My Everest

As I've gotten to know my embroidery machine over the past few months, we've had quite the love/hate relationship. Kalinda, as she is now called, has helped me create some beautiful pieces, but she has her faults too. You see, Kalinda can only do 4 inches of embroidery space. And while that may sounds like a lot, it's not. It's not at all. So if I ever want to write a really long name, or monogram something large, I'm somewhat out of luck. This has caused much friction between Kalinda and I. It seems that Kalinda is a lovely, wonderful, tasty cheesecake. But what I want is Jello...and Kalinda is never gonna be Jello. (Who gets the reference??) All of this came into play for what is now known as "My Everest."

 When I first got Kalinda, one of my friends up here in Boston...Shoutout to Sarah Nell...asked me if I would monogram some towels for her sister-in-law's Christmas present. "Oh yes, yes!" I said far to quickly. Because at that point I didn't fully realize what that size embroidery would involve. Normally I just have to "hoop" the item I am embroidering one time, then type what I want it to say into my handy dandy computer program, and then WHAM, done. For kitchen sized towels, it's just that beautiful and easy. But to do a large towel with a normal size monogram, it required rehooping the towel three times and trying to measure each minute aspect just right so the spacing of letters would turn out okay. Perhaps this doesn't sound hard to you, but for me it was SOOO difficult. In my cold, Boston, December apartment with no heat on...I was sweating! Literally! The first towel I tried started out okay for the first two letters, but by the third letter, disaster struck and it was ruined.

Why C? Why did you have to scoot over so far...WHY?!?

So I drove to the store and bought purple towel #2. Another hour and towel later, I made an acceptable large towel. Hallelujah! But more problems came. For the large towel I used a font I downloaded letter by letter rather than the embroidery website I use for most writing. What this means is that on the smaller hand towels, which are usually easy,...I had to hoop 3 times and space the letters again. NOOOOOOOOOOO. *soft sobbing began* But another hour later, here is the result:

Are they perfect? No. Are they as good as they are going to get without me jumping off a cliff? YES. Did I make it successfully to the top of my Everett this time? Not yet. She also gave me a set of green towels to do. So for now I'll suck some oxygen from my mask and keep on climbing.

P.S. Sarah Nell, don't feel bad! This is all for the best. You're pushing my embroidery skills to new heights, where I was too afraid to go on my own. So for that, I thank you.