Never enough time to stitch

I haven't updated my blog because I have not been stitching as much as I would like.  We have been preparing our living room, hallway, and dining room for new carpet.  Between painting, sanding, dusting and cleaning up behind my husband, stitching has fallen to the wayside. But, after a year of walking on particle board flooring, we now have brand spanking new carpet with the best padding money can buy.  A few more days to put the house back to rights, next Monday our gas fireplace will be installed, and I will be stitching in all the comforts of the modern world. 

Our house was built in 1920 as a farmhouse. It has two fireplaces, but the chimneys had been roofed over at some point, so heating with fire is out of the question.  There is no ductwork for A/C or heating, and at some point a previous owner had installed electric baseboard heaters.  Last winter was wickedly cold here in the mountains of TN, and our electric bill ran at $500 or more for about three months.  We did our best to keep our pipes from freezing, but we did not succeed.  They froze solid for about two days in January when we were hit with a really deep freeze.  Fortunately, we had all the pipes replaced when we bought the house.  There were still galvanized steel piping throughout most of the house.  We replaced them all with the rubber hosing that is more likely to expand and contract along with any freezing, and we came through the winter blast with not a single leak.

The little stitching I have been doing, I have struggled with.  On the original piece, the stitcher created a flower basket, but the flowers and greenery do not sit evenly across the top of the basket.  I always struggle with charting for authenticity, leaving all the mistakes in place, or accuracy, correcting the more glaring mistakes for eye appeal. 

I hope to forge through this issue this evening and make a decision so I can get this piece finished. I am at that point in the piece when I have been working on it for so lone, I feel like I will never get it finished.  I need to get over that hump; when I can see the light at the end of the tunnel it seems to rejuvenate me and I become excited about stitching the piece again.