as if I needed more opportunity

Tiny rug progress! I am still *loving* stitching this. It’s really cost-effective therapy: I have to concentrate so intently, few other thoughts slip in like, Really? We’re driving across North America with three cats and a giant dog in a 31-foot long so-called recreational vehicle? By choice?

I’d like to able to say my purity of focus prevents mis-stitchery mistakes, but that is profoundly not so. I’m rather amazed at all the many ways I make them. And although I’m learning as I proceed, inventing tricksy cross checks and multi-stranding, new mistakes creep in despite my diligence. Some are caught soon enough, and I can de-stitch the messups, but some are insidious and aren’t detected until far, far too late.

When that happens, I usually just go to bed.

And thus a whole realm of stitchery and pattern adjustments opens up, and I ponder and puzzle the most graceful way to move forward. With 2,401 tiny stitches per square inch of basis, one might think I have lot of options. But pattern and symmetry are both demanding taskmasters, and the challenge becomes how to fail slightly less obviously, and to not let the tiny errors compound.

I totally fail especially at symmetry; my brain fingers invent ways to diverge on not one but both sides of the pattern. And where motifs repeat, I must decide whether to intentionally try and recreate my, um, adjustments or go for the original pattern again. Thereby introducing further potential mistakes variations.

It’s humbling.

So this is about four of the 20 chart pages completed. Mostly. Impressive, ne?