Unfinished business, part 1

A couple of weeks ago while writing about my bedroom cleaning project , I mentioned discovering a some unfinished projects I had totally forgotten about.  This week I decided I needed to get at least one of them done.  This one to be exact:

I picked this stitchery project up over a year ago on a quilting shop hop with my sister in law.  I used to do a lot of cross stitching, and I loved how this kit incorporated stitching and painting. 

I decided to make the larger of the two projects:

Guess I should have known better and started smaller, but I just loved the full range of people and animals that are in this one.

I went and bought my supplies, which included this disappearing ink pen. 

I then traced the pattern onto the material.  This was kind of a pain because I have never been able to let myself spend the money on a light box.  I have really wanted one a couple of times, but have alway wondered if I would actually use it enough to justify the expense.  So for this project I waited for a sunny day and then taped the pattern and material on a window.  This turned out to be a bigger project than I had expected.

There's a lot of lines in this project!  But I pushed on, got the pattern traced and started to stitch.

Then I learned something unexpected about my disappearing ink pen.  It disappears faster than I can stitch.  I had spent all that time tracing, only to lose half of my markings before I was finished. 

I was so bummed.  Since it was no longer sunny outside, I decided it was time to take a break from my project.  I sat it on my craft table, and unfortunately didn't pick it up again until I was packing up some craft supplies.  So in the box it went, and I didn't really think about it until on time last month.  

I'm out of time for today, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to tell you more.