Finally, A UFO Finish!!!!

I forgot to pack my camera, when packing for the retreat ... so photos will have to wait till Wednesday.

Midnight Moogies is done.  A process that started back in 2006 is over at last.  And a strange process it has been.  My first mistake was using the recommended 14ct Aida.  If I were starting over again I would use a 32ct or, better yet, a 36ct linen.  My next mistake was starting at the center and working outward ... after making a rookie mistake in the orientation of the fabric.  I ended up lopping off sections at the top and bottom and sewing them to the sides to correct this error which I didn't discover until well into the project.  At that point I had already stitched the two right side cats and all the houses and shooting stars on the right as well.  I really should have started over again at that point but I just didn't have the heart to do so.    All I can say is I do not recommend stitching through three thicknesses of Aida even with the sturdiest of needles.  I dislike Aida at the best of times but this was such torture that I put this piece away sometime in late 2006 and didn't resurrect it till October of 2012.  It was one of my very oldest UFOs.  I do like the individual cats though and I can see myself someday wanting to stitch one of them again: maybe as a cell phone case or a TV remote pocket.  Not any time soon, mind you, but someday.

So, it is with great joy that I mark this project as DONE on the UFO sidebar.  I am a little too old and arthritic for a happy dance but I can manage a few bars of the Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.  Please sing along with me.

Another Moogies Photo

The seemingly interminable grey outer border is actually stitched, as is the mouse and a bit more of the flower.  Of course, I now have no excuse for avoiding the two remaining vertical legs of the black and white checkerboard inner border.

I think once I am through with Midnight Moogies, I will return to a more normal [for me, at least] three to four to five project rotation.  I find that, though I am not bored with my stitching, I have become bored with my blogging about this one project.  How much can one say really?  I am posting less frequently since it takes longer periods of time to produce the sort of progress that is worthy of a photograph.  And since my blog is primarily a journal about my stitching rather than a series of essays on stitching in general, this makes for less time spent writing, an activity I do enjoy as long as I have something to write about.

Then, of course, I need to get working on my 2013 BAPs: finishing the stocking for Liam and starting and finishing the stocking for Piper.  These are major projects and I certainly need to get started on them if I am to have these stockings ready for Christmas of 2013.  And there is also my goal of stitching a Town Square ornament a month so that I may have a Small Town America themed Christmas tree in 2013.  Furthermore, I'll be taking another class with Thea Dueck in October and I'd like to have all my previous Thea class pieces finished and ready to display at show and tell.  Finally, I am itching to get started on one of the few charts I bought last year, Cedar Hill's Berry Patch Rabbit.  What better time to stitch a rabbit then in the weeks prior to Easter.  And I also want to stitch Tansy-Yarrow-Rue during the Spring to get me in the mood for gardening again and to show my appreciation for my husband's thoughtful anniversary gift of three charts from my wish list.

All of the above will restore some much needed variety to my daily stitching routine and will enable me to write about it more frequently and more fluidly.  I truly miss blogging.  One might argue that blogging is essentially a narcissistic activity in the first place but, even so, one needs something [however thin] to write about.

Poll Results

It seems most of the folks who voted were thinking along the same lines that I was:

  2 votes for stitching the mouse as charted in DMC 169
  4 votes for stitching him in a slightly darker shade of grey
14 votes for a wildly colorful mouse.

Thus encouraged I shall stitch the little fellow today.  I have settled on a dark periwinkle row of tall Xs going across a bright yellow body.

Finally Tired of Smalls

I must be one of the most perverse stitchers on the planet.  At the very least, I must be among the more unpredictable ones.  After a month devoted to smalls, I decided I needed to work on something large and ambitious again.  But, do I pick up where I left off on the Woodland Angel Stocking? No, of course not!  Perhaps you are thinking that I resumed work on the Mystic Needlework Accessories Class Project that I had been working on in October? Not a chance!  Or could it be The English Band Sampler about which I was do enthusiastic just a month ago?  Wrong again.

What Midnight Moogies looked like at the start if the week.

No, I chose a UFO so old that it dates from a time when I was still stitching the occasional piece on Aida, Midnight Moogies from a very ancient Cross Stitch Gold magazine.  This was abandoned originally because I had oriented the fabric wrong way around when I first started stitching it and didn't notice it till a full quarter of the design was stitched.  The result:  I had to cut fabric from the top and bottom of the piece to sew onto the sides to get the proper width.  This meant that for a quarter of an inch wide strip down both sides my cross stitches have to penetrate not just the Aida but the seam allowance on the underside as well, making it a  real pain in the proverbial ass.  I suppose I could use a thimble to protect my finger but I have always found thimbles very clumsy tools ... they slow me down considerably.  And since age and cataracts have already  slowed

Midnight Moogies as it appeared before this day's stitching

me down somewhat, I fear if I use a thimble, I might actually start moving backward in time instead of forward.  Those are the negatives of this particular choice.  The positives do balance things out though.  The colors on this piece are so very cheerful, so eye-popping bright against the navy blue Aida that they compensate for the grey days of winter.  The pale watered down sunshine so typical of December can't compete with all this vibrancy.  And then the lines and graphic elements of the design are so very bold and strong.  It raises my spirits just to pick the darn thing up.  Do I wish I had started this piece on linen?  Sure!  Do I wish I hadn't made the stupid rookie mistake of orienting the fabric improperly?  Absolutely!  But still, I am going to enjoy working this piece as long as my arthritic thumb can stand the pressure of pushing through four layers of Aida.  I keep telling myself, "It's only till I finish the border.  It'll be smooth sailing after that."    Just a note about these photos: the fabric color is actually more of a navy blue than a bright navy blue.  I can't imagine why the photo shows it to be so bright.  It is an outdoor photo but the morning is bleak and overcast, threatening rain any minute.  I don't know where all the light is coming from!

For the past week I have been working on the black-stitched outlines of all the design elements and am nearly finished with that task.  I hope to finish all the black stitching [with the exception of the checkerboard] this weekend.  Once that is done, I will alternate between stitching lengths of the ever so boring black and white checkerboard border [through that pesky seam allowance] and stitching the vibrantly colored fill of the various design elements.  I wish I could claim that once the checkerboard is done, all the boring parts of this project will be past.  But, there is an outer frame of DMC 169 ten rows all around, rather like a stitched matte board.

Oh, and before my obsession with smalls petered out, I did finish up one more cardinal ornament.  This one has a lime green and grape colored scarf.  I have fabric enough for one more cardinal ornament which I may stitch during the Christmas vacation.  Please note the scale of these photos is quite different.  The stitched-so-far area of Midnight Moogies is approximately 16 inches square and the final project will be approximately 22 inches wide x 20 inches high whereas the width of the La-D-Da Christmas Cardinal is just under 4 inches.