Tiger Cross Stitch

So this is the project that I completed that inspired me to actually create this blog. I still have to wash it, block it, mount it and frame it, but here it is.

 

Its from a kit- 'Blue Eyes' from Kustom Krafts. I started it in January 2010 and finished it, by sheer determination, before the end of January 2011. I probably could have done it faster, but various stresses and classes and other projects conspired to delay it. 

It had been a while since I'd done needlework or any real crafting when I picked this up at the Knitting & Stitching Show in Dublin. So, since I was rusty- there were lessons I had to relearn. 

Lesson 1: 

Next time, I shall stitch in a clockwise direction, not counter clockwise. I had dutifully started in the center (as I find it annoying to try to find anything other than the center) and then went down and around in a counter clockwise manner.

 This unfortunately meant that for the last half of the tiger, I had to keep moving the stitched portions out of the way of my stitching hand. It would have been much better had I gone the other direction and not gotten my grubby mitts all over the stitched side.

Lesson 2:
When it says it has a extra threads spare, I really don't need to skimp. While I'm a naturally tidy stitcher, I appear to have almost enough extra thread to actually create a second Tiger. I've checked the instructions, and yes, I did use the correct number of threads according to them. Not really a lesson to be learned, I guess, but it is handy to know.

Lesson 3:
And this is probably a life lesson for me, not just with this project, but I tend to underestimate my laziness. My initial estimates of how long this would take me was clearly wrong, and then it got re-estimated several times along the way. While yes, there were various perfectly good reasons for the delay, if I were to do such a project on a timeframe, I'll need to give myself quite a bit of leeway.