Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned

Well, Sunday...hmm.mmm...the day started out very nice. It was somewhat sunny. The dog was doing better and was getting around without a lot of help. I was glad cause on Thursday and Friday, not so much. I cleaned the house on Saturday and did all the laundry so I had planned on a full day of stitching. Me, my fabric, my needle and thread all cozy on the sofa with some good music in the morning and for the rest of the day into the evening, football or a chick flick if the games were blowouts.
That all changed with a phone call from the Cadet, who along with 7 of his buddies had a run in with Campus Security the previous night. Suffice it to say, Security was not amused. And these young men are in a boatload of trouble.

Great.

So, stitching plans were scrapped for a little while during the time the DH and I had a frank discussion of the event and how we both felt about the Cadet's recent behavior and school performance. We agreed to disagree on some points of the discussion and agreed on other points. Then, I got a shower and headed into town to do some shopping. Hey, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, right? The shopping trip really wasn't all that exciting, to the grocery store for salad fixin's, a Sunday paper and then to Staples for a notebook and printer paper. I just needed to take a drive and clear my head.

Once back home feeling a little calmer and after a 45 minute heart pumping walk on my dreadmill, I officially commenced stitching around 3 o'clock. The football game came on the TV. I pulled out my love, John Foster, but he and I would only have fought with each other. So back he went. The little redwork piece I am stitching for the Valentine's exchange gave me fits the other night cause I miscounted on some back-stitched motifs and I didn't want the aggravation of backstitching (I dislike backstitching ALOT). My lip actually curled up at the thought.
M. Pollard just lay in the stitching basket quietly, obviously she wasn't willing or wanting to come out to play.

So, who to stitch?

On one of my trips upstairs I heard a siren's call...it was Sarah.
Oh, please, come stitch on me...silken threads, quaker motifs...you know you want me...

Sarah Tatum charmed me. And then she sucker punched me...HARD.

I haven't stitched on Sarah for at least 6 months if not longer. I guess she just got angry and decided revenge was in order. She just had to be patient, bide her time until I picked her back up again.

Sarah's a big girl and even though I loved working on her, other patterns stepped ahead of her, John being one of them. At the end of the year, I evaluated what I wanted to stitch on during the first half of 2007. I chose 4 patterns. Sarah didn't make the cut so Sarah went into my inactive WIP pile. She wasn't a UFO but she wasn't on the list of the top 4 things I wanted to work on. She was sittin' the bench, a second stringer, waiting her turn when I got bored with one of the chosen 4 projects ahead of her. Obviously, Sarah doesn't play second fiddle to anyone.

I finished the 2nd motif on the top left of the sampler and began to work a large rose motif below it. I got bored with the drab olive-brown color I was stitching with, so I decided to start the top middle motif, one with a zigzag border to be stitched with a very nice deep forest green called Jambu (DMC equivalent 500). It's a smallish motif, one that I thought I could stitch quickly without a lot of fuss and make some progress. I was terribly wrong.

Sarah smiled an evil grin and let an entire toad-y population come to reek havoc. I got that motif 2/3 complete and no matter what I did, the zigzag border just wouldn't work out. A little sleuthing revealed my counting error in one of the zigzag borders that I used as a stitch marker to place the the inside of the motif. Because of other mistakes and perceived mistakes I made working on this smallish, quick-to-stitch motif, I worked on that motif for more time than I will admit and in the end, most all of it had to be ripped out.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.