Up to No Good...

...as usual. Yes, I've been Very, Very Quiet of late, and this picture is why.

Now, there's a story here. (Otherwise, why blog about it?) I bought this back in either 1989 or 1990 so I'd have some needlework to occupy myself with in the summer months -- in those days, I was BIG into knitting, and face it, wool just isn't what you want in your hands when it's 90 degrees in the shade with 100% humidity. So, traipsing around the Windsor Button Shop, a wonderful store which has sadly gone out of business -- they couldn't afford the rent at the local mall -- I spotted this and picked it up. Hey, it has sheep, right? What knitter doesn't have a love affair with sheep, if only in theory? So I bought it and started work on it right away.

By 1990 or 1991 -- I rather think I started it in 1989, so progress would have been by 1990 -- I had the words all in, and the line border. Then I set it aside -- time to get back to knitting -- and forgot all about it. In 2001, feeling horribly depressed over a number of things including Empty-Nest Syndrome, I rediscovered cross stitch, picked this back up, and filled in all the sheep and the background. Then I was stumped -- I knew that the floral border would require a good deal of finicky work -- so I set it aside again.

In the meantime, I discovered the wonderful world of internet groups, including a couple of cross-stitch groups, and these taught me hitherto-unknown techniques like the pinhead stitch for starting and ending needlework, the loop method of starting, and "parking" threads so that it's possible to work on really complicated projects with multiple colors of thread without losing one's mind. In October of this year, I had to attend a conference for tax collectors -- what needleworker in her right mind travels without a project?! (On the other hand, who said I was in my right mind....) This was my designated Travel Project (shows how much travel I do), so I flung it into the van and headed up for three incredibly boring days, about which I have already blogged.

But they were just the jump-start I needed to keep going on this project, and this past week, it suddenly dawned on me:

After, what, 18? 19? years -- I could finish this thing.

I got it done last night.

Now to frame it, and then -- on to the next thing, or rather, back to current projects, namely, the Golden Tikhvin Theotokos (see my last post for photo), which is my Lenten project, and a bit more work, as I can fit it in, on Maryland Mountain Express, which is somewhere in the distant archives of this blog. (I just looked -- January 2006)

All I can say is, thank heaven for "parking."