lots of teeny tiny stitches

 I finished one of the panels for Emie's Etui this week.

I was muttering to myself about how long it was taking me to stitch this panel. In the middle of the night one night this week, I woke up still muttering. Then I tried to figure out how many stitches I was doing. 32 count linen, cross over one.

So I multiplied 32 by 32, which would be the number of threads in a square inch of fabric, and came up with over 1000 stitches if I just worked tent. If I worked cross stitches, it would be over 2000.

Surely not, I thought. After all, my abilities to do math in my head are more like inabilities to do math in my head, much less doing math in my head in the middle of the night. So when I got up the next morning, I pulled out the calculator--and, yep, still over 2000 if you do cross stitch over every intersection in a 1 inch square on 32 count linen.

No wonder it takes so long!

And that's also why the next two bands on the next section of the etui seemed to zoom by.

But the next step is tent over one and cross over one (again) to make the wreath for the center of the panel.

Over one again . . . sigh . . .