It's a Beard !!!

Years ago, when we first started our group we used to stitch pictures for each other. We would all chose a picture that required about the same amount of work (or so some of us thought...) and then at Christmas we would exchange the pictures we all did for one another. Some meetings we would pour over magazines for hours to choose just the right pattern. Having your friends stitch it for you meant that much more once it was complete. Some of us would bring it to the meetings and you could see it in it's progress and some of us chose not to show it until it was completely finished and ready to be presented as a gift.

Can you guess what I chose? (Probably not - unless you skip to the bottom of this article to know who is writing it...) Faces ! I Love Faces. Girls. I Have 3 Girls. Santa. Who doesn't love Santa? So I chose a picture that seemed to represent each girl. (have you figured out who is writing yet..?)

This is one of my favourite stories. The picture I chose for Jody to stitch for me was of a Santa holding a baby - pulling at his beard. She cursed and swore *shit, bugger, damn* several times throughout this project and she was ready to kill me for choosing this pattern with the many shades of white throughout the beard. She got so frustrated with making mistakes and not being able to find them in all the 'whiteness' that she got mad one night, crumpled up the material, threw it in the garbage and started over. I almost fainted when she told me she did that and I said, "for heavensakes, it's a beard - NO ONE would have ever known, or seen the mistake!" I know, I know she said, but I knew they were there so out it went.

So now whenever someone starts to rip out stitches in their project, or start to curse *shit, bugger, damn*, we say, "Just throw it out and start over!"

Seriously - there is no way you could find a mistake in this beard if you wanted to. Silly Jody. If only then, we had known the phrase, "it's a beard ! " .... before we knew "it's a dishcloth!"

Bonnie