hotel room the next day while Andy was working in a nearby company, I started it. The kit came with linen, which I had never worked on before -- only aida cloth. Aida is the one which is more like squares with holes at the corners, whereas linen is just holes -- no visible boxes. When stitching on aida -- you go up the lower left hole, across the square/box and go down the upper right, then come up again in lower right corner and go across the square/box and down in the upper left, making an X (hence the name cross stitch) -- but with linen.... you have only the small holes, and you skip a hole for each stitch that you make... it's less complicated to demonstrate -- my point here being that stitching on linen is about 150% more difficult than on aida. So the fact that this is my first project on linen that I am attempting and the measured size of the piece (when finished) is 24 inches wide by 36 inches high -- is like saying that you can ride a bike, therefore you must immediately also know how to drive a stick-shift left-handedly.

But I gave it a good start, and did about 6 square inches of work, then another 4 inches, then discovered that I was off. But not only was I off -- I couldn't even work out where I'd made my mistake.

With any other piece of stitching, this probably wouldn't have been a problem. However, with a piece that large, and this being the middle of the piece, if I am off one single thread on one part, and can't work out how to compensate for it... it is only going to get worse and worse the further from the middle that I get.

So I stopped -- tried again (and failed) to figure out where I'd gone wrong. And then I put it away... started a different project and finished it (beautiful wedding sampler for my brother and a birth sampler for a friend's children) and continued like that, stitching on aida -- starting and finishing projects.

Every once in a while I would come back to the Britain in Stitches... look wistfully at it... sigh... and put it away again. Until one week I felt extremely ambitious, went to the needlework shop up in Bakewell (Wye Needlecraft -- best stitch shop in Derbyshire!!!) and got a piece of cream colored aida to begin the map again.

And I did -- I worried about the fact that I might run out of threads because of having started it before (being a kit you only get so much thread in each color) -- but nevertheless I began again.

And once again I went wrong... and once again I couldn't for the life of me figure out why or where.

As an aside -- in my defense -- the chart is made up of backstitched city and town names, and of little symbols for trees, mountains, rivers, etc. -- but the shining glory of the whole thing is the mini (and I do mean mini) cathedrals, village halls, castles, and other ancient landmarks. They have all been charted over one thread... and stitching that on aida just doesn't work well -- because you don't have the hole in the middle to go down into -- you have to physically force the needle through the middle of the square to stitch the buildings.

This time I had even begun to copy onto my own graph paper, the place names and the buildings -- to make it easier for me to see how to stitch them. I had an envelope of Place Names, one for Buildings in England, one for Buildings in Scotland, and one for the finished graph charts...

After I went wrong a second time, I kept the graph charts, and the giant blown up photocopies I had made of the original charts (heaven forbid that anybody try and stitch this thing from those originals -- they'd be blind by the second half hour!!!) and put it all into a bag for another attempt someday.

By this point I was really hooked on stitching and had made many new friends from the stitching shop in Sandbach and was even going to a weekly stitch & chat with other ladies...

There I learned some neat phrases for categorizing stitching --

stash -- items you own that are on your "to-do" list... you have purchased them in advance
WIPs -- works in progress...
UFOs -- un-finished objects...

Through the course of meeting with these ladies -- my stitching became much more adventurous. I gave linen another try -- completed a very small (5"x8" piece) which was very simple because it was solid stitching -- no counting across any gaps or anything more than 4 holes away. I found that I really liked the look of it -- and of the charts and samples that Sue had in her shop by the designers Mirabilia and Lavender and Lace... L&L is the mother and Mirabilia is her daughter (who ironically lives and designs in Columbus, OH!) -- beautiful ladies and fairies and queens and mermaids... beaded and metallic threaded and just amazing on linen...

So I picked out a chart that I really loved, bought a piece of linen to work her on, and began. I already by this point had most of the DMC thread collection -- and not long after this completed my collection (Andy got me the rest of the colors as a Christmas present -- in the US in a good sale they cost 5/$1 -- in the UK they don't go on sale and cost $1 each.)

I started the chart with the ladies' help and really loved stitching the "Rose of Sharon" -- finished her in about 9 months. She's beautiful. She's framed and hanging in the dining room.

That got me hooked completely and I was desperate to stitch another design -- this time I wanted one with beads and metallic threads -- so I picked "Angel of Love" -- who is amazing... the middle of her dress is a solid mass of beads and metallic threads. She took about the same amount of time -- even though I could stitch much faster by this point, she was that much more complicated and intricate that it took as long.

She is framed and on the living room wall. After her was "April's Blue Diamond" -- another lovely lady who only took 4 months (her dress is slim and there was not much to it so didn't take much time), and then the "Herb Gatherer" by Shepherd's Bush ... lastly "The Winter Queen" -- a beautiful lady facing the side with a crown of beads and fluffy white furry thread lining an intricate dress of about 3 shades of whites and at least 7 shades of blues. She took about 9 months too -- and again I stitched so much faster by then -- but she has a dress that is solid stitching about 19 inches across and the same high -- takes a while when you have a solid area like that.

All these ladies are on the wall in stunning frames.

All of this to say.... I am giving up on Britain in Stitches -- I picked it up a third time, got a new piece of linen, had a tremendously good start and got much much further than ever before, and yet here I am again -- off by one thread, (the mistakes were never in the same places) and once again, I can't for the life of me figure out where I went wrong. I kept rough track this time of how long I worked and what names or buildings I stitched on which day -- most of the days I spent at least 5 hours working on it, and only managed to do 4 or 5 names and 1 or 2 buildings.

Folks... for a stitcher who can stitch about an 1 1/2" square in an hour (which is pretty awesome) that is soooooooooooooo slow.

Not to mention that it was making my eyes cross trying to stitch over one thread and do backstitch on top of that!! Ay yay yay.

So rest in peace, my little map of Britain... I am not throwing you away... but I don't think I will be picking you up any time soon....

*if you listen carefully you can hear "Taps" being played in the background*

Posted by kristen at January 4, 2007 9:35 PM