Unforeseen Contingencies

Now, you all have me nervous about the Monster on the Wall.  I keep looking up at it, wondering when it is going to come crashing down, killing my monitor, a window and a cat or two who love to sit on the wide window sill below and no doubt, decapitating me with its long "tail".

I can see the newspaper headlines now.  "Local woman killed by falling driftwood."  Should make an interesting obituary read.

Look at that "eye".  It does look menacing!!!

You asked how far I am on the Nativity Scene cross stitch?  No?  You didn't?  Well, I'm going to show you.  With an explanation, because, there is always an explanation.

I do like to work a cross stitch from the right side to the left.  BUT--to start, one must first find the center point of the cloth and the center point of the pattern, start there and work outwardly.  This cloth is 25 inches wide.  The pattern comes on five different pages.

I could not count the teeny squares over to the right side of where the pattern starts on the cloth, so I started at the middle point--which is Joseph's head.  I did the top part of part of that section.  Then jumped up to the ivy border and did that over to the farthest right point and down a bit so I could count on where to start the Wise Guys.  That guy on the right is one of them.

Now, IF I have counted correctly, I can work from the right of the cloth/pattern over to the left.  IF I have NOT counted correctly?  

Saturday, I got the other Wise Man started.  His crown of golden metallic thread starts just below this guys red head scarf.  Got his crown done and all of a sudden---I was tired of it all.  

I took it out of the hoop, folded it up nicely and stowed it, the thread and pattern in the lidded box next to my chair.

Sunday morning, after TV church, I opened up the NEW, sealed Noah's Ark baby quilt.  There was no thread included!!!!!!!  On E-bay the description read, "NEW!  Sealed in its original packaging." On the front of the packaging it stated, "thread included".

Someone lied to me.  So, not to be deterred, I entered the color numbers in a Excel spreadsheet, sorted them from lowest to highest number, printed out the list and headed to Michael's.  I got 26 out of the 29 colors I needed and walked up two stores to JoAnn's to get the other 3.

Came home, ate a bit of lunch, and sat watching movies on TCM while I wound the floss around the paper bobbins--4 hours!!

I started at the upper, right-hand corner of the quilt and I stitched while I watched/listened to "Mercy Street" and "Victoria" on PBS.  Would you believe it took me two hours just to get one cloud almost finished!  If you have ever done a large cross stitch project, you know how time intensive these things can be.  

I figured, if my colonoscopy comes back "bad", I should try and get this, the last of the 9 baby quilts done.  If I croak, my sister can finish the Nativity Scene.

.................always planning ahead for any unforeseen contingencies.