Incoherent Scribblings

Maggie Progress and Rotation Thoughts

Today I passed the 100 hour mark (actually I am at 104 hours) on “Passing Admirers!” Maggie now has a head, hair, and a hat. I feel really good about the momentum I have going with this piece and think that I am about 70% done with it. I don’t think I should have any problem finishing it by September.

However, working so intently on “Passing Admirers” has got me to thinking about my rotation again. I can’t decide if I have become a screamer with a focus (Heh, that sounds kinda funny…) of if I am a OAATer.

Sometimes I think that I am more of a one-at-a-timer at heart: After all, I used to be a very strict OAATer. No matter how large or small a piece was I would work on it until I was finished. I did lots of small pieces because I liked variety and I never even entertained the thought of rotating.

When I bought “Passing Admirers” though, I started pondering the idea of rotating. As much as I wanted to stitch it I was afraid that if I tried only to stitch it I would become bored and go into a stitching slump.

And so my rotation was born. At first I tried to rotate using the famous 10 hour system, but it didn’t work for me at all. Though I liked keeping track of how many hours I stitched, the whole system felt too scattered and constrained and it quickly fell apart. For quite sometime I have just been doing a screaming rotation and while it worked for me, I found that some pieces were quite neglected.

That is when I tacked a “focus piece” into the mix. It seems to be working well: I have gotten a lot done on my focus piece and still have other projects to work on if I get bored. However, since most of my stitching time is ending up on the focus piece, should I consider myself a OAATer again?

Funny… just as I was pondering this very issue, it comes up on the Rotation Stitchers’ Bulletin Board. One response to this was to look at stitching on a continuum with the strict OAATer on one end and the hard-core rotators on the other. From that point of view then, I would say that I am probably half way to the half way point. (ha ha)

All in all I guess it doesn’t really matter: The important thing isn’t what to call myself, but what I eventually accomplish!

Round Robin Rant

In January, I decided I wanted to join the world of Round Robins. When I was doing my research about them, one of the first things mentioned was that you should do a round robin with people you “know.” (In real life or from a BB you frequent.)

At that point, I didn’t frequent the boards, but I knew a blogger that was promoting a new International Round Robin group, so I signed up for it and immediately got involved. It seemed all was going well, except on our first posting date one lady wasn’t finished and sent her robin only partially completed.

From then on this particular lady was a round robin participant’s nightmare: On the next post date she was also not finished with her round and claimed on the post date that she was still waiting for floss! Luckily, she finished that piece and sent it on, though it was a week late.

Then about a week before the third post date she sent us an email saying she was dropping out. A flurry of activity ensued concerning sending her robin back to her, whether or not we needed a substitute stitcher, and that she was sending the robin she was supposed to have been working on to the next person without putting a stitch into it! Just as we were getting things ironed out, she sent another email saying that she hadn’t meant to drop out of our robin!!

Then another lady apparently lost her email access and we haven’t heard from her since the first post date. I was getting my packages from her and while I received the first two, I haven’t received anything since. I finally resorted to writing her a snail mail letter inquiring what was going on, but still haven’t heard from her.

Since I wasn’t having a great experience with this group, but still wanted to do a round robin, I signed up for another round robin elsewhere. This was organized by a board I frequented, but since the board is large, the people that signed up for the robin with me were strangers.

Our first post date was June 10 and already there are problems. The person who is supposed to post to me is late (even though she did let me know that she would be late) and the person that gets my packages is a little boy of 9. Now, I had reservations in letting him participate to begin with, but thought I would give him the benefit of the doubt. However, I got a message from him yesterday saying he won’t be stitching on my robin because he “doesn’t stitch that way”… whatever that means!

Even so, those frustrations have not turned me away from round robins. However, I have learned my lesson and from now on will only being doing robins with people I “know.” And that is how it came about that I set up a blogger’s round robin with Cathy, Jo, Dawn, and Vash.

Though we aren’t posting for the first time until September, everyone is really excited and we have been emailing each other like crazy discussing, fabric, layouts, themes, and everything else. This is what I wanted a round robin to be like and I can’t wait to get started!

Turning Point

Finally! A real post!

A little over a year ago I went on my first bra shopping expedition here in Germany. It turned out much better than I had anticipated, so a few weeks later when I decided it was time to buy some new panties (for you Brits out there, please insert “knickers” here), I was hoping that I would have similar good fortune.

I have mentioned the style of panties that I prefer to wear before: I suppose the best way to describe them would be “string bikinis.” The biggest difference between “string bikinis” and thongs is that “string bikinis” have material that covers your ass. Thongs, on the other hand, only have a wisp of material and it is specifically designed to go up your ass.

For me, this is a very important difference and has long been the deciding factor for my preference between the two. Of course, the advantage of a thong is that you have no VPL (visible panty line), but even with that argument in favor of a thong, I still had a hard time convincing myself to buy a pair of panties that went up my ass on purpose!

That isn’t to say I didn’t own a thong or two. But they were special; I didn’t wear them on a daily basis. I didn’t like the feeling that something was going up my ass, so the only time I wore a thong was when I was fairly certain it would be coming off soon.
When I decided to go panty shopping for the first time here in Germany it wasn’t because I really needed new panties; I had brought a whole basketful of brand new ones with me from America when we came here. I just so happened to be in the mood to do some lingerie shopping at the time. I went back to the store where I had found my bras, but unfortunately I didn’t have such good luck with the panties.

As I browsed around, I discovered that unlike in America where there is a good balance between the selection of “string bikinis” and thongs, the selection here was skewed… in favor of the thongs! For every pair of “string bikinis” I saw, there were at least 10 thongs! Then I noticed the insane prices for these little triangles of material: 12 Euros was the average price for ONE thong!!

Because my American underwear was still in relatively good shape at the time, I only bought two new pairs of panties that day; a pair of “string bikinis” and a thong. I wasn’t too excited about the thong, but thought since the selection of thongs here was so much greater I would buy one to see if I could manage to get through the day wearing it.

I tried, but it was to no avail. I couldn’t manage to wear that thong for more than a few hours at a time without going crazy. I hated everything about it. It was cotton and I hate cotton underwear! When I looked in the mirror at my bum, I blamed the cellulite that has popped into my cheeks in recent years on the thong. Finally I buried that horrid thing underneath the clothing that I mean to get rid of one day and went back to happily wearing my “string bikinis.”

But in the past year, my basketful of “string bikinis” that I brought with me from America have begun to show their age. About a month ago, I surrendered to the fact that I must buy some new panties. I went to a store with more reasonably priced underwear this time and spent hours sifting through the thongs until I finally found a handful of “string bikinis.”

However, somewhere along the line a thong got into the mix somehow. Since it didn’t cost too much I didn’t take it back. It just sat in my closet and I thought I might wear it one night if I was feeling frisky.

Well, yesterday I decided to wear a pair of white capris and when I looked in the mirror I was aghast at my VPL. It was then that I came to a crossroad: I could either try to ignore the VPL (which as most women will tell you, even if no one else notices something like that it will bother you because you know it’s there) or I could try a thong one last time.

I decided for the thong. I pulled the new thong out of the closet, determined to ignore the sensation that something was going up my ass. The material of this thong was much silkier than the one I bought a year ago, the “thong” part was much thinner, and amazingly I was able to wear it all day with only the slightest notion that I needed to pull something out of my ass. In fact it didn’t really bother me that much at all

I think I may have reached a turning point: There just might be another thong or two in my future.

No Stitch Designs

Hot off the heels of asking if there are any designers you stitch just to say you have stitched one of his/her designs, comes a great question from Cathy and that is:

Are there any types of designs that you won’t stitch?

As a matter of fact, yes there are. I am Agnostic and will not stitch any religious design (with the exception of “Noah’s Ark,” but only because I love the story.)

As a general rule I don’t celebrate Christmas, so I don’t typically stitch designs with a Christmas theme either. (Even though I did recently buy that “Patchwork Santa.”)

I am not too fond of “LizzieKate-type” designs and in most cases I would refuse to stitch them. I find them rather simplistic and feel like I could design them myself if I wanted to. I also don’t really care for the style or amount of writing on them. However, if I ever come across one that I liked, I would stitch it.

I think that is about it though. If this question had been asked at this time last year, in addition to the above answers I would have replied that I don’t stitch anything with a finished size larger than 5″x7″, but that has changed and I am glad! There are so many beautiful large designs out there that I think I was really limiting myself.

A Quick Post

Since I last posted I have had some major blog issues. Most of the problems are behind the scenes, so you probably haven’t noticed much difference except that layout is different. (This is temporary.)

Though I am still in the process of ironing out these issues, I have managed to get a good start on Maggie. After nine hours, her bodice and arms are done. I will be giving her a head next. I will try to post a progress picture soon, but meanwhile you can see my progress on Maggie in my gallery.