Scarlet Quince Ramblings

Is it possible for cross stitch to be accursed?

I just finished the large piece I’ve been working on for the past year — “Figure Five in Gold”. I’m not quite sure what I want to start next so I went back to a very small piece that I started last summer for something portable to take traveling. It’s the “Fruit Crate Label” and I have been working it on a hoop. I thought I would leave it on the hoop but quickly got annoyed. It’s a very small hoop and there wasn’t as much room as I like for manipulating the needle while anchoring the floss. Since I wasn’t using the scroll frame I put “Fruit Crate” on it.

First of all, I sewed it on crooked so that the fabric wouldn’t tighten. I was anxious to get stitching so I left it that way for one evening. I made 3 stitches of one color, then switched to a color that occurred in several places around the edges of what I had done so far. I did all those stitches and as I was putting the floss back on the bobbin, noticed that it wasn’t the symbol I had been stitching. I had picked up a bobbin, it had the wrong symbol, and I used it anyway. So I got to rip all that out. Net for the day: 3 stitches. The next night I took the piece off the frame and carefully measured and marked so I could put it on straight. I got it very straight, but it still wouldn’t tighten on the left — the hoop had stretched the fabric. And I continue to make mistakes, more mistakes than I’ve ever made stitching. When I’m not actively stitching with the wrong color or in the wrong place with the right color, I’m finding mistakes I made previously. It’s not an especially complicated chart. I just don’t know what’s wrong with it unless it’s a case of demonic posession. Probably if I checked in the middle of the night I would find the scroll frame spinning around on the stand.