Decisions Made

We had a busy but fun weekend and yesterday was basically a down type day with me going to Mass, supervising (lol) my DH, BIL and good friend raising the roof over our patio, making dinner and going through another tree's worth of paperwork for school. I really, really wanted to stitch but figured I needed to get the other stuff I just mentioned out of the way. In actuality, it turned out to be a good thinking day about stitching and crocheting.

I keep my crochet squares in a drawer in my buffet server in the dining room. After I tackled the school paperwork, I pulled them out. It has been awhile since I did that and I realized I am not happy with them. Don't get me wrong, they look nice but not nice enough. There are missed stitches, wonky borders, and they range in size from 7 inches to 9 1/4 inches (I measured). I also realized that the ones that I am doing variegated are a lot of the pretty raised stitches (in the book they are listed as green) and they just don't WOW me. I put together about 6 blocks of the first column (the square starting #26) and realized I would have to end up redoing a couple because of size. A couple would take some fancy made up stitches to get them to fit and don't even get into the blocking of a few to get them to size. In other words, I just don't want to have this on display or in use in my house. People oohhh and ahhh over my cross stitch, they would just not comment or say very little about this afghan. So I made a decision. I am redoing the squares and starting over from square 1. I am also changing up how I will use my colors (variegated autumn colors, ranch red and warm tan).

In the CAL booklet, green will be the ranch red, ecru will be the variegated and rose will be the warm tan. Confused yet? Those who are doing this will understand as the actual pattern has green, rose and ecru squares in it. I just used my own color scheme as many others did. This will be for my family room and my family room is warm autumn colors, or will be once DH remodels the family room. But for right now it does match my furniture. So if it gets done before the remodel (I can hope, can't I?) it will still match.

So today I will start with the redo and it will be square 26 and I will try my hardest to get it to the perfect 7 inches before the border. No more of letting an 1/8 inch or 1/4 inch slip by because I am trying to get it finished. I want this to be beautiful when it is finally complete and since I have to sit a 1/2 hour before my kids get out of school (I need to get there early to get a prime parking spot), these should stitch up quickly since I already did them and I kinda know what I am doing.

Now onto stitching. I haven't come up with a rotation that satisfies me yet. I just need to find a happy medium. I have been thinking of even stitching Monday and Tuesday on Coffee, Wednesday on Dragon, Thursday through Sunday on Rose (I really want this one done as the powder room is complete and needs something on the walls). I even figured I would keep Sunday to do what I want. I don't know yet. I may try it out next week after all of my evening Back to School Meetings to see how it goes. I have DD's Back to School Night tonight and DS's on Thursday. By the time I get home, there is no way I will stitch as I will have to check homework and get the kids ready for bed. Anyway, cross stitch is still in the air. This would be an easy decision if I did smallish type projects. Not me. I do huge, big, impossible to finish projects. LOL But I like what I do and enjoy every stitch even if it means, I don't have a lot of finishes in a year. So hopefully by the weekend or early next week, I will let you know what I decide to do. I just can't do it now as this is the first full week of school and the kids and I are still adjusting to the back to school routine.

Today is the first full day of school and so far, I am accomplishing stuff. It's a miracle if you ask me. LOL I have laundry going. beds made, and I am showered and out of my pjs. LOL So hopefully I will accomplish a lot of household stuff during the week so that I can enjoy a stitchy weekend or even a weekend of not having to clean a bathroom or going grocery shopping. I really want to try to get that stuff done when the kids are in school. I miss not doing lots of things with them and the weekends will be the only time for that.

Have a great day everyone!!