Yesterday, I picked up my counted cross stitch and stitched for a couple of hours. Make that ripped for a couple of hours. Cross stitch is something I really love to do; however, it’s classified as a leisure activity in my world, and those are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain these days. Sad to admit.

Previously, I’d managed to stitch quite a lovely wee section of the project and was pleased. Job well done. It’s challenging, because I’m working on a deep blue canvass with very subtle shifts in thread colors.

When I sat to stitch yesterday, I discovered a problem. I had miscounted three rows in a small section, used the wrong shades of thread. I probably could have left it. I was tempted to leave it. Boy, was I ever tempted. No one would have known but me. Oh, it might have caused a little ripple of disturbance on the back burner of the brain; but — and it’s a big but — those rows didn’t belong there, and I would have been adjusting and compensating throughout the rest of the piece for leaving them there. The section would have been slightly too high, throwing the rest of the piece just a hair off balance. The finished piece wouldn’t have been…… right.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

With needle in hand, I began to rip. And rip. And rip, careful not to disturb the stitches that were good and true. I didn’t quit until every last wrong stitch had been removed and the section reworked correctly. In the course of restitching, I stumbled a few times and had to rework it…again. It was just one of those days.

It was at this point that I realized how much cross stitch is like writing. When those pages aren’t working — when it’s wrong — you have to rip — careful not to disturb what is good and true.

I confess. I don’t like ripping pages. I can. I have. I will. I do. It’s the nature of the writing beast.

Let’s get to work.

Elen