Why did I pick Train of Dreams?

Tonight I read a lovely comment by Melinda. She asked me why I picked Train of Dreams. As I was typing my answer it got pretty long, so I thought it would be better to make a full post of it.

Her question:
Melinda said...
I love your Train of Dreams - I also love using the 18 ct. I am new to your blog, so forgive me if I may repeat or ask questions you have already talked about. Can you tell me, is it the dragon? Or why Train of Dreams as a choice. I also have this chart - just wanting to compare notes.

I love answering questions and I never talked about my reasons so here goes:
I don't really know why I picked it. I am not a huge fan of dragons, but Sprangler's dragons are just very cute. I remember seeing the piece on a few blogs I was reading and I just loved the playfulness of it. Plus I love to read and Sprangler has lots of books in his pieces. At the time I was stitching a sampler. Nice but I wanted something different.

When I first visited the HAED website I thought maybe there were even better pieces. I found lots of them, but still I liked Train of Dreams more. I was captivated by the scene, the colors and the size of the piece. Most of HAED's patterns were so big, I was seriously afraid of them! I knew I had to pick a pattern that would motivate me to finish! I knew this would keep me motivated.

Also, my stepdaughter loves trains. We travel by train every weekend (I pick her up at my in-laws) and she is always very excited to go on the train with me. She also has a toytrain at my in-laws and at my place, she loves playing with them. She has autism and mentally she is much younger than her real age. When I saw Train of Dreams I knew this would get her exited and she would talk a lot about it. We need to train her communication skills and we follow her interests. If she wants to talk about the rug, we talk about the rug, if she wants to talk about her Playmobile figures, we talk about that.
When she first saw Train of Dreams she almost started to fly of excitement, she LOVED it. Especially when I told her this would be hers and we would hang it in her bedroom at my place. I don't know if she really understands it but I keep telling her it's hers. When she's here and I'm working on it while she's playing she always wants to look at it and count the books or talk about the dragon (she calls it a crocodile). She even helped with a few stitches! She still calls it "knitting" (my MIL knits and quilts). Only buying new shoes makes her happier LOL.

So I think it's a mix of everything: the colors, the cute dragon, the joy it brings to my stepdaughter, the books and the joy and piece of mind stitching gives me!