SBQ: Love and Hate

It's been almost a week since I posted, and that's partially because I haven't been stitching much this week. We've had landscape contractors here, ripping out shrubs & weeds, and fixing the flower beds so I can repopulate them with nicer things! Anyway, on to stitching!

I'm so far behind on SBQ's (Stitching Bloggers' Questions), I won't even try to catch up! This week's question applies to one of my current projects, though, so it's getting me back into answering SBQ's!

This week's SBQ was suggested by The Wagon:

What do you love to do that many people hate? What do you hate to do, but do anyway?

All right, I'm strange, but I find french knots very easy, and really like doing them. It seems that so many people avoid french knots or replace them with beads or other types of knots!

For the record, I make french knots with one wrap around the needle (although most diagrams show two), and sink the needle just a little bit away from where the thread came up through the fabric. Maybe some people don't like them because they try to go back down in the same hole and the knot slips to the back of the fabric. That would frustrate me, too! Try moving over a bit (or over 1 thread of linen/canvas) when bringing the needle to the back, and it becomes very easy!

Here are my most recent additions to Fantasy Remembered - french knot raspberries:

I've even picked up one of Theresa Layman's kits (Snow White, Rose Red) that is nothing but french knots!

As for what I hate to do - that's easy! BACKSTITCHING! I'll do it if it's just a bit here and there, but nothing will make me put a cross stitch chart down faster than tons of backstitch to define the shapes in the picture. It's as if the designer has never heard of shading. And if the backstitching is used as a separate element, like a tendril on a vine, I'll stitch that in double-running so the thread on the back doesn't show through to the front.