Jewells of Thought

Yesterday morning I came to a startling realization. The birthday party is this Saturday. I have had to work a little bit at a time on the tractor due to the intricate stitching in the pattern. There are 5 different shades of green and 4 different shades of grey and yellow.

The work is in the details. The half stitches or quarter stitches are sometimes the hardest stitches for me as a perfectionist to get them right down the middle. Sometimes I do and other times it takes a redo once or twice to make it just right. That also depends on my nerves I can at times let it go with a close to the middle stitch. Especially knowing it won’t matter once I put in the back-stitch.

However, my eyes are not the eyes of the young teenager I once was. The patterns I have for these tractors are amazing I am grateful to have them from my Aunt Mary. These patterns are hard to see I have had to actually put them on my phone to blow them up and it really does help me to see them much bigger. The key I read for the pattern was made by hand and actually the figures are sometimes hard for me to discern between a couple of the different color icons. You would never think a ‘d’ and an ‘o’ would look similar, but when the square is holding two icons for the two stitches in that square it’s hard to know the difference. The same with ‘w’ and ‘u’ it’s hard to see legibly what color I am really looking for in part of that square.

So that has been something I have had to deal with these last couple of weeks. Although the tires are equally as hard as the green and the yellow. but that’s why these are special pieces I make for my guys. It’s also why I have tried to take it somewhat slow so I don’t make a ton of mistakes. I keep counting and recounting each step of the way this time more than I have in the past. I made a tire look like it was pregnant one time, because I got lost in the monotonous key and couldn’t find where I went wrong and then it was too late I just had to own the mistake and make it look like it was supposed to be there. I guess I could have made it seem more like a flat tire on the other side. Anyhow I promised myself after that snafu I would be more careful and cautious about counting a dozen times before stitching.

I can’t wait to see this as a finished pillow with the tractor fabric on the other side.