Feeling Better

Well, I'm feeling better emotionally after a bit of a pity party last night.  Talked to one of my best friends and she sorted me out!  It is nice when friends care enough to verbally slap you back to your senses.

I have a few things on my list of 'should do', but, you know what?  Forget it.  If I haven't done it by now, it wasn't really that important!

Besides, I've finally settled on what 'fun' thing I should do in all my spare time -- cross stitch.  If I do smaller pieces, I can sit here and work so I won't have to re-arrange everything in my studio.  (This does not mean that my studio doesn't need a good re-arranging and de-junking regardless -- just that it won't get done now.)  I have a number of books with great cat designs so I've selected several, picked one to start on, and will get the material today.

It's been so long since I started a cross-stitch from a pattern that I had to look up how to determine the fabric size.  Several sites, which seemed to have copied each other, said to follow the pattern directions.  Oh so not helpful!  The directions for the pattern I'm using give the stitch count and the size of the image and nothing more.  I finally found a website that said round up, then add 2 inches to each side (or 4 inches to the dimensions).  The image is 4.5 x 6.875 inches, which rounds to 5 x 7, add 4 inches to get 9 x 11.  This seems like an awful big piece of material, but when I think about how to stretch it to frame, I suppose it's right.

Now the big question is do I have the fabric?  and the colors?  I'm going to have to go digging in the closet to see.  I had purchased some sale cross stitch material, but it's 18 count and not 14.  I don't want to make the design smaller, so I need the 14 count.  I know I used to have, but where is it?  (This is one reason I really want to clean up, clean out my house -- so I can find what I have!)  At least I know where the floss is, so that will be easy to check.  I'll check the floss and give myself 15 minutes to find the 14-count aida, before I head into town.

Oh, and before anyone asks what the design is (other than something with a cat), it's a secret.  Shhh...  I'm giving it to a friend, who I don't think knows about this blog, but still, I don't want to risk it!