Patience: Stitching Bloggers QOTW

Do you feel cross stitching requires patience?
When I was small, I was always throwing tantrums. I was a masterful door slammer and quite the stair stomper too. My mother said I had no patience. You know how that goes. You become the "one" that has no patience. Thirty-odd years later my cousin is the clumsy one and my sister is the athletic one and I have no patience. In the mid-1970s, my mother tried to teach me bargello to increase my patience, but the belt project just ended up being thrown about the room. So it makes me laugh, laugh, laugh when people say "you must have so much patience" as they give me that beatific look reserved for women who stitch. You know, the one that's a cross between "aren't you a dear" and "you must be mildly retarded to spend all your time doing that."

If they could have seen me last night when I was near completion on the "tree of life band" in Drawn Thread's Birth Band Sampler only to realize that that whole band was one stitch too far to the right. Of course I spent much time examining the "fudge factor"--you know, how can I put this right with a few extra stitches? DH said he couldn't see any problem with it. Well, of course not. It's 36 stitches to the inch; the human eye isn't that discerning from across the room. (You know, the normal human eye...) And then I spent nearly the whole of And Then There Were None taking it all out. Since this is the last project on my August list, I was really hoping to get much further--like to the point where I need to know the kid's name (because that band is right in the middle. Because this fetus will have 3 names if female and 4 if male, I really need to know the name to continue). And all I had (have?) to do to get to that point is two bands--about 40x50. Undeterred, I figure out the problem and start stitching again. Get to the last leaf across the top, and realize it's off by one again. This time, I hadn't stitched the whole thing. But I did throw it down in disgust. Oh right, I have patience.