Why I should not sew after 10 p.m.

Yup.  Last night I sat down to finish the patchwork crocodile.

It was almost completed, right at the stage where I tend to push a project aside and leave it (when all I need to do is sit with it for another hour or so and it would be done).

So I'm plugging away at the crocodile.  Let me just pause to say attaching limbs directly to the seam (where you tuck them inside the item while you sew it then turn and POOF, the limbs are there all perfectly attached) always causes me grief.  Its like I get blunt force head trauma and just can not figure it out.  Well, I can figure it out (in the sense that I know what to do) but I have to physically do it (like pin and then do a fake turn out to make sure it's right) more than once before I finally get it right.  Last night was pretty typical.  I pinned the legs where I wanted them then quasi-turned the piece to see how the legs would face.  And of course they were wrong.  So I re-pinned then basted the front set on.  Gave a quick mini-turn and. . .they were facing the wrong direction.  Tore the basting out and re-basted.  Finally they were right.  Then I had to go through almost the same production for the rear legs (only this time I didn't have to baste twice).

Once I finally got the legs on and the whole body sewn, turned, stuffed, and closed it was on to the face.  I dutifully finger pressed the seams under and held them to the body to find the placement and then stitched them on.  They looked fabulous.  Then it was on to the stitched teeth.

I labored to get all the stitching done (using yarn and a fat eye needle) and it looked quite good if I do say so myself.  As I'm holding the finished piece up and examining it I wonder aloud if it needs nostrils (something not in the original pattern).  So I even put some nostrils on.

I turn it to show it off to my spouse and then I notice something odd.

The legs are backwards.

WHAT?  How on earth could they still be backwards when I took so much time to make sure they were right and. . .

They were right.

It was the FACE that was wrong.

I had put all the facial features on the butt.

My crocodile was a butt fah-say (that's how my wife and I say "face"--fah-say, it's classier that way).

So I spent the next ten minutes doing a fac-ectomy on my christmas crocodile's butt.

This is why I shouldn't sew after 10 p.m.