Today over on The Wagon I joined in a discussion concerning current stitching gripes. Though I griped a little bit about the fact that I still have not finished “Above the Clouds,” my main stitching gripe right now is that I somehow seem to have forgotten how to rotate my projects.
I don’t know why I do this to myself. I love it when I have a rotation and it is going places. I get so much accomplished and never get bored.
However, as I mentioned in my reply, the biggest problem I have with rotating is that when I perceive that I am close to finishing something I lose perspective and this stubborn little stitcher emerges and proclaims that she is not going to work on anything else until said project is complete. This attitude works great if I am within 10 hours of finishing the project but unfortunately I sometimes underestimate how many hours I have left and overestimate my enthusiasm for it.
In addition to this tunnel vision that I seem to acquire when I am almost finished with something, it seems to me that when I say a screaming rotation works for me I am just fooling myself. I won’t say I get nothing accomplished when I am using a screaming rotation, but (and I have admitted this before) I feel terribly unfocused.
Honestly I wish I had the luxury of going back to my daily rotation, but I have come to accept the fact that when working full-time I don’t always have a chance to stitch every day. Therefore I believe my best bet is to return to the ten-hour rotation that I implemented this summer. After all, before I got off track with the whole job/moving/working thing it was working rather well, so I can’t see any reason not to pick it back up again.
Sadly, I still have the exact same five projects in my rotation as I had six months ago when I started. 
But, as you will see below, at least I have made some progress on them.
On May 31, 2007, I posted my ten-hour rotation as follows:
- Above the Clouds (~50%)
- Spring Queen (0%)
- Fairy Flora (~65%)
- Four Seasons Cats, Summer (0%, 25%)
- Poet’s Heart (~20%)
As of today, my ten-hour rotation will have the following order:
- Fairy Flora (~75%)
- It has been quite a while since I worked on Flo (August maybe?) and I have really missed her.
- Poet’s Heart (~60%)
- Spring Queen (~5%)
- Four Seasons Cats (~30%)
- Last time I worked on this I abandoned the one cat at a time method and decided to work on them all.
- Above the Clouds (~90%)
- A pox on Confetti! I WILL finish him though! We have been through way too much for him to become a UFO!
I will probably revamp this in a month or so to include some things that I hope to stitch in 2008, but for now this is where I begin (again!).
Sue says:
Good luck with starting up your rotation again. I still go by the screaming project method, but have often wondered if I actually tried one like your 10 hr. method if I might get more done.
17 December 2007 at 21:14
Cathy says:
My rotation has totally evolved since I started. I also do not get to stitch every day. Rather than have a “on Monday I’ll stitch ‘A’ and on Tuesday I’ll stitch ‘B’” rotation, I have an order in which I stitch each piece. If I miss a day, I just continue down the list on whatever day I do get to stitch. It works for me.
18 December 2007 at 07:48
Tammy says:
Your thought process sounds similar to mine today. I just entered a blog entry stating almost the exact same thing, but different projects, of course.
Good luck on making some progress on your rotation. Remember, every stitch is one more closer to the finish.
18 December 2007 at 12:29
Jennifer says:
I have a rotation problem like you do. Working full-time, you don’t always have time to stitch every day. Instead of doing a 10 hour rotation though, what I do is a weekely rotation. One week I’ll work on project A, the next week I’ll work on project B, etc.
Currently I have 4 major projects going, so it works out nicely. Every project gets attention once a month.
Good luck!
18 December 2007 at 14:09
Kate says:
I’m a pretty strict 10-hour rotator (most of the time, at least). I find the best way to stick to my rotation is to be organised. I use the rotation spreadsheet, and keep all my WIPs in a folder along with the printed rotation sheet. I also have a timer to keep track of stitching time. It’s tedious getting organised, but I think it’s worth it.
18 December 2007 at 21:24