The berry that was close to being buried

 Came close to taking it out back and digging a hole for it.  The Enforcer motion detectors are at the garden and every time I try to get to the burning pit, I get the begeezers scared out of me and a soaking from the spray.  Until I remember that they are up and running, no stitchery will be burned. Buried.... possibly.

Maybe Mary and Meg causing a linen choosing fiasco made me decide on a VERY small project, but as small as it is, a whopper of a PITA.  Little scraps are stored in an envelope, even a few inches, and I chose 32 count Copper Penny for this.  Previously done on a higher count, very tiny precious little berry,  I wanted a little larger. If I had not rid my stash of Klostern, I would have tried this freebie on it.  And still want to.  

In a nutshell (it's a big nut)...  this new needle claims a very smooth eye but it was horrible and not smooth in the least.  I counted wrong. The Pineberry Lane chart shows the berry upside down on my print, and rather than flip it, I thought it would not be a problem.  Such a simple and quick two color shape, how could I screw it up?  Let me count the ways.  Over and over yet I still kept it the same position on my board.  The real head smacker is when I forgot to change the pattern to include a calyx in the center (don't be impressed, I thought it was called a leaf and looked it up).  So I remove all the red at the top which was a real mess since I fill vertical and then cross horizontal for blocks of color.  You can't remove one row at a time, each cross is going in two directions.  But I proceeded, had a ton of tails to weave in the back.  Didn't think it would take long but IT DID.  So let's move on and get this berry done.  Wait a minute.  I just filled it back in with the red, just as it was before I frogged it. Where is my head?  Was I bone headed enough to remove it again?  Yes I was.  Now, the mass of tails on the back have made it thick enough to not need fill when finishing.  But wait, that top is a little too high after adding that center leaf (that's what it is) so I removed a few rows and each vertical row added its own tail to the ever thickening back.  Better.  Now I can fill in the red and get to the seeds.  Hmm.  That red looks brighter.  IT IS.  I picked up 347 instead of 3777 because I left it out from trying colors for this linen.  Now about the seeds.  How many times can they disappear?  Let  me count the ways once again.  Where the hell are they going?  I make the knot, come up in a different area, and when I look to see how far from the previous knot I am, it's GONE!!!  I am coming up and going down in different holes!  They prefer to stay on the back and leave a little white thread buried in the red.  So after two attempts, I used a slip knot in the mess on the back after each knot.  Finding a stitch to attach it to on the backside was not easy since it's a road map of carryovers, woven tails, shredded fringe throughout.  But.  It's done.  And I'll stitch another without errors just for spite.  I can't believe how many days this has taken and how bone headed I am to not START OVER rather than continually frog and croak.

Sixteen foot doors are sanded, cleaned, primed, painted.  We couldn't get an overlay design of any kind because of the dark color which would warp them.  So flush it is, and I ordered bean straps for them.  Rather than drill into the steel (I hate steel doors) we will use strong magnets to hold the decorative straps.  Our old door had very pronounced wood grain texture, this does not.  If we would have chosen windows or patterned styles I can't imagine the headache with priming and painting.  So I'm glad it's simple.

Large orange male is hanging around and the black/white is here every day also.  They must be strays, Missy is having none of it.

I'm tired, going to bed.  Hope your weekend was peaceful, joyful, or both.

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