Birds Cross-Stitch

Day 9: There was more than one time during the stitching of this piece that I thought I'd never get it completed, although none so intense as when I started. I began with the birds and round nest in the center and had placed fewer than a hundred stitches and discovered that I could not tell where I'd put a half-stitch using one thread of light yellow and where I needed to put a full cross using two strands of the identical colour. I had had to have the pattern enlarged in order to distinguish the colour codes, but that didn't help as much as I'd hoped. Working the piece on 18-count fabric further complicated matters, and after a couple of weeks at that first nest, I laid it aside and moved on to other projects. Unfinished works have a way of nagging at my subconscious, though, and when I found myself needing a project I could lay down quickly so that I could attend a mischievous kitten, I said, "Eh, I might as well work on the birds." Toward the end of the first nest, I realized that I needed to work all the full crosses of any given colour first. That way, there was no possibility that I'd cross a half-cross unintentionally. I chided myself for not thinking of that earlier, and from there, the work proceeded more quickly than anticipated. I still had trouble reading the pattern...black n and dark blue n were horrendously difficult to tell apart!...but soon, I had the nest and the house immediately above it done. Then I moved on to the birch house in the upper right...the one topped by a "haystack"...thinking to get one of the hardest bits over with before my patience ran out. Oddly enough, it went quickly. Once I really settled in to working on the embroidery, each nest and its birds took roughly 3-5 days to finish. The frame was delivered yesterday. I hung the piece above my desk, one of few pieces of stitchery I've kept for myself.