Decision time

Now that A&E is finished, and waiting to be framed, I have gone back to focusing on Sleepy Hollow. Last night I spent about an hour and got half of the moon completed and one strand of floss outlining a portion of the tree. I am really hoping to finish this soon so that I can start my next cross stitch design.

I have fallen in love with HAED designs (Heaven and Earth designs) and while I haven't started any yet I have been collecting a few charts every time I see a sale. So far I have Moonlit Waters, Boreas, Ophelia, The Last Unicorn and The Kiss by Hayez. I am eyeing another called Bathtime. A gorgeous mermaid in a bath with candles all around. I really want to attempt one of these more challenging pieces but so far have found excuses as to why I shouldn't. Current space restraints have been my main excuse lately. So, I hope to keep my current projects at a minimum in order to justify starting such a large time consuming project and keeping the space used to hold said projects to an all time low. I have my to go cross stitch for travel and work breaks, Sleepy Hollow is about finished, Aidan's crochet blanket ( many breaks from this as crocheting has started to make my hands cramp, too much typing at work), my husbands crochet blanket (on hold till Aidan's is finish so not technically being worked on now) and finally, Santa's Secret stocking. I rationalize having so many WIPs by the fact that they are each a different technique and since I classify by technique i technically only have 1-2 projects dependent on what technique I'm working on. Sneaky, huh? With that in mind I have a new found desire to be done with Sleepy Hollow already. I have been waffling between two of the HAED patterns, Moonlit Waters or Boreas. Moonlit Waters was the first design I fell in love with and purchased. The silhouette, reflected in the water by the bright moon is amazing to me. It doesn't appear to be cross stitch to me because of the amazing detail and he fact that it is makes it even more tempting. Boreas is a cross stitch pattern based on a John Waterhouse painting. While I love his work, and also, it seems to have fewer colors, it also appears to be made up of mainly confetti stitches or constant color changes I am not to the point of tackling that yet. When I was debating between this or Tempest or Psyche opening the box, I gave up and had my husband choose his favorite, so Boreas it was. I have the supplies for either of them but tonight I sorted the floss and wound a ton of bobbins for...Moonlit Waters! I figured, I have loved this pattern for so long and since it will be for me, that it will make a good practice project. I don't have the recommended 25ct fabric and can't get that here so I will be using 28ct that I found in my stash. I was thrilled by the discovery until I remembered I purchased it for this project when I bought the pattern and had just forgotten. LOL. So decision made. Next step will be to prepare the fabric, which I will be using Easy Count Gridline on. Probably a major cheating offense to hardcore Stitcher's, but the less chance I screw up the better. I just hope I bought enough to do it all at once.
~ Till next time.