Hide and Seek – An Unfinished Object

Spring is emerging in the high desert that I call home. The aspen trees are budding, green shoots are rising out of the soil and daffodils are blooming. More and different species of birds are at the bird bath and bird feeders.  The outside temperatures are warming. Fruit trees are covered in blossoms. The sky seems particularly blue.

Inside the house, we have not yet turned off the heat because we still might get blasts of cold weather, but the thermometers are at their lowest settings. On a couple of days we opened the front door and back door allowing a breeze to flow through the house from one end to the other. The stale air from a house closed during the winter months has been replenished with distinctly fresh air.

As a cross stitcher, my mind turns to spring designs. I mentally review the spring designs that I have completed, and in my mind I get stuck on a project that I started some years ago but never finished.

Today on my Saturday Stitching Post, I am featuring Hide and Seek, a design with rabbits and flower pots.  It is what is known as a UFO in cross stitch lingo, an UnFinished Object.

Many stitchers are most enthusiastic when starting new projects. Picking out just the right design, selecting the fabric and gathering the necessary threads is a great part of any project. Making the first stitches in pristine fabric provides a natural high to lovers of fibers and fabric. Sticking with a project from beginning to end requires a great deal of commitment, and very often enthusiasm for a particular project wanes. Some stitchers deliberately have many, many projects going simultaneously. They develop a rotation where they will spend a certain amount of time on each project and then move on to the next one. They get back to the first project at whatever point in their planned rotation it fits. In doing that they find that their interest is more likely to be maintained for each project.

I am not one of those who has innumerable projects going.  I would feel scattered and overwhelmed. However, I usually do have two or three projects going at the same time. One is a relatively simple project that does not require a great deal of concentration while I watch TV or watch a movie. This would also be a project that is fairly portable that I can take with me when I travel. I have another project which is usually large or very complicated and is not the type of thing that can be worked on at any time or any place. I work on it when there are fewer distractions and I can just sit and stitch.  Any one of my projects might get interrupted when I work on a gift  that might have some kind of deadline.

Aida, a common cross stitch fabric

This rabbit design is a complicated project that I started in the early 2000’s. I was very enthusiastic about it as I am with all projects at their onset.  I started it and made good progress but then I messed up on the stitching. Counted cross stitch, which is my craft, does not have markings on the fabric.  The design used is done on a grid and the fabric also has distinctive squares. The grid pattern is followed to make the stitches.  Somewhere in working this design I counted wrong and then could not figure out my mistake.

The grid pattern

At the point I erred with this piece, I had decided to do another project for a gift so I set this project aside. And then another project came up.  Every time I went to pick it up the rabbits I was faced with the daunting task of having to figure out where I had gone wrong and then remove stitches.  I allowed the thought of doing that to defeat me before I ever got re-started.

I have to get past that. These rabbits deserve to be complete.

A UFO, just another thread of my life.

[Project Details: Hide and Seek from  For the Love of Cross Stitch, May 2001.  Design worked on 32 count antique white linen using 2 strands of DMC floss over 2 fabric threads.]

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