Instruction frustration

I made great progress on the way home from work yesterday on my Shepherd's Bush Amaranth. But today on the way in it was a different story. I took me over an hour just to complete two small bands. In the older SB patterns (I can't comment on new ones as I don't have any) sometimes the drawn instructions leave a lot to be desired. What should have taken me just a short time, took forever because I had to figure out how to come up with a finished band with one bad picture. I find it so frustrating when the directions come up short. And I'm an experienced stitcher! I can only imagine what someone who is new to pulled work and band samplers would think when they try one of the older patterns. I wonder if the newer SB get any better. I love the Drawn Thread instructions - now those are clear. To be honest, it didn't help that I was crabby! :-)

We had really bad storms last night. Even the emergency broadcast system was activated. Now that is freaky. Where I live the signal is a siren followed by a male voice recording telling you what TV and radio station to tune to for more information. Hearing a disembodied voice through the thunder is creepy at best, terrifying at worst. It was a tornado not to far from my house - it quickly turned into Lake Michigan so it was over pretty quickly but the thunder, lightening and rain continued for hours. I didn't sleep a wink.

While working on my Marquior last night I discovered I made a counting error - a fixable counting error. I always follow this strategy when working on a piece - if I can fix it I will fix it. If it's involving multiple colors and the end result won't matter, I try to find a way to make it work. Well, last night the error I found was fixable - I was one stitch off on the side border. So I had to rip out a couple of hours worth of work - that is such a bummer. But I felt I had to - it's only part 1 after all and I want this piece to be all that it can be - and hell, I'll be working on the damn thing for 16 months so it had better well be a work of art when I finished! LOL! So out it came. So no real progress to report on that piece.

Tonight is agility with Molly so no stitching. I get to do my other highly frustrating hobby instead! :-)