Gosh, I have rotten eyesight. Often, when I’m embroidering, I don’t see a mistake right away. Often, I don’t see it until I start editing photos.

Even when I use my CraftOptics – which come in very handy if you’re eyes are not so great and you really want to see detail – I don’t catch certain mistakes. I think working with Soie Perlee is especially difficult for me, when I’m filling with it. The way the light plays on the silk makes it difficult to distinguish the stitches.

Still, what a thread to work with! I love it! (You can see how Soie Perlee lines up to other silk threads in this article, if you’re curious about the thread.)

I’ve made the tiniest bit of progress on my Jacobean design and Anna has made some progress on her version, too. If you’re just now joining me on this project, you can find the previous article on my progress here, and the backstory on Anna’s version here. Anna is my niece who works with me right now. She’s 26, and while she’s had a bit of experience in general embroidery, she’s never done this type of project. It is making her bead-obsessed.

Today, I’ll show you where we are, talk about what stitches we’ve used and why, point out my mistake and muse about how I’m going to fix it.

I’m pretty excited to get back to stitching this morning! I love developing an embroidery project and seeing how my ideas are going to pan out.

Believe it or not, I’m always unsure of every new project I start. I don’t know, until it’s finished, if I’m going to like it at all. I don’t know if it’s going to live up to whatever is percolating in my head. I can’t tell you how many times I say, “Well, that didn’t work!”

But I love the exploration! I love the trial and error! And when I fall asleep at night, my head is normally whirring with The Next Step.

I wake up super-charged to get to it. And it makes a great carrot! A developing embroidery project is always a marvelous enticement to get those Needful Things finished every day, so I can concentrate on stitching for a few hours in the afternoon.

Here’s a little bit of progress on the Jacobean design I’m playing with, with some starts and stops and explanations of my thought process – what went right, what went wrong, what I decided to change and why…