Incoherent Scribblings

The Year in Review

2004 was a very busy stitching year for me. I just did a quick count and I have finished 29 pieces so far this year. Currently I have three works in progress, one of which I will most likely finish before the end of the year. (You can see almost everything I have ever stitched in my cross stitch gallery!)

Most of the pieces that I did this year were small (around 3″ wide by 3″ tall). I like variety when I stitch and until sometime around September of this year, I didn’t work with a rotation system. I did one piece at a time until it was done. (The “One Piece, One Finish” system as I like to call it.) As a consequence, I did lots and lots of small pieces.

A couple of different times I got in a “mood” and did a series of something and as a result, I now have the “English/German Fruit Series” and the “Black Cat Series.” Though I stitched each piece in both of these series on individual fabric squares, I now wish I had planned ahead with these series and did them all on a larger piece of fabric. Oh well…

As it is, even though I still have one more to do the “Black Cat Series,” the first three are framed and hang in my bedroom. I have a matching frame and space on the wall for the fourth one and hope to do it soon.

The Fruit Series, on the other hand, is just in a bag waiting for me to get inspired and do something creative with it. I had thought about putting it together in some sort of book and giving it to my niece (who I have inundated with English/German things), but if I do that I would like to do some more fruit to make it worth the while.

This year also marked my conversion from Aida cloth to Evenweave fabric. At first I didn’t like Evenweave and was constantly miscounting, but after a while I got used to it and then there was no going back. In some ways, I think working with small projects as I made the change from Aida to Evenweave was a very smart move. Since the projects themselves weren’t very big, if I miscounted I could rip it out quickly and fix my mistakes.

While I was learning all about Evenweave, I still did my bigger projects on Aida. However, in March, I decided to start “Cat in the Garden” and do it on Evenweave. After stitching on it for a couple of weeks I had miscounted so much that I had to rip out a fairly large section. I got fed up with it and threw it in my “I Hate This Piece” pile and figured I would never finish it.

I was in a bit of a stitching funk at that time because I was still trying to work under the “One Piece, One Finish” system. I didn’t cross stitch for about a month and a half. Finally, I picked up some cloth again and went back to stitching my small stuff.

I happily did that until I started regularly reading some stitching blogs. When I saw the variety of pieces you all do and how most of you work on a rotation system, I decided to give it a shot. I started out with a ten hour rotation system, which quickly turned into a fifteen hour rotation system, which quietly turned into what I am now using: the Screaming Rotation — I work on what I want for how long I want with the condition that I can’t have more than five projects at once started and I must finish things. It has worked quite well so far and the best part about it is that I finally finished “Cat in Garden.” (Actually, once I picked “Cat in Garden” back up it went fairly quickly because by then I had worked on Evenweave long enough that I wasn’t making as many counting mistakes as I did at first.)

Currently, I am working on “Passing Admirers,” “Brooke’s Baby’s Sampler,” and “You are never too old for a Teddy Bear.” Tentatively, my goal for the new year is to have “Passing Admirers” done by spring, “Brooke’s Baby’s Sampler” done as soon as possible, and “You are never too old…” done before New Year’s Eve (2004). I already have one small project (the final “Black Cat”) and two large new projects lined up for next year, but won’t start them until I at least get the baby sampler done.