Sometimes you say or write something and suddenly you realise that you’ve been using terribly overblown language. I’d started by calling this post "Crisis!" but looking at it a bit more soberly, and bearing in mind all the real crises going on in the world, it is of course nothing more than an annoying inconvenience.

Having said that, it is a very annoying inconvenience, which at worst would mean discarding a more than half-finished "Fruit of the Spirit" and having to stitch it again. And all because of a careless snip of the squissors.

I’d finished stitching all the Kloster blocks and cross stitch on the top two-thirds of the design, which is as much as I can do without moving it on the scroll frame. There were still some decorative stitches to do in Petite Treasure Braid, but when I’d done three in the whitish Pearl colour I’d chosen, I wasn’t sure about the effect. Perhaps a dull gold would be better? But I was at my weekly stitching group at the time, and didn’t have the dull gold Treasure Braid with me, so I decided to start cutting. As I was poking in my cut ends, I realised that I’d snipped a stitch in one of the Kloster blocks. (The left-hand picture shows the front, the right-hand one the back of the work.)

In fact as you can see I’d only caught one of the plies with my squissors, not the complete perle thread, so at first I thought I might be able to push the cut ply to the back and make do with what was left of the thread. But unfortunately no amount of poking and stroking and judicious cutting has yet produced a result that I would be happy for other people to see – especially as I hope to give it to our church when it is finished, and a gift for the house of the Lord should be as good as I can make it.

So tomorrow afternoon I will very carefully take out the two Kloster blocks that are affected, and very very carefully try to stitch them again around the cut area. I am encouraged by the experiments I did some time ago with the double-sided Kloster blocks, which involved a similar exercise (only planned). With a bit of luck the process won’t be too frustrating and infuriating! But it may be just as well that this happened while stitching "Fruit", with its gentle reminder of Patience and Self-control …