Incoherent Scribblings

I used to claim that I was a pretty selfish stitcher, but it appears that 2006 was an exception. Of everything I stitched, I only kept four pieces for myself. The rest were done as part of a round robin or given as part of an exchange or to my family. (You can see pictures of any and all of the following happy dances in my gallery.)

Kept for myself:

1. Home of Needleworker
2. Catch the Wind
3. Stiefmütterchen
4. I Love My Cat

Given to someone in my family:

1. Baby’s 1st Christmas
2. Oakley’s Dragonfly
3. Spring Basket
4. Christmyth Unicorn
5. Little Feet Baby Sampler

Round Robins:

1. 2 rounds SBRR
Keeping the Eggs Dry
Autumnology Scarecrow
2. 2 rounds SBSRR
Christmas Eve
Spring Chair
3. 3 rounds RNRR 4
Lizzie*Kate Spring Square
Winter Square
Autumn Heart
4. 2 rounds RNRR 1
Sunflowers
Edwina Hedgehog

Exchanges:

1. SBEBB Birthday Exchange
Wheelbarrow for Melissa
Heart Needlebook for Cathy
2. Nature’s Beauty Birdhouse – Garden Exchange
3. Bent Creek Signs of Spring – Spring Exchange
4. Friends Count (modified) – Friendship Exchange
5. Flip Flops Rock – Summer Exchange
6. Chef’s Hat – Recipe Exchange
7. Sun Needleroll – Needleroll Exchange
8. Cats in Charge – Crazy Cat Lady Exchange
9. My Thread… – Scissor Fob Exchange
10. Winter’s Eve – Stocking Stuffer Exchange

Total 2006 Finishes: 29

Of course, here is the interesting part: In 2006 I only had five less finishes than in 2005 even though in the middle of the year I packed up my life and moved it back overseas. Not too shabby, I say.

I can’t stand it anymore! I really, really need to look into getting a new scanner ASAP because I absolutely hate photographing my stitching!

Before I left Germany, I scanned nearly everything because it gave a better view of my progress and because it was so much simpler and quicker. These days when I finally get something done or (gasp!) have a happy dance I have to make sure my batteries are charged, take 10+ pictures (two of which might be decent), download the pictures, and then crop and touch everything up before I can even think of posting them.

And then when I finally get all of that accomplished, I almost always get called away before I can get everything uploaded. So, take my word for it… I have been stitching. In fact, the night before Christmas I had my last happy dance of the year when I finished “Home of a Needleworker” and I have made some significant progress on “Fairy Flora.” And I promise, one of these days I will even have some pictures (or scans) to prove it!

I see from my blogroll that not only is it time for my monthly goal wrap-up, it is also time to look back at my 2006 stitching plan and see how I did. I think I will put my 2006 Stitching Plan Review in a separate post, but here is a quick recap of my December goals and an overview of what I want to accomplish in January:

For December I planned to:

1. Have the “Baby’s 1st Christmas Ornament” from The Victoria Sampler for my nephew stitched and finished by December 15. – Not quite. I finished everything up before Christmas though…
2. Start and finish(?) my Winter Quaker Exchange Piece. (Post date January 10) – I will be starting that today.
3. Participate in the Robin’s Nest December Stitch-A-Thon. Even though I didn’t post any progress pictures, I did participate.
4. Continue with the Robin’s Nest Ornie SAL – Yep!
5. Start a new round of my rotation. – Yep!
6. Finish “Home of a Needleworker” by the end of the year. – Yep! Last Happy Dance of the Year!
7. Stitch for an hour a day. – Nope. I was just too busy.

Now for January, I plan to:

1. Finish and mail my Winter Quaker Exchange Piece. (Post date January 10)
2. Participate in the Robin’s Nest January Stitch-A-Thon.
3. Continue working through my rotation.
4. Get ready to start my “Romantic Stitcher” SAT with Cathy.
5. Choose my pattern for the Biscornu Exchange at the Robin’s Nest and if I have time, make a practice one.

And my final goal for January… buy a new scanner!

Today’s story actually started a couple of weeks ago when I found out that we would be going to my cousin’s on Saturday, December 23.

My cousin’s oldest daughter’s birthday is on that day, so along with Christmas, she was going to have a birthday party this year. A person with a birthday so close to Christmas is likely to cause confusion for any family, but in my family it causes extra headaches because not only is my aunt divorced from my cousin’s father, my cousin is no longer with her oldest daughter’s father. As a result, there are always two extra families involved with this particular birthday.

Most of the time my cousin separates the birthday party from the Christmas party for her daughter, but for whatever reason that was not the case this year. It was therefore decided that my family wouldn’t do the Christmas part of the party until after the other two families left the birthday party since neither my aunt nor my cousin are on the best of terms with their respective exes.

This was all well and good, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, it was then decided that we would only unwrap presents to and from my cousin’s family and the presents to and from my aunt, uncle, and youngest cousin would wait until Sunday when they were coming to my mom’s house. Silly and confusing I know, but no one asked my opinion!

So then on Sunday, my aunt, uncle, youngest cousin, sister, niece, and nephew arrived at Mom’s house to unwrap presents. Mom and I thought that my sister was going to bring all the presents for everyone but my dad’s family to Mom’s house, but somewhere along the way our wires got crossed and my sister was under the impression that Mom, Stepdad, and I were coming to her house Christmas morning and exchanging our presents there.

Granted, my sister only lives two blocks down from Mom so we could have gone down and got the presents, but then Mom decided it sounded like a good idea to go to Sis’s on Christmas morning because she wanted to see what Santa brought the grandkids anyway. So once again we decided to only unwrap part of the presents.

The present confusion finally got sorted out last evening with Mom, Stepdad, and I planning to go down to my sister’s this morning to have a little Christmas with the kids and with me staying at my sister’s house until Dad, Stepmom, and Stepsister came for lunch and more presents.

I went to bed last night not with visions of sugar plums in my head, but thoughts of my tasty cream of broccoli soup since I had been “volunteered” to make it for lunch.

I was even awake this morning when the phone rang: It was my sister informing me that Christmas at her house had been canceled… Due to the fact that my niece had gotten sick in the night.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope yours was less confusing than mine!

With six days to go before Christmas I have finally finished the Baby’s 1st Christmas ornament for my sister/nephew!

While I had planned on giving the ornament to my sister early enough so she could hang it on the tree, I need to confer with my mom as to exactly when I should give it to her. I could give it to her as early as tomorrow, but we are having Christmas with my mom’s side of the family on Saturday and I was actually thinking of giving it to her then… that way a bunch of people could ooh and ahh over it… hee hee

This was the first time I have tried a finishing method that was anything but square and I am pleasantly pleased with the results. I don’t think that the back of the ornament got centered as neatly as the front side, but once the cording was added I doubt it is noticeable to anyone but me. (We are always our own worst critics, aren’t we? )

And as my Christmas present to my readers, I remembered to photograph the process and have added a new tutorial entitled “Padded Shape Ornie” to my sidebar. Enjoy!

It isn’t ornamentified yet, but as you can see, the stitching for “Baby’s 1st Christmas” is complete. This was a quick stitch and I should have been done a few days earlier, but between being sick most of last week and spending time with a new friend, I haven’t been stitching as much as I had planned to at the beginning of the month. I am still aiming to do the finishing so I can give it to my sister before Christmas, but we’ll see… I do have some Christmas parties to attend after all!

In other show and tell news, I also received my Stocking Stuffer Exchange piece. This little snowflake ornament was stitched for me by Cathy and is hanging proudly on our otherwise gaudily decorated Christmas tree. (My niece helped me decorate the tree last weekend and we put so many ornaments and lights on the tree I am surprised it hasn’t tipped over yet! )

After we finished decorating the tree on Sunday, my sister asked me to watch my niece for a few hours so she could wrap presents. Because I am a cool aunt and because I wanted to keep her occupied, I asked her what she wanted to do while we were hanging out. Imagine my delight when she told me “cross stitch!”

I didn’t know how serious she was about “real” stitching, but I pulled out some 14ct Aida and found a beginner pattern anyway. I told her if we were going to stitch we were going to do it the right way and I was very impressed with the results: Not only did she seem to catch on to the proper ex-ing technique very quickly, I also managed to keep her attention for about 2 dozen correctly made stitches (about half the dragonfly’s tail) before she got distracted and rearranged the colors in my bobbin box.

After she went home I decided to take a few hours to finish up the pattern we had started so that I can frame it and give it to her for Christmas.