August 29, 2026 - A Wasted Morning

 Wasting time is one thing that makes me crazy. Of course, my idea of wasting time is probably different from everyone else's.  :)   I can sit and fondle linen or floss all day and to me, that isn't wasting time. Looking for something I can't find .. that is a total waste of time.

My plan for this morning was to get the okra cut, get the sprinklers going, pick peppers, get the okra rinsed, cut and on a tray to flash freeze, vacuum seal the cut okra from yesterday and then I could start stitching. I was going to stitch two hours on Rejoice Evermore, then get 450 stitches made on Come Into My Garden, then go back to Rejoice Evermore if there was time.

All the gardening/food storage things got done. I was out in the garden just as the sun was coming up - a little after 6:30. I was done with all the food and garden chores by 7:30. Took a shower and was ready to start stitching. 

Yesterday I pulled out the Rejoice Evermore project (bag with floss and the stitching on the scroll frame. Then last night, this picture popped up on my Facebook memories. This happened at the beginning of 2024.

Luckily, I had made a PDF for using in Markup R-XP but back then, I didn't know how to add the key/legend to my project in Markup so with the paper chart gone, I had no key.  I put the entire project away and then in May of this year, I got it out to work on it. No legend. I went back to the PDF I had made, printed myself a legend and kept the paper copy with me. I worked on this project for a couple of weeks and when I pulled it out to start working on it again this morning - no key/legend. I searched and searched. I thought . . I'll just go back to the original PDF except apparently when I cleaned out a bunch of files, that one got dumped. I decided to order a new chart but they're $18 plus shipping. Nope, not doing that either.

Then I told myself . . I have so much stitching done on this already, I can match the floss up to the same symbol I've already stitched but you know how my brain is - there's probably a little (or a lot) of OCD in there. I absolutely could not make myself stitch without a key. I would make 2 stitches, get up and look some more. In two hours, I made 11 stitches. Ridiculous! It would have been perfectly fine to match colors to previous stitches but I just couldn't do it.

Vince and I had to run an errand and I was telling him. He asked me where I stored my original PDFs that I make. I told him how in the beginning when I first started making them, I would save them to the memory card in my phone . . oh, wait! I didn't clean that off. I grabbed my phone, went to those files and found the PDF, with the key.

I have now printed three of those keys. One is in the project bag. One is pinned onto my design wall and one is in the side pocket of my chair . . where dogs cannot reach it. Surely some day I will finish this project and laugh about this. Today I am not laughing about it.