May's WIPocalypse

It would normally be a WIPocalypse and Smalls check-in, but I did not finish a small by the cutoff date (I won't finish it before the calendar month end either).

While I only have a WIPocalypse write-up, there was progress on my small.  As of this afternoon, it was here:

It is coming along quite nicely, but I had to go searching for a color (I finally found a bobbin worth in a Just Nan project box) and got sidetracked (in a past life, I was one of those dogs that gets completely pulled off the trail be squirrels and butterflies).  Honestly with everything going on at work and the mental time I am allowing it, I haven't been doing much of anything.  My stitching has been minimal, my blog reading and commenting has been close to zero and I've been spending much too much time aimlessly clicking around Pinterest and playing Candy Crush and Bubble Witch.  I do have to get myself in hand and stop allowing work pressures to take over my leisure time.

So onto .  Melissa at Measi's Musings is the host (and a wonderful host she is too) and has since 2012.  It's very simple to participate, pick a few WIPs you'd like to finish up, stitch on them and post each month.  Melissa also provides us with topics each month so we can get to know the participants a bit better and, in some cases, get more stitching ideas.  This month's question is: Which designer's projects do you absolutely love, but are too intimidated to try?  Intimidated?  I'd say none. I tend to jump in with both feet if I like a design.  It's all just one cross after another and with all the resources available on the internet, even the most complicated specialty stitches can be mastered in short order (although those darn Queen stitches still elude me).

The one piece on my WIPocalypse list that has been getting what little attention I have been giving my stitching is A Glimpse of Santa.  It went from here (still can't get the photo to rotate):

to here:

It stitches up fairly quickly as it's all full crosses and fairly good sized blocks of color.  But, I do not much like the pattern - too many similar symbols.  Two different squares but one is fractionally smaller then the other.  Circles that are different sizes and bold or not, etc. so it's VERY easy to grab the wrong color (yes, that is the voice of experience speaking).  I think it's because it's a fairly old pattern and there just weren't as many symbol choices in pattern software at the time.  I prefer to think that rather than think the designer set out to deliberately confuse the stitcher.