Well, my first HAED weekend is over, and I'm already wondering if I've bitten off more than I can chew. And if I'm finding it tough, what more for Eel, who has only been doing cross stitch for a couple of months! It's really been a learning curve for me, but I'm finding it slightly easier with all the changes I've made since starting.

I had my needle ready at 12.01 am on the 1st of May. Soon after starting, I was already finding it so difficult. My cloth was huge and draped all over my legs, and was making me feel really hot! I also started by doing in-hand stitching, but that was a really bad idea. My hand started getting all cramp-y, trying to hold the masses of cloth and stitch at the same time. Also, there were so many colour changes, I was getting lost in the design, and was wasting lots of time trying to find out where I was. So, what changes did I make?

First, and most useful, I started using my Q-snaps. I'm only using the 11" ones, I think, they're relatively lighter compared to the 17" ones (and smaller!). When I sew, I rest it on my knees, and so have both hands free, I don't need to hold the cloth at all. That was working quite well, but I still had lots of cloth hanging all over the sides of the frame, so I stole two clothes hangers from my mum, and have rolled up the fabric and clipped it together to make it more manageable. It's hanging out quite a lot in the picture, but when I sew, it's all tucked at the back, which is much easier.


The only thing I'm wondering is whether the clips will make any marks on the cloth as time goes by. I suppose it doesn't really matter, I've discovered that on 22ct fabric, the coverage is so so complete, that whatever marks that I've made with my water soluble pen totally disappear. This being the case, I'm thinking that I won't waste my water soluble ink, and just use a regular pen instead. Here's a close up of the work that I've done.


Can you believe that that is HOURS of work?? And that's only a teeny tiny corner of one page! Earlier on, when we were discussing mini deadlines, we said we should do about a quarter of a page a week. I really think that's going to be tough!

Oh, and as for me getting lost in the design, I've decided to use a highlighter to mark out the rows that I've done, and that really helps me out. At first, I was only marking it off as I finished the thread, but that wasn't working too well. I was still getting a bit lost, so I now mark the paper as I finish every row, and that's been great so far.


You can get a really good idea of how much I've completed from this one page. And there are something like 40+ pages in our designs....

PS: Do you know that HAED is having a 25% discount off their designs to celebrate Mother's Day? Hahaha...I feel so tempted to get something else now!