My mother hung my first ever cross stitch attempt in her living room soon after I had finished it and to tell the truth I was in no hurry to have another attempt at one so detailed. However, my mother's friend asked if I would cross stitch a design for her so that she could give it to her mother as a present.

I was so proud to be asked that I cheerfully agreed without even looking at the design she wanted or checking when she wanted it finished for. Needless to say I quickly found out that I had bitten off more than I could chew since the piece she wanted was an incredibly detailed rose alphabet sampler and she wanted it in only three months.

I sat down with the chart and tried to work out which stitches were which and which colors corresponded to which symbol but I quickly got lost so I panicked and bought the biggest cross stitch book I could find. This was a big help and I was soon stitching away but even though I was working on the design every evening I still didn't think I could get it finished in time, especially as I had to learn new stitches as I went along.

I tried and tried to understand the instructions for a French knot but regardless of how many times I attempted it I just couldn't master the stitch. I will admit to being very close to giving up entirely but I felt awful letting my mother's friend down.

Somebody suggested that I look on the internet for some information that might help but I went one better and found the details of a membership club in my local area that met once a week. They were delighted to have a new member and soon I was French knotting like I had been doing it for years but a few weeks after I had joined the club disaster struck.

One of the members who had been cross stitching for years just happened to look at my work while I was having a break and she quickly pointed out that not only was I using the wrong kind of stitch in a few places I was using the wrong colour thread!

Boy! Did I feel like crying? I seriously felt like giving up but my new friends rallied around and showed me how to carefully unpick the threads so that no damage was done.

In total I had to unpick about a quarter of what I had done and I felt awful but my friends came to the rescue and gave me lots of tips on how I could stitch more quickly and how I could be sure I was using the correct colour thread. They also knew of a supplier that sold the same thread as that I had unpicked so that I didn't run out at a crucial point.

All in all my friends at the cross stitch club were a fantastic help and quickly put me back on track so that my 'disaster' project didn't turn out to be quite as big a disaster as it could have been.

I have since learnt not to agree to cross stitch for anyone else unless you have seen the design and are happy with it and you know you will have plenty of time to complete it.

I did finish the disaster project on time but it was a very close call in the end. Even so my mother's friend was extremely happy with it and I even got paid a bonus!

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