Come to a bloody end

At exactly three pm on Thursday, 3 June, as I made the last blanket stitch on the Antarctic continent, the needle slipped and scratched my finger deeply. Blood welled up onto the thread and spotted the edge of the blanket. I had been embroidering in a distracted fashion, aware that I was almost finished but not counting the stitches left, so the pain and blood brought my attention dramatically to the beginning of the end.

The blanket stitching that covers the whole continent is completed but there's still many hours of work left to finish and prepare Antartica for its future life as an art object instead of my obsessive love interest. The embroidery is the part I most enjoy, although I'm not immune to the satisfaction inherent in the next stages. So the bloodstained final stitch was a bitter sweet moment, and I admit tears pricked my eyes once I had cleaned up my finger and tied off the last thread, and looked over what I have accomplished in the past seven months.