I'm so disappointed

In the first few days of October, I started a cross stitch pattern called All In A Moon by Miss Crescent's Crowne. You can see a picture of it (and the next one called All In A Sleigh too!) here: http://needlecraft-corner.com/dg-misscrescentscrowne.html. This had been one of the most fun things I have stitched in ages. I think that's for a couple of different reasons. I'm stitching it in hand rather than using q-snaps or hoops or scroll frames, and it makes it so much easier for me. I used to stitch everything in hand or with hoops and then got introduced to q-snaps and then scroll frames and then I got the idea that I was not supposed to stitch anything in hand and have been frustrated ever since! On a whim, I just decided to try with this piece and it has been so enjoyable. The other thing I am doing differently with this piece is that I am using a larger needle. I know that they are supposed to stretch the holes out on your fabric, but I have tried using both size 24 and 26 (on either 28 or 32 count fabric) and do not see any difference. I'm sure on 40 count fabric it would indeed look like someone tried to stitch with a pickax. However, my stitching projects on 40 count are few and far between. There is a REAL difference in how comfortable it is for me though. So I am using my size 24 needle which I know some people consider on the same lines of a railroad spike in size. That's ok. I have fibromyalgia and carpal tunnel syndrome, and I can feel the needle and hold it better.

Ok, so I have been working on this piece as much as I can in the evenings (some evenings are more successful than others...depends on the collective canine attitude) and I got excited and decided that I'd take a picture of it before I started stitching tonight since I anticipated being able to stitch on it for a while. The plan, and it was a good one, was that I would then post the picture of it when I started stitching tonight and the picture of it after I finished stitching for the evening. The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

I had worked on it for maybe 30 minutes, and one of the letters would not line up with one of the other letters the way it was supposed to. Have I mentioned some OCD tendencies? I cannot stand for a piece to not be just perfect and will take out an amazing amount to make it so. I spend the better part of the next hour trying to figure out how in the world these 2 letters could NOT line up since everything was spaced the distance that it should be spaced from the things it was spaced from...????? So I finally started looking at the moon itself instead of just the letters and lo and behold, the moon was a stitch off. Go back and look at that picture again. You see the letter G? Everything below it is messed up. I just sat there and thought "no way am I taking all of this out! It will just have to be one stitch too far one way and I'll eventually go on to become obsessed with something else and it will all be ok" So I kept working on the letters. Until I realized that, my OCD notwithstanding, it will NOT all be ok, because the letters will be touching each other. And even if they are different colors it will look stupid. And every time I look at it, I will have that same "it's touching" anxious feeling in my stomach. Sooooo...it will have to come out. It might actually be easier to start over come to think of it, but I will try taking this out first. If it looks like my spike of a needle has done too much stretching of fabric holes, then I'll deal with that when I come to it. This certainly wreaked havoc with my plan to finish this in a timely manner and then stitch some other cute small Halloween things.

Maybe instead of my original plan to post pictures, I'll instead post the one of how it looked when I started tonight and then one of how it looks when I unstitch it. Sigh.