Poor, neglected Santa

I used to be very good about documenting my stitching progress, but over the last couple of years life has gotten in the way and my stitching journaling has fallen by the wayside. I'm trying to do better! To that end, I have recently begun photographing all of my stitching at various stages of completion.

This photo of Santa's Magic, by Mirabilia, was taken just a couple of weeks ago. That is not to say that I have stitched on it, or even touched it, in recent memory. The most recent photo I have prior to this one is dated July 27, 2003. I like to think that I've worked on this project since then, but I'm not sure. I know that I haven't touched it at all in 2005... maybe not even in 2004.

I first saw Santa's Magic in my local needlework shop. He looked so regal in a dark wood frame with double suede mats that I just had to stitch him. I purchased the recommended fabric and all of the necessary supplies. There were piles of metallic braid and beads, not to mention Wisper thread. I ran up quite a bill at the LNS that day.

That was 1999. It's now November 2005, and Santa still isn't finished. I started out quite enthusiastically, as this scan from December 1999 shows.




Before long, the ACRES of metallic braid started getting old, then the beads. And then I made the mistake of trying to use the white Wisper thread that was called for in the pattern. As it turns out "white" Wisper is not nearly as white as the DMC B5200 that I was using to stitch the white areas. Having the two threads together made the Wisper look yellowish, so I had to frog the Wisper that I had stitch. Have you ever tried to FROG that stuff? It's not fun.

And so my beautiful Santa has turned into the UFO that languishes in a drawer while I work on anything else. What really bugs me is that he is sooooo near to completion.

Perhaps I'll make a point of working on him again after the figure panel in Castle Sampler is completed.