(Cue dramatic noises of surprise and shock!)
Seriously, I hardly ever finish cross-stitch projects. Once, I was sure I never finished them because I just wasn't any good at cross-stitching. Now, I realize that I never finished them because counted cross-stitch just doesn't really suit me. (And don't get me started on the kind of cross-stitch where you take a piece of fabric with a printed picture on it and stitch over it. Not that there's anything at all wrong with it if you enjoy it, but me, I'm more inclined to just hang up the pretty picture than to spend all that time stitching over it to make it pretty much look the same. ;))
Anyway, the problem wasn't that I was bad at cross-stitch (though I'm still not that awesome at it, it's true), and it wasn't that cross-stitch and I just don't get along. It was that I hadn't found a type of cross-stitch that really fit me. But a few months ago, I came across some pictures of other kinds of cross-stitch in an old needlework book I have, and suddenly I'm enthused again about learning it.
I'm realizing more and more as I keep on crafting — even from the stuff that I finish but hate hate hate making, and from the stuff that comes out merely blah — that when I'm drawn to a craft, there's probably something awesome about it that I will totally love. That doesn't mean, though, that the most readily available form of that craft is suited to me. And if I confuse the readily available project ideas and kits with the whole of a certain craft (which I have done a ton of times...), I just might miss out on some obscure form of the craft that really, really flies my starship.
So the lesson is, apparently, that sometimes I just have to struggle through the projects I have ready access to, even though they don't really suit me, in order to get good enough at a craft to discover the parts that I really, really like.
Life is kind of like that, too, huh? ;)
But rather than get off on a hippie tangent about life, the universe and everything, I'll just share with you the cross-stitch project that I finally finished:
It still needs some of the plastic canvas cut off, but it's essentially done. OK, except for that part where I decide what to actually do with it. But WOO. I must have bought the kit for this project somewhere on the order of eight or nine years ago ... and it's finally done.
There's hope for me yet! ;)
Just for kicks, too, here's a picture of our resident orange cat:
If he ate lasagna, he would pretty much be Garfield. He's grumpy, doesn't like kittens, sleeps all the time (though what cat doesn't? ;)) ... and actually, we've never tried giving him lasagna. Hmm. Maybe if we tried it, we'd discover that he really is a Garfield cat. You never know.
Aaaaanyway...
So what'd you make this past week? :D
