Cross stitch

I've been doing cross stitch since college, when Rachel helped me complete my first project, a snowman wall hanging from a kit. That project took two days total to stitch and assemble.


Then I started a scene with killer whales, also from a kit, which took about 5 years, give or take. It took so long mostly because I would spend months (or years) not working on it all. Once I finally finished the whales they became a gift to my mom.


In 2005 the whales were followed by butterflies on a background of flowers, still in progress. It's my first project that is not a kit, so I had to buy all the individual colors I needed, including several colors of "Glissen Gloss" thread that I couldn't find in a store and ended up ordering online. They give the butterflies a wonderful shimmer, but they fray very easily and I can guarantee you that they are frustrating enough to work with that my next project will use only normal thread. I made a lot of progress on the butterflies in the last 3 months before I left LA, since I had shipped almost all worldly possessions to the garage at my parents place. I had no bed, no chairs, no TV. My realtor left a small camp chair at my place for her to use during open houses, and I sat there and did cross stitch most evenings. I also worked on the butterflies when I first moved back to Nor Cal, until I adopted the kittens, and I became concerned that the moving thread would be too tempting for them. And then Patrick came along, and I spent most of my extra time with him. Now, after some encouragement from Mom, I've started working on it again, while he's watching a football or hockey game in the evening I can sit on the couch with him and stitch. I'd like to document my progress on this blog to encourage myself to keep working, so here it is, as of 12/23:

There are 4 butterflies total, the cross stitch is done on the bottom one and most of the second, but you can hardly tell where the 3rd is going to be, and the fourth hasn't even been started. I realized this past week that one of my colors of Glissen Gloss is going to run out before I can even finish the butterfly I'm working on. When it does I plan to leave gaps and move on to the other colors until I can tell for sure what I need to order to complete the project. Once the cross stitch part is done, I have to go back and do the backstitching, and it seems like there's a lot of it on this project.