Cinderella's Casle Cross Stitch or Are We There Yet?

This thing is huge. It may not be that large to someone who's main craft is stitching, but it's enormous to me! Not quite as large as the Past, Present, Forever one, but still pretty freakin' large. The finished product's recommended frame size is 16" x 20". This is 14 ct. Aida, which means that for every inch, there are 14 stitches vertically or horizontally, which means 196 stitches per square inch of canvas. There are many square inches of stitched canvas on this thing. I am very nearly done with the cross stitches. I saved the sparkly bits for last, because I like sparkly and that's one of the reasons I've been so keen to work on this one recently. The sparkly factor is wonderful.

As I was stitching the second to last firework, I figured I should give you some idea of the size of this thing, so that those of you who don't stitch can have a bit of understanding of why it's taking so *&*%*^& long to finish. The following picture is of the largest firework on the piece, the green one. I was barely able to fit the whole thing into the hoop I'm using for this project:


That hoop is eight inches in diameter. Eight inches. That means there's approximately 112 stitches from the top to the bottom of this firework, and probably about 84 across. Yes, it's not filled in completely, but still, that's a lot of stitches. I still have to put the other two colors into the firework too! And cross stitches take a bit more time to make than knit or crochet stitches. While I can motor along at over 1 st/sec when I'm in the groove knitting, it takes me approximately 6 seconds per cross stitch. And then once I've finished with all those, I need to do all the backstitching, and there's quite a few bricks on the castle walls that get outlined. Unless I decide I'd rather be knitting, this thing might actually be finished before Christmas!