All the Time I Cannot Spend

Whoooooo boy, this week has been crazy and I expect next week to be crazy as well. I got myself into a whole situation in which I volunteered for something at church and now I have none of the times. The good news is that this project is wrapping up. The bad news is that lately it has required cleaning the entire house, cooking, and otherwise making things guest ready (yay buying new vacuum cleaner, happy early birthday mom).

Needless to say, I haven't spent as much time with My Boyfriend Gandalf as I would like. Still, we've made time for each other despite our busy schedules, me with cleaning, and him with spending time in his plastic bag in a corner.

Still, it's sometimes hard to find that perfect balance of Enough Time with I Have Shit I Need to Do. They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but certainly in the first few months of a relationship it's much easier to get distracted from the Need to Do. The fact that my mother, whom I share the house with, also has company over has not benefited the levels of stress and actually accomplishing things. Throw a bout of insomnia on top of that and I am one grouchy His Girlfriend. So perhaps it's best that we not spend too much time with each other at this particular moment anyway.

Progress, 25 May 2014. Roughly 30x30 stitch square

Progress, 30 May 2014. Roughly 60x30 stitches

Philosophy of Mistakes

We are currently
Reading: The Anatomists Apprentice by Tessa Harris (audiobook)
Watching: How I Met Your Mother (tv series, Netflix)

Dear Reader,

My Boyfriend Gandalf and I have already made a few mistakes in our currently short, but long term relationship. It's brought some thoughts to my foremind on how I prefer to deal with mistakes, how society tends to deal with them, and what the benefits and detriments are in addressing them.

We all make mistakes. Some are reparable. Some are not.

My Boyfriend Gandalf is on Evenweave whereas I normally work on Aida or waste canvas. I didn't realize when I started the project exactly how difficult it would be to fix my mistakes, and I've found that even when I am able to fix it there is sometimes a ghost of threads left over. I've found that no matter how healthy a relationship is, that ghost can hang around for awhile, but there's always the opportunity of stitching over it. It then becomes part of the stronger fabric, rather than contributing further mistakes down the road. Sadly, that is one of the easier corrections to make.

But what happens when you discover one further down the road. One that you've based other decisions on that either also have to be corrected, or must continue as they are. Well... That depends on the mistakes, where they are, what they relate to, and whether or not you can see a way of working around them.

So far the mistakes I've made with My Boyfriend Gandalf have been fairly minor. The mistakes I've left include a couple of stitches where the cross is in the wrong direction, but since the stitches are insanely small and they're on the edge of my stitching I left them. I also made one extra stitch in the wrong color for a particular color block, but that was easy enough to work around and so I incorporated the mistake into the pattern. Others I've caught early enough to address and found that they were worth fixing.

I've had to be careful in addressing these problems because Evenweave is a bit more delicate than Aida. It's easier to warp and tear, so picking out stitches is more of a pain in the ass than usual. Still, despite the mistakes, progress is being made. My Boyfriend Gandalf and I are happy with it so far.

Progress, 22 May 2014

Progress, 23 May 2014

In the Beginning...

We are currently
Reading: Allegiant by Veronica Roth (audiobook)
Watching: 4400 (tv series, Netflix)

Dear Reader,

Starting a new project is often like starting a new relationship. There will be challenges and triumphs, the celebration of birthdays and possibly deaths (though hopefully not too many), and the general irritations of learning the complexities of the individual and how they are made.

And some projects are just too damned involved.

Hence my new boyfriend Gandalf. 

Gandalf is a Heaven and Earth Design based on A Light in the Dark by Matthew Stewart. It is basically the tits as far as awesome cross stitch patterns are concerned. And I am one of those not so girlie girls who has trouble finding patterns they actually WANT to invest that much god damned time into. So I was thrilled when I discovered this pattern, and even more so to discover it was on sale for about $10 on Mothers' day this year.

Our problems started on the download.*

See, I was under the impression that when I bought the digital pattern I'd be able to download a copy to access, oh, I don't know, anywhere. Meaning I could put a copy in my Google Drive and shuttle it off to an eReader or whatever and yay less paper. Alas, it was not to be. For whatever reason I was unable to actually download. Luckily, I had just bought a new printer cartridge, so all of the printing. All 60 something pages, most of which is pattern, there being only three pages of color key.

You may be right... I may be crazy.

Other problems have included not being able to find 25 ct Evenweave/Linen to start on, and so settling for 28 ct from Hobby Lobby, which I was able to find in 30x36 inch for $15.99, or about $9.59 with their weekly 40% off one normally priced item coupon. Dating is expensive, ya'll, but that's no reason not to be frugal when you can. Just because this is an investment doesn't mean I don't get to look around and see what will fit best with my priorities. I save money where I can, buying floss from Walmart when I know it's available, only getting what I know I need for a given page (though another misadventure includes buying DMC 898 instead of 838, oops) and hoping that it'll be on sale at some point, since The Wally obviously does not carry every single DMC.

Anyway, this blog will be a semi-irregular posting of what My Boyfriend Gandalf and I are up to, our crazy adventures, our thoughts and frustrations with each other and everyone around us. Possibly some interesting anecdotes here and there as we experience the world.

Progress as of noonish 22 May 2014. I hate myself so much right now.

*If that sounds like a pun, it probably is.