The Tree of Life has been planted!

It's January.  It's the time of the year when I am looking for something to lie in my lap and keep me warm while I am making it.  Hopefully, it will turn out pretty enough to enter in the annual woman's club arts and crafts show.  I try to enter a watercolor or an acrylic piece for the fine arts category and a crocheted piece for the crafts side of the show.

I have both my pieces for this year ready to go on Wednesday this coming week.

I worked last night and today on next year's crocheted piece.

This is what I hope my "Tree of Life turns out like:

I have completed the first 3 rows of the tree pattern and the FPDC (Front Post Double Crochet) stitches have were just as easy as I remember them being. HOWEVER, the BPDC (back post double crochet) stitches have been a total bitch.  

I was on row two of the tree pattern counting under my breath as I tried to crochet through the row when my adorable husband came in and sat down.  Not realizing what I was doing (though I am not sure it would have mattered), he proceed to read an article about the competition between Rory McIlroy's competition with Tiger Woods -- complete with how many competitions one or the other would win.  He threw out numbers of wins over different periods of time.  So I kept losing count and having to rip out my stitches and start over again.  I started to laugh and finally just put my work down until he was finished.

Did it upset me?  No, it didn't.

Because I thank God every day of my life that he saw fit to bring this man into my life.  So what are a few stitches I have to crochet over again in the big scheme of things?  Nada. 

When I started laughing he asked me what I found so amusing and I told him I had been trying to count while he was reading out all those stats. He said, "I thought you had that little electronic gadget to do that for you?"

This is what he is referring to:

I told him that I still need to count stitches in my head while I am in the row because I cannot stop between each stitch to press the button to record the stitch.  (Yes, my friends, another gadget.  You do know me, after all.)

At four rows into the tree pattern, this is what mine looks like as it sits in my yarn bowl:

I did conquer the BPDC stitch after a little while.  It is more difficult than the front stitch -- as most back stitches are.  And I had not done it in a long time.  Thank goodness for Youtube videos! 

It's Saturday night.  We're going to check Amazon Prime for something we haven't watched previously and, hopefully, no one will be calling out numbers while I am trying to count my stitches.