It’s the end of June….

2020 is half over. How many are excited to see it end?

Wipocalypse 2020 Question is how are you doing on the goals you set for yourself at the beginning of the year?

How many of you feel like January was more than 6 months ago? How many feel like real life ended in March and you’ve been in either hibernation or a horror movie for the last 3 months?

I feel like I’ve been in hibernation. I went into quarantine with plans to stitch like crazy while on work from home meetings. It wasn’t 2 weeks in when my kids suggested that I get a switch lite to help with stress reduction. I told them I wasn’t stressed. My oldest son told me to sit down and explained that even if I thought I wasn’t stressed, this was the first time he’s ever seen me swear while trying to thread needles.

So I bought a Switch Lite and Animal Crossing New Horizons. I have a 5 star island and play daily which hasn’t helped my stitching time. I also haven’t done much writing or made a new floss tube video but I’ve been doing well at work and my team is amazing.

But for the last three months, I’ve been on auto drive. I’ve played video games and done not much else but work, eat food my amazing husband prepares. I’m up 10 pounds and I’m having problems with my hands and feet swelling and going numb while I sleep. It’s partially menopause, partially stress, partially not drinking enough water and eating too much salt, and sleeping in a way that impinges the ulnar nerve. It makes me not want to stitch much.

I started the year with goals to participate in WIPGO 2020, the purple peppermint Blackwork SAL and plans to finish several large WIPs this year.

As far as I’ve done on Purple Peppermint Blackwork SAL

I didn’t actually start the Purple Peppermint SAL in January but everyone’s work started looking so good, I couldn’t resist anymore and I started it and then I didn’t like the way it was looking and I stopped. I had forgotten that Blackwork works better worked from a diagonal, horizontal or vertical pattern. I know it will get better after I finish the first row and roll the fabric but for the moment, I’m having trouble motivating myself to work on it.

My first start of quarantine and what I work on when not gaming.

I thought it might help to have a project near my desk for when meetings got boring. Considering that I started it the end of March, it has some progress but not as much as it could have been.

The only thing finished during quarantine which isn’t a video game.

I did actually finish something though. This square was on my WIPGO list and I did actually complete it, looking at my chart I finished it May 6, 2020.

I have done at least a 1000 new stitches on this during the year.

My WIPGO board had 1000 stitches per square on this project. I did finish 1000 stitches on June 1, 2020 but I’m behind by 2 squares so it still needs 2000 stitches for me to be caught up. However, I look at it and I just can’t seem to motivate myself. In fact, in an attempt to motivate myself to stitch more, I started this Waxing Moon Designs.

My 2nd quarantine start

Here’s hoping that I can start waking up out of this hibernation and actually start getting things accomplished towards the goals that I set back in January. However, I’m not really planning on accomplishing much this year if it continues the way it has since March.

Choices for the next WIP to work on…

I am hours away from finishing Fruit Bell Pull by Teresa Wentzler.  I probably won’t finish it tonight but it will be finished tomorrow.  I have only a little backstitching and the border on the last block left.  That means it’s time to pick the next project or decide to move to an active rotation.

Being the data geek that I am I have multiple options when I sort my spreadsheet. If I go with the oldest projects I’m looking at Pegasus started in 1982.

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OR Rainbow Unicorn started in 1983

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or if I stick with Cross-stitch Dragon Ride from 2000

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If I sort by Percentage complete, I’m looking at the Dr. Who Quilt
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Or The French purse kit I inherited from my Grandma
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If I go with projects with the fewest remaining stitches. Those would be Tempest and Ecology
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Or I go with the Carousel Horses which are on the highest count fabric and my eyesight is going. (Summer is the closest to complete)
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It’s a good thing that I have an evening to decide what to work on next.

However, suggestions are appreciated.

Stitch May-nia results as of May 22

There is still one week of my May-nia left for this year but This is what I’ve accomplished: AutumnQueen2016
Mirabilia’s Autumn Queen 4.5 hours close to 1000 stitches
Overdyed Dragon
OverDyed Dragon by Dragon Dreams 2.75 hours
DrWho
Dr. Who Quilt 1.5 hours
FruitBellpull
Fruit Bellpull by Theresa Wentzler 1.5 hours
SomethingWicked
Something Wicked by La-D-Da
FortunateTraveller
Fortunate Traveller by Theresa Wenztler 1.25 hours stitching 1 hour sorting pattern
Tidepools
Reflections of TidePools by Ro Pace – 2 hours
Fall Carousel
Fall Carousel Horse by Theresa Wentzler 1 hour
Not pictured
Anniversary Roses by Lauren Sauer
Bucilla Purse Kit from 1943
Final picture –
Mardi Gras Quilt I’m working on…20160522_194808

For more information on my new stitching process – check out my new blog – Agile Crafter

 

Wednesday WIP report – end of the month…

And here is a full finish, not only is the stitching is done I’ve framed it too.

Circus Carousel by Threaded Treasures

Circus Carousel by Threaded Treasures

This was a kit someone gave me and I held onto it for quite sometime. Then when I was doing some cleaning, I noticed some bug had left me a present on the fabric. I washed it and started the kit hating every moment of it because the fabric was cut so that I had to work with the weft on the vertical instead of on the horizontal. There is a reason that they tell you to stitch with the selvage on the side.
Anyway I got close to the end and realized that the kit only came with 2 buttons for the carousel animals instead of three and to add insult to injury the two buttons the kit did have faced different directions. Any Carousel fan knows that all the animals face the same direction. If they didn’t people would be riding backward. So I went to the Craft Center to get a replacement for the one that I didn’t have and they had an elephant which was facing the direction I needed. The shop owner was nice enough to trade the button from the kit for the one which was facing the correct direction.
This now means that I have no small projects going at all. Everything is medium or large.

A two and a half hour delay….

That’s right, I’m supposed to be working on fiscal reporting analysis for a client but I’ve already established that there is a disconnect between the checks issued list and the SQL reports, why can’t they kick it back to the report writer to figure out where she screwed up.  No, I have to go find what isn’t working for a SQL report when I don’t have database access or access to the report query.

So given this situation, what did I do – Put together the preliminary rotation for next year.  I have 42 total slots.  Yes, I know that is just far too many for a true rotation but I haven’t figured out a decent way to name things that would be a 5 to 10 slot rotation besides, I’m trying to look at everything I have in progress without starting anything new and if I gave slots to the type of craft then I wouldn’t hit everything before I could give myself more excuses to start new things  It’s not like I hit everything this year but, with this list I have hope, right?

If any of the rotation experts that see this have suggestions, I would love to hear them.  So without further ado, here is the the preliminary work list for 2014….

Slot Style Project Designer
1 Crochet Camo Afghan
2 Cross-stitch Be Naughty/ Too Late? Lizzie Kate
3 Cross-stitch Fruit Bell Pull TW
4 Piecing Dr. Who SAL Quilt Fandom in Stitches
5 GFJ PROJECT
6 Needlepoint Dragon Doorstop Dragon Dreams
7 Cross-stitch Summer Carousel Horse TW
8 Blackwork Blackwork Dragon Dragon Dreams
9 FUPPY
10 Piecing Jungle Quilt
11 Cross-stitch Autumn Queen Mirabilia
12 Embroidery Pegasus Dimensions
13 Cross-stitch Autumn Carousel Horse TW
14 Needlepoint Purse Kit from Mamas
15 Cross-stitch Fire and Ice (Kustom Krafts) KK
16 Crochet 63 Square Afghan
17 NEW PROJECT
18 Piecing Monster Quilt – hand turned
19 Piecing Monster Quilt – iron on
20 Cross-stitch Spring Carousel Horse TW
21 Embroidery Knotty Sheep EGA
22 Weaving Varigated Warp fabric
23 FUPPY
24 Piecing Garden Path
25 Cross-stitch Dragon Ride TW
26 Needlepoint Stars for a New Millennium Tony Mineri
27 Cross-stitch Sentinel Fire Wings Design
28 FUPPY
29 Piecing Star Struck Mystery Traditional
30 Embroidery Rainbow Unicorn Dimensions
31 Cross-stitch Fortunate Traveller TW
32 Piecing Scrap Pieced Wandering Foot
33 Cross-stitch O Christmas Tree MLI
34 FUPPY
35 Needlepoint Tide Pools Ro Pace
36 Piecing Mama’s UFO – Good Housekeeping
37 Cross-stitch Main Street: Crafter’s Paradise Marie Barber (JCS)
38 Needlepoint Victorian Stocking Peter Ashe
39 Piecing Mama’s UFO – Bonnie’s Quilt
40 Cross-stitch The Circus Carousel Threaded Treasures
41 Piecing Oriental Kaleidoscope
42 NEW PROJECT

A few clarifications:  FUPPY is my stack of Finished Unfinished projects – there are many of these that need to be worked on – a quilt on the quilt frame, ornaments, bellpulls, etc.  So for every 5 to 6 fun projects, I need to completely finish a finished object.  I know myself well enough to know that I will want some new starts during the year if only because I look at what I have and nothing screams “Work on me!”  and besides Salt Lake Comic Con is having a Star Trek Next Generation reunion and I want to make a signature block quilt if I can get them all.

Also, if I get myself in gear, #1 will be completed before New Years hits and maybe a good chunk of #2 but we’ll see.

Thoughts, Suggestions?

Wednesday WIP post (on time for once)

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So here is my progress for this week.  Apples are almost done and the leaves have progressed nicely. I didn’t have any scroll bars free so I’ve been working on it with a hoop and I left the hoop on the other night and I’ll need to do some ironing before I move to the next square. For a TW and limited stitching time it’s been moving quick.

Pulling out a really old WIP

It’s TWOctober – this means working on one of the numerous Teresa Wentzler patterns I have already started.  For the past several years, it’s been the Carousel Horses but this year, I pulled out Fruit Bellpull.  I’m not sure why.  It’s an ancient piece and I haven’t worked on it for almost a decade (I think the last stitches were in 2004) but there are reasons for that. See back when I cared what my husband’s sister thought and when I was trying to be nice to his family since he was trying to be nice to mine, I agreed to stitch Fruit Bellpull for his sister.  She bought all the supplies with the help of a friend who wouldn’t stitch it for her and gave them to me to work on for her.  She bought Lugana as the fabric.  Well, I don’t stitch on evenweave – I’m a linen girl.  So I would work on it and then rotate it out as soon as I could.

Then came the year after DH’s mother died when his sister could not be bothered to come to the door to get her Christmas gifts and she changed her number without telling us and started sending her bill collectors to our door.  Yeah, gotta love family.  So I put up the bellpull and forgot about it.  Although I did send it out for a round with a UFO exchange.

This year however, it’s been calling to me.  And I’m finding that with my deteriorating sight, evenweave is actually pleasant to work on.  I don’t need the magnifier I can use my reading glasses and see it just fine.  I’ve done quite a bit of work this week. I’ll see if I can find a picture of what it looked like before I started but if not, we’ll just start posting progress pics from where I am now.

And I may have to rethink my opinions on evenweave as a medium.

Remember that Lost purple ornament?

Remember when I talked about how my Local Needlepoint Shop lost my ornament found it and offered to do the finishing free?

Well all during December and January I call and left messages asking if my ornament were finished and kept hearing that “No, it’s not here.”  Well, in April I went in person to the shop and asked the shop owner if my ornament was ever coming back from the finisher.  She went over to her ornament display and picked it off the tree and said, “Oh it came back in November, I wondered why you didn’t come pick it up.”

I am proud of myself for not screaming at her.  Instead, I used my store credit to get a piece of canvas for a beta stitching project that I’m working on – pictures to follow.

However, I now have no reason to ever set foot in that shop again unless I’m really desperate for a fiber I can’t find anywhere else and it’s during their sporadic business hours.  However, I’ll probably do better asking 123 Stitch if I can’t come over and do an emergency pickup.

Sorry to lose a designer but, now I can post this again.

Several years ago, I stitched Morning Song for a wedding present for my sister T.  However, I customized some of the colors.  See my sister married a ginger haired man and was looking forward to having red-headed kids.  So I made the children red heads.  Well, that meant that I had to change the color of the dress because it’s just silly to put a ginger in pink.

Once I had done that, I wanted to make the mother look more like my sister so I swapped the blonde from the mother’s hair with the browns in the trees behind her so I have a brunette with ginger kids in front of an aspen grove.

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I was rather happy with the result because I was still new to pattern modification.  I posted the picture on my website when the gallery still worked.  I named the picture and the designer and listed what changes I had made to the original pattern.  After all, that’s what we’re supposed to do to honor the copyright, correct?   Well I got an email asking me to cease and desist showing the picture or legal action would follow.  I sent an email back asking why, what was I doing wrong since I had done everything I knew to protect the designer’s rights.  I was told since I hadn’t followed the design exactly the copyright holder was offended and wanted it removed.  I was broke in those days and didn’t have money for a legal fight so I removed it.

Since the recent death of the designer in question, I’ve heard examples of the copyright agent for the estate giving permission for posting images which were previously denied.  So I feel safe publishing my finished work of the Lavender and Lace Morning Song pattern again.