I may take a break from my dragon in the near future because I managed to do something I thought was impossible.
See, crafts is what the women in our family do. My grandma can knit, crochet, and paint. I think she may have done cross stitch too. My aunt used to quilt and do cross stitch; half of my current thread stash I inherited from her. I've got several of those cool Lavendar and Lace seasonal patterns that I would also like to do someday. My mom does knitting, crochet, and used to cross stitch. Not so much with her hands these days.
She had this booklet I loved when I first started. When she was downsizing from the 4 bedroom house the family used to live in to something smaller for herself after my dad passed, I was visiting and got to take some books from the library. While I took some cross stitch magazines she still had, that booklet was gone. Most likely I was allowed to take it when I moved across the country for my first marriage. I left that relationship with the clothes on my back and temporary custody of my son. Everything else was lost. My clothes, cookbooks, my 3k Pokemon cards, and more. Honestly, I was more upset over the cookbooks and the pizzelle press that was a wedding gift.
Every now and then, I would think of that booklet. It had a sampler I always wanted to do when my skill improved. Not a hard one, but I was very rough in the beginning. My stitches weren't even in tension in the least, my back was a disaster, and I would start by knotting my threads in the back (just makes me shudder to think of now, haha). I would make an attempt at Google to find it. It doesn't help that it's out of print. 😂 Never with any luck.
It's called Count the Ways to Say I Love You Cross Stitch. The sampler is "I love you" in different languages, with cute bears in each frame. You could do them separately or together and I always wanted to do the full thing. There are a few other patterns in it as well that I've wanted to do. It cost more in shipping than the booklet but was just $12 total and I couldn't pass up the opportunity.
It'll be a week or two before I get it. So we'll see if I'm tired of always stitching in 310 by then. Or how worn out I may be in general. I have quit my previous side job because I needed something more structured as I adjust to having my son again... and I have an interview for a new one later today. Nothing fancy, just pizza delivery. If I don't get that, I'll be hunting for something. 🤞 It's getting rough in this growing disaster of an economy, and I'll be glad when a certain someone is out of office, however he goes. Not soon enough!
If you read this far, thanks for the follow/support/whatnot. 🥰 There will be a wip post tomorrow, wait til you see how much I've done. For now, bed. I hurt from having to take part in rearranging the locking cases at the main job. 😭