Vacation time

Yes, I’m on vacation and I’ve spent Tuesday thru this morning having a lovely visit with my parents.  My sister, her husband and one of my nephews also came for lunch one day to see me before they were off on vacations of their own.  It was even hotter by them than at home but we spent the time indoors visiting, watching movies, and playing Yahtzee.  (Dad is the Yahtzee king – he got more of them than Mom and I added together). 

And, Mom gave me a long-awaited haircut – it had been almost a year since I had gotten it cut – nothing fancy just many inches off the back  but my sister had been the last one to trim it  last July when I was there so it was long overdue and ever since I had broken my arm, I can no longer get that arm to reach where I need it to so can’t easily trim it myself like I used to.   Of course Mom and I were remembering the time she trimmed my bangs right before picture day in grade school.  She got them uneven and had to trim them some more, and some more — yes one year in those photos I have very very short bangs! LOL  (I trimmed my own bangs this time!).

I also got a lot of stitching time in but there were issues.  I was working on First Thanksgiving and forgot where I had needed to make a change in the chart from how it was charted to make it symmetrical on both sides — so that meant some ripping, more than once.  I also decided that I think I would have been better off stitching this with the DMC listed  rather than the Weeks Dye Works conversion listed in the chart.  I just don’t think it’s a good conversion also I realize some of it may be because of the nature of hand dyed floss but some of it is clearly just not a close choice to the DMC.  Since I only had the pulled WDW with me, I switched up some of the colors to just other colors that I liked.

So here’s my progress – the Native American was the part I ripped out and redid a couple times.  Although I got the last line of text I had charted centered with the rest of the prayer, I forgot how close she stood to those letters so I’m going to take “Amen” out and move it over.  One of the things I need to do (due to it being not symmetrically charted) is add one row of stitches down the side of her skirt next to the Amen.  You can see it from my photo but the gold part at the top of the skirt sticks out one stich wider than the lower skirt on that side and looks goofy to me since the entire gold section is symmetrically stitched so in my mind the lower skirt needs to match up.   Many people would stitch this whole chart exactly as charted and be happy with it but I would also see those stitches (and other areas I have changed) and see them as a mistake.  You can’t really tell it either from my photo but she’s carrying a basket of fruits and vegetables.

The other thing is her skin tone – way too light although it looks lighter in my photo than in true life – but I didn’t have another good choice with me.  I am so over ripping out things on this project that I’m either going to leave it as is or I may just stitch a different color over the top of it.  At this point I’m just wanting this stitch – with all its charting inconsistencies mentioned since starting this stitch –  done!   In looking at the chart, I’ve decided to leave some of the items out and make it a bit shorter stitch even tho it will still be a large project when framed.

Here’s the front of the chart

I never cared for the two turkeys on the bottom so I will leave those off, as well as the table of food.   The little bit of border under the numbers with the single pumpkin at each end I will move up to under the two ladies and then the alphabet will be under that and I will decide if I do the cluster of pumpkins at each end of that once the rest is stitched.  I still have things to stitch in at the top – both flags, and the motifs to the right of the plantation vignette.  Then there is also the bunting border to be finished.  I likely won’t stitch the single stitch border all the way around (just makes it harder to get centered for framing) and I already had not planned to stitch the vine border.   So… still a good deal of stitching to go but I have my final plan in place.  

Okay enough rambling for now.