Incoherent Scribblings

Mistake Breaks

Today’s SBQ was suggested by Sharon and is:

When you find yourself making a lot of mistakes in various stitching projects do you find it better to muddle your way through or do you take a brief break from stitching? If you do take a break, how long do you take?

If I start making a lot of mistakes in a particular project, I definitely take a break from it. If I don’t, I find that I just make more mistakes. However, I don’t take too long of a break because if I do, I am likely to forget where the mistakes were made.
Interestingly enough, it always seems to me that I discover that I am making mistakes near the time that I should quit for the day anyway, so I usually put the project away for the evening and come back to it again the next day with fresh eyes.

A Real Stitching Post

I know that Bea is dying to see a picture of the square I stitched for her robin, so here is “Edwina Hedgehog with Flowers,” from The World of Cross Stitching, April 2006. This was a really fun little square to stitch and it was nice to stitch a cute little cartoony character again. (I haven’t stitched one for ages!)

The post date for this robin isn’t for a few days, but since I need to pack up my Crazy Cat Lady Exchange piece today and mail it off to XXX, I think I will go ahead and mail the robin to Kara as well.

Speaking of the Crazy Cat Lady Exchange… I finally did the finishing on it yesterday. I have been trying to do the finishing for a week, but spent most of the week running around for supplies instead. You see, I thought I had brought most of my finishing supplies like quilt batting, ribbon, buttons, etc. with me to the US, and I am still pretty sure that I did, but for the life of me I couldn’t find anything in my mess of things that are only about half unpacked.

As a result, it took about four trips to Wal-Mart before I got everything together… which wouldn’t be such a big deal, except Mom lives in Small Town Iowa and the closest Wally World is 22 miles away. I tried to find the supplies in town, but in a rural Iowa town of 1800 people things like Tacky Glue are always a challenge to find.

Nevertheless, I put the finishing touches on the piece last night at about 11pm, so it is ready to drop in the mail as soon as I finish here. And, like all my exchanges, it is so charming that I wish I didn’t have to give it away.

Stitching Statistics

It has been crazy couple of weeks for me, but things are slowly settling into something of a routine. I haven’t been stitching as much as I would like and I keep forgetting about the SBQ, but I finally remembered this morning, so here it is.

This week’s SBQ was suggested by Elisabeth and is:

How many pieces have you stitched? Out of these, how many have been for you? How many have had specialty stitches or other techniques besides cross stitch?

Well, I am not exactly sure how many pieces I have stitched, especially if I count round robins and exchanges, but these days it is probably well over 100 and quickly approaching 200.

If I don’t count robins and exchanges, I would guess that probably around 90% of the things that I have stitched have been for me. Before I got involved in robins and exchanges I considered myself a pretty selfish stitcher and very seldom stitched things for other people. Obviously once I got involved in robins and exchanges that changed and now there is always something in my rotation that doesn’t belong to me.

I recently started experimenting with specialty stitches, so right now I haven’t stitched a lot of pieces that have them. However, I have had a wonderful time trying them out so I would imagine that in the future more and more of my pieces will have them.

License to Fail

My dad taught me to drive when I was 13 in the good old-fashioned Midwestern way: We took a tractor with a manual transmission into the middle of a field and practiced over and over again until I could drive around the field without killing the tractor.

A year later when I was eligible for my driver’s permit, I had to take the written test four times before I passed it. I suppose if I had actually opened the driver’s manual I might have only had to take it once or twice, but, you know, I was 14 and I knew everything.

When I was a sophomore in high school I took driver’s education and when I finally turned 16 in May I didn’t have to parallel park or worry about who went first at an uncontrolled intersection because I didn’t have to take a driving test. My successful completion of driver’s education was enough to allow me to be on the streets unaccompanied just a few days after my sixteenth birthday.

By the time I took the written test in Mississippi ten years later I had quite a few years of practical driving experience under my belt and, as a result, I passed that test with flying colors.

A couple of years later I was overjoyed to learn that Mississippi had a reciprocal agreement with Germany and I wouldn’t need to spend hundreds of Euros for driving lessons. Once again, I only needed to take a written exam. German driving tests are known for their difficulty, but I was able to pass even their written test with just one error.

I only drove a few times when I was in Germany, but since those licenses never expire I can use my German driver’s license to drive in America for now. And I have: I have been be-bopping around town ever since I got back two weeks ago in my old Chevy Malibu knowing that technically I am legal, but feeling a little bit dishonest about it nevertheless.

Therefore, one of my top priorities upon my return has been to get my Iowa driver’s license. Of course I want to be able to “legally” drive, but, as my American readers will confirm, a driver’s license functions as so much more than merely a license to drive here. And besides, the sooner I get my driver’s license, the sooner I will begin to really re-exist here.

So, last week I picked up the driver’s manual and have been flipping through it at my leisure. I took the written exam yesterday and very nearly had a perfect score. (My only error occurred because I carelessly marked a wrong box.) However, since my last American driver’s license had been expired for more than a year I was told that I would also need to take a driving test.

Even though I have never taken an actual driving test, I made an appointment for this morning with confidence. After all, I have been driving for nearly half of my life and besides, as long as I wear my seatbelt and use my turn signals how tough could it actually be?

When I arrived I joked around with the driving examiner because he had misspelled my name on the form. I proudly handed him my mom’s insurance card and calmly waited as he inspected my mom’s 2001 Pontiac that only has 37,000 miles on it. I didn’t pay attention to what he was marking as we drove around town through uncontrolled intersections and parallel parked. I turned off the radio and remembered to keep both hands on the steering wheel. I was glad I had worn a shirt that complements my complexion and hoped that for once in my life I would take a decent driver’s license photo.

And when we got back to the courthouse 15 minutes later, he told me he doesn’t like the way that I “roll” through stop signs and that he will see me again when I can actually come to a complete stop.

A Cute Update

For those of you who were wondering, the kitties and I managed to make it to Iowa safe and sound. You can read about the whole experience on my main blog.

In stitching news… I don’t have much!
Actually, I pulled out Bea’s round robin yesterday and started working on it. I was really eager to get back to my needle and thread and got a good start on my square. Bea’s theme is “cuties” and I have chosen an Edwina Hedgehog chart from my April issue of The World of Cross Stitching. This is my first Country Companion pattern and I will say one thing for it… It sure is cute!
I currently have no pictures because I don’t have a scanner and I need to charge my camera’s batteries. I am not sure how many progress pics I will be posting while I am at my mom’s anyway… I had forgotten how painful a modem can be!