A Work in Progress

Here's a picture of my slightly wrinkled Panel 4 of Petit Sampling Etui. This was the 2009 SAL for my sampler guild. It's been the Project from H*ll for me and nearly made me give up stitching. I had to frog a lot of over one stitching on the first two panels and when they were done, I took a short break. The stitching on the third and fourth panels went better, but took a lot of time. I took a long break to piece some quilts and do some smaller projects and finished up the fourth panel over my Christmas break. Once I got back in the groove, I realized how much I had missed stitching so that has spurred me on to complete this project.

Here's the third panel of Petit Sampling Etui. Not tooo much frogging occurred during the stitching of this segment, so it went more quickly than the first two panels. I'm plugging away on the fourth panel and discovered last night that I needed to frog a small section I had misplaced. Shouldn't take too long, but I want to make forward progress, not reverse! I'm getting a bit discouraged about how long it is taking me to stitch this since I've been working on it pretty much exclusively since July. I've always known that I would finish in the top three if there is ever a contest for World's Slowest Stitcher, but this is getting ridiculous!! Of course, my foray into knitting (thank you everyone for your kind comments!) and trying to complete four quilt tops to take to the quilter next week has abolutely nothing to do with how little stitching I'm getting done. Nothing at all.

Two or three years ago, I joined the Delaware Valley Historical Sampler Guild which is a fantastic group of people. We're doing Petit Sampler Etui as an SAL with a goal of doing the finishing at our meeting in January, 2010. The panel with the house gave me all kinds of problems and I had put it aside in the spring. In June, I began to panic after talking about the project with another member who reminded me about how far I was supposed to have been at that time. So I've been stitching on this very steadily since then. I continued to have problems with the house panel and I'm sure I have stitched it three times. I also had to do some "reverse stitching" on the panel with the two ladies, but the third panel seems to be the charm and I am moving right along on it. I completed the over-one lettering last night after I took the picture. The suggested guideline for the SAL is to finish the third panel by the September meeting on the 12th. I'm pretty sure I'll b...

The rain has left southeastern PA and taken the frogs with it. Maybe now I can make some real progress on Petit Sampling Etui. I frogged the line of over-one alphabet that begins with 'N' and got most of it re-stitched. Would have done more stitching, but the prom festivities and the late nights during the previous week caught up with me so I fell asleep with the needle in my hand. I'll have three more days on this before my rotation changes, so I'm planning to get this box done.

I have always been amused by story of the plague of frogs sent to Egypt to punish the Pharoah for not releasing the Israelites. I'm not amused by having them take up residence near my Petit Sampling Etui . Especially when I'm stitching over one. Especially when I have to take out an entire row of alphabet. Especially when I've already "reverse stitched" another section of this chart. No, I am not at all amused.

On Friday, my husband had to have his car towed to the dealership when the 'check engine' light came on. I mentioned this to the guidance counselor at my school and also remarked that exactly one year ago on May 22nd that my older son had been driving in Florida when the engine in his car seized up. When I heard the details, it was very frightening--he was in the left lane, passing a panel truck when he lost all power and brake functions. He managed to get the car to the shoulder and was safe. It turned out that the cap had been left off the oil pan when he had the car serviced several weeks before and had been slowly losing oil. (It all ended well with him being safe and the dealership replacing the engine, but thinking about the "what ifs" still causes me to shudder.) The guidance counselor talked about how there may be a pattern to these events and perhaps I should look at what they are telling me. Then I recalled that four years ago on Memorial Day weekend my son ...