Star Wars cross stitch + a story that is only funny in retrospect

This is the project that I obsessively slaved away on in the days leading up to our anniversary: a star wars pixel people cross stitch!

pattern is from wee little stitches on etsy

It seriously felt like it took hours, and I think it actually did. Between being really terrible at being able to see the grid of shapes and colors and transferring it to my fabric without effing up every five seconds, and having to fiendishly protect the MASSIVE pile of thread from my kids, it was painfully slow. 

I literally got the thing finished and popped into a frame one minute before my husband walked into the front door. Ha! And I managed to slice into my finger while cleaning the glass in a repurposed frame, so I was gingerly centering the fabric into the frame while trying not to bleed all over it. Classy. 

 

The quotes were something I added to the picture because I thought they went well with the "love" theme of an anniversary. 

Also, the pattern doesn't call for backstitching an outline over the outside of the clothes but I had to because I was stupid and chose a fabric that was whiter than I realized. It would have been better to do something greenish since there is no green in the picture. 

When I bought it I thought the fabric was more "oatmeal" but I was in a rush.

  

Do you see that fabric under the picture? That's the obscenely adorable ironing board cover Tim found for me on etsy for an anniversary gift. A while ago we picked an ironing board from someone's trash but I couldn't use it because the cover was unusable. It sat in our basement for a while, and meanwhile all I've ever had to use for my sewing was a little tiny tabletop ironing board and a super cheap iron that doesn't work properly. So on the morning of our anniversary the ironing board was sitting in the kitchen with the cover and a new iron on top. Ahh! So awesome! 

I did mention that there was a funny story involved in this post. Now that I've gotten over the emotional trauma involved in this incident I feel that I can share it. Lol! On Monday morning right after breakfast (I suppose it was about 7:30 or so) I opened up the door to our deck to let the kids play while it was still cool enough to be outside. At this point I was still fussing over getting that cross stitch done so I skipped getting dressed and went out there in my pajamas to work some more.

 Suddenly I heard the door slam shut. Violet had run inside and shut the door, which is one of her favorite things to do. So I reluctantly set my cross stitch down and went to open the door. One of Violet's other favorite things to do right now is to turn locks on doors.  Several times recently I have heard knocking from our garage because Tim has been locked in there by Violet.

My stomach dropped when I realized that Clover and I had just been locked out of the house on the deck, while Violet was locked inside. 

the place of the crime

I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but our deck happens to be attached to the second story of our house on tall stilts. To make things more interesting, I also happen to be terrified of heights. Sometimes I stand next to the edge of the deck and look down, and feel like throwing up before looking quickly away. 

Clover and I crouched down and talked to Violet through the glass panes of the door, wildly gesticulating at her to turn the lock back. Violet started crying. Then she attacked my serger, which is also one of her favorite things to do. Then she started crying again, calling "mama! mama!". That activated the crazy mama thing in me that resulted in my kicking through a door to get out of a bathroom I had been locked into one time. 

I looked to the neighbor's deck and assessed the gap between ours and theirs. The deck beyond theirs has stairs going down. But the odds of me falling through one of the two gaps involved in that feat, plus the potential humiliation involved in being caught trespassing in my pajamas (I also had a tank top on with no bra. yes...oh yes...) was too much to bear. 

So before I knew what was happening I had slung my leg over the side of the deck, looked back at Violet's terrified little face in the window, held my breath and climbed all the way over. Now I was standing on a rickety board and holding onto the railing, and Clover was frightened by my activity. She wasn't the only one. I felt like throwing up. But I reassured her that I would be ok and that I would be back soon to open the door. And then I started shimmying down so that I was dangling by my fingertips from the edge of the deck. Then I let go. 

Thunk. I landed in our yard and dropped to the ground to avoid breaking my ankle and being stranded there while Violet was potentially in the house eating borax like the day before (yeah, the day before we got to make our first call to poison control because Violet locked Tim in the garage and then climbed onto our dryer to get into some borax).

Then, in my pajamas, I streaked through the common area around the side of our townhouses and ran to the front of our house to punch the code into the garage door since the front door was also locked. Victory! I burst into the house and ran up the stairs to meet Violet, who was in hysterics and covered in tears. Clover was admitted back into the house seconds later. All was well. Crisis averted.