A Halloween Finish

Look what I finished this week! 

This little Mill Hill beaded cross-stitch kit is one of my oldest UFOs. I found the real oldest UFO a while back and it'll get its own post eventually, but this one was old enough to be ashamed of.

Or not. At the time, I absolutely couldn't finish this project. I didn't give up or get bored, I backed myself into a corner with some mistakes in my counting and stitch placement and didn't know how to get back out.  The best options were packing it in the bottom of a sewing basket or throwing it away.

This is how it looked when I pulled it out of the sewing room earlier this month --



This was a bandwagon I probably shouldn't have jumped on, but these designs are adorable and some of the stitchers I'd met online were talking about how quick and fun these kits were... So when I saw them in the local shop, I splurged and bought two. I think I gave the other one away after getting myself into so much trouble with this one.

Ten years later, I was looking at it through different eyes. The money was long since spent, I wasn't going to beat myself up over counting mistakes I'd made that long ago. I grabbed the chart, figured out where the pumpkins should have been, and started stitching them without the beads or fancy details. About halfway through that process, I kept looking at the bats and concincing myself that I should bead the rest of the vines, even if I wasn't going to do the pumpkins.

Would you believe that the beads, which sat in a little glass dish on top of my computer cabinet at the old house, were still sitting on the high shelf in that same dish? It took me about two seconds to decide that I wasn't going to sort through them and figure out which shade of green was which.

.

I wedged the pumpkins in where they would fit, added the vines I had enough thread for, decided to skip the rest of the flowers, and I'm calling it good. It's not the way the designer intended, but I think it's good enough to hang on the wall. Not bad for something I considered a lost cause.

Those Mill Hill kits have gotten even  cuter over the years. I caught myself drooling over their new magazine ads before I remembered how much of a project this one was. I know more about stitching now than I did then, and I'm sure I could pull it off better the second time around. I'm just not sure that I want to.

For more finishes, check out Sew Much Ado, Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?,  and Freedom Fridays, Wonderful at Home, and Inspired Friday.