I'm Beginning To Think I'm Brain Dead

I'm beginning to think I'm brain dead. Well, maybe not brain dead, but certainly there's some sort of stitching block that didn't exist earlier in life. Sigh. The cretan stitch for week four of Take a Stitch Tuesday was difficult for me to do, at first. I kept getting backwards where the thread was supposed to be.

But I did manage to finally get it, I think. After fumbling around with it for awhile, I did a seam and came up with this:

About the pink spider rose, welllllll, I messed up the fabric in that area pulling out some other stitches, so the fabric was a little tattered-looking and frayed. I couldn't think of what to do with it, so I just added a little spider rose. I know it doesn't really look like it belongs there. Actually, it looks more like it belongs there in the photo, but on the block as a whole, it doesn't really look like it belongs there. I'm pondering what else I might do to make it look like it does belong there. Meanwhile, there it sits.

Then I spent a little time trying something different with the cretan stitch, and came up with this:

Definitely not the most creative thing you'll see among the TAST needleworkers, but I'm a beginner, so cut me some slack! I'm rather proud that I even tried doing something different. I would love to be more creative, but I don't seem to have given myself permission yet to be so. Maybe by week 52, I'll have broken through that barrier!

So, this is what the block is looking like right now: It's slowly but surely getting some personality. And for those who notice that the stitching on the seam to the left of the heart, which is the buttonhole stitch with a backward slant, looks different on the top than it does on the bottom, those parts were done at different times. And, as fate would have it, I'd managed to stretch the fabric in such a way that while I was doing the upper half it looked like it was lining up with the bottom section. I was trying a different kind of embroidery frame, because the hoop just wasn't working for me. The frame didn't, either. I think if the block were larger, either would have worked better, so the next block will definitely be bigger.

What did I learn this week? Trying something different is fun and not as scary as I kept thinking it would be. And I need a bigger block or to baste the block to a fabric frame to make it larger so the hoop holds it better and I can work better. I learned that I really need to make sure the fabric is in the hoop or frame straight and not twisted akilter.

I also learned that I'm still enjoying the TAST challenge. It's been more challenging than I thought it would be, but less challenging than is uncomfortable. So, a nice kind of challenging. Perfect.