Needlework Zombie

Need sleep.  I've been making custom Christmas stockings for several years now, but each year they seem to get more elaborate and eat up more of my Advent with desperate late nights and entire days spent with needle in hand.  I stayed up until 3:30 AM this morning, powered by Rockstar, and now the tips of my right thumb and index finger feel like I've bruised the bone squeezing the tiny beading needle all night and all day yesterday . . . and all the day before, etc.

Here are some of the finished results for this year.  These were for some cousins in Montana, made to match one I made for their son two years ago.  These are all just craft felt on denim, cut by hand, assembled by hand, painted by hand, and sewn down along every edge by hand.  Even the letters are cut by hand from printed templates and hand beaded.

I'm starting to feel like it's giving me carpal tunnel issues.  I wouldn't recommend this kind of minute hand-stitching to anyone who has a life.  These were actually finished a few weeks ago, but I had a hard time getting decent pictures with the lighting around here.  Now I'm frantically working on two more which are even more elaborate, each with several celtic knots.  Imagine sewing all along the borders of a celtic knot.  

Yeah, it takes about 12-24 man-hours each.  We haven't quite figured out when during the course of all this the housework is supposed to get done.  The dog feels neglected.

It's not that I mind doing it, but deadlines are a killer.  Sometimes I would just rather do something else for a while.