They seemed innocent enough when I first saw them. Nice little cherries, innocent little cherries. Lovely little border just waiting to become my first towel. I bought the leaflet and thought nothing more of it. Little did I know what was in store for me. Little did I know that I hadn’t just bought a nice easy project to spend some relaxing time with. No, in fact I had brought the evil cherries of doom into my home.
It started when I sat down to take a look at the colors and found there were over 20, including multiple shades of red. I sighed. Usually I love a project like this but I wanted some relief from the Iris Mosaic picture I am doing; which has like 4 shades of purple, 4 of violet and a similar number of both green and yellow green all barely distinguishable from one another. So, it wasn’t going to be simple cherries. Should have looked at it more carefully in the store, but I would probably have bought it anyway. Then I noticed that the chart had a little convention I happen to hate; a shaded strip on a page showing where the previous page left off. I find this confusing. But still I plunged ahead. Well here I am still working at it and hardly more than one cherry done (which does look quite nice I must say) but the cost has been that I’ve frogged the thing at least three times because of the damned stupid shaded strip! However, so the experience shouldn’t be a complete waste I’m going to tell you how to avoid (hopefully) dealing with your own Evil Cherries of Doom.
1) Pay attention to how the symbols on the chart look. Do some look very similar to one another? That may cause confusion later, decide if you can deal with this and work out a strategy. One idea is to color one of the symbols with a colored pencil so you know which is which.
2) Is the chart printed in sections? Does it have a shaded do not stitch strip like my Evil Cherries? Be clear about these things before you thread the first needle. Some people like to copy multi section charts and tape them together, others number the sections and work them in order so there’s no confusion. As to the shaded strip, best thing is to be constantly aware of what is and is not stitched and count everything multiple times. (or if you are me you have a seam ripper and tweezers easily at hand)
3) Have a system in place for tracking and storing working threads of similar colors. Nothing is worse than using dark red when med dark red is supposed to be used. Believe me; you WILL notice the difference in the finished piece, even if it’s only a couple of stitches. I use a bunch of Ziploc bags. Each color goes into a bag as it gets used along with a label. I do this as soon as I take the floss off the color organizer (kits) or bobbin. This has saved my life, with the previously mentioned Iris picture, that has multiple shades of similar colors. However, any system that allows you to keep the different shades organized, will keep the evil ones at bay.
Hope that this helps somewhat. Pray for me would you? After the cherries I’ve got a matching border of pears, from the same leaflet, to do on another towel. Lord knows the horror that waits.
