I have about 5 wips on the go at the moment, and earlier in August, I had 2 weeks holiday where I planned to make tracks into at least one.  I had hoped to get the “my big toe” design finished before I went back to work, but that didnt happen, unfortunately.

However, it looks like I’m going to finish today! Hurrah!.  It’s not perfect – I gave up trying to do that after I spent as much time frogging out as I did actually do the stitching, so in the end gave up and just plodded on.

I’ll get it finished, washed, ironed – may even get a photo before long, which I will look to post up here – and then consider about framing.  It’s a big item, so professional framing will be expensive, but after putting the effort in I say why not!

I’m still in the first week of a 2 week staycation, and it’s been interesting how little stitching I’ve been doing.  I was down at my parent’s place dog sitting on the weekend – did a lot of stitching on the Saturday, not much on the Sunday.  Had things to do both Monday and Wednesday that took me out of the house for several hours on both days, but Tuesday and Thursday (today) have been stay at home days.  Nevertheless, not a great deal of stitching done.  Reading, yes.  Sitting outside, yes. Meeting friends, yes. Doing housework (housework?!) yes.  Stitching, well not a lot.

Much has to do with the fact that summertime daytime TV is crap.  I do have limits as to the crap I will watch and this is lower than I am prepared to go.  Much also goes to that the weather is…..so-so.  Rain some days.  Sunlight but cool other days, like today.  I can sit out on a bench for 30 mins or so reading a book, but the grass is damp to sit on, and I cant relax enough to stitch on a wooden bench when it’s 20 degrees out.  (Why stitch when outside and cold, when you can sit in bed inside and read?!).  I could sit in bed and listen to the radio when stitching I suppose but I’m not there yet, and am not aware of the radio schedules enough to find something interesting. It’s still early in the week for the long podcasts I subscribe to to not be available yet, and I’m also trying to plan slightly ahead, in that I am going away for a few days early next week to somewhere different, and dont necessarily want to “use up” all my interesting podcasts ahead of time……..

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to chunk my way through the “Reflections” sampler from My Big Toe designs – I’ve had to order even MORE blue thread for this (talk about a complete mis-judge in terms of what’s needed by moi!).  Had hoped that I could have concentrated on this sampler enough to get it completed and into a framers during this holidays, but perhaps not.  Bummer!

I cant believe how much frogging I’m doing on this *$£% kit!   (“Reflections” by My Big Toe Designs).  It’s not a difficult design, but with the lettering being so close together (some lines are only 1 square from the next line above/below), being out even a little bit can be fatal and require a frog and a restitch

Well I seem to have spent as much time frogging this design as stitching it! Another few hours was spent taking an additional 2 characters apart. I’ve never had an attempt that’s so wrong so early. All I can think is that this is an American kit, so you start in the top left hand corner and stitch page by page (where I’m used to stitching from the middle out). My failures seem to be consistently on the cross over from one page to the next, where I manage to get a handover wrong (too many stitches or starting in the wrong place) and it goes down hill from there. Sigh.

Well as if I didnt have enough WIPs on the go already, I decided to start the “Reflections” sampler from My Big Toe designs the other week, thinking it was going to be a relatively nice easy job – only 3 colours, a couple of alphabets and plain sailing right? I should be so lucky.  Over a week later, having frogged the top left letter M more than 8 times, and I’ve still got it wrong. What is it with my counting and the inability to get this right?  I’ve done more than enough samplers in my time and for some reason cant get this right. Aarrgh!

I finally gave in the other week and ordered some My Big Toe Designs.

They are a Christian based cross-stitch design company located in Boise, Idaho, but unfortunately, dont sell their designs to the public themselves.  I therefore had to find a vendor over here, and chose Lekker Threads from which to order copies of  Reflections (MBT-45) ,  Padre Nuestro (MBT-031) and The Name Of God (MBT-037) .  Now I ordered on the 28th October, and got an automatic email out of them accepting my order.  I then got no other emails until last Friday (the 17th November) to say the order was on the way – by the time I got home the order was already there.  The wording on one was in Spanish, the others in English.  No major loss, as I know enough cross stitch (and enough Latin based languages!) to take a stab at the Spanish directions.

I dont know whether to be unimpressed with the service or not.  The items I ordered turned up with no chasing. It was nearly 3 weeks to get the order though, and no email or stuff on the website saying “There may be some delay in postage because……..”. Not all people have multiple languages. I’m not sure I could recommend them with much enthusiasm.