Incoherent Scribblings

House Cleaning

Yesterday Dawn and I started our new SAL piece “Summer’s Magic” by Dragon Dreams. We hadn’t intended to have two SAL pieces going at the same time, but since we are still waiting for the Kreiniks to finish “Harvest Witch” it was either start something new or take a break from the whole SAL business. Of course, since neither one of us is usually opposed to starting something new, we chose that option!

Anyway…

Over the weekend I decided to clean house concerning my WIPs and moved a couple out of my rotation. Although I don’t really like having UFOs, one thing that a rotation has taught me is that if you have a project that you keep ignoring when it comes up in the rotation, perhaps you should examine why you keep ignoring said project.

In my case, the projects that I keep ignoring and have decided to move out of my rotation are “In Cupid’s Garden” and “Four Seasons Cats.”

I am not really sure why I haven’t wanted to work on “In Cupid’s Garden” since I began it during Guilt Free January, but I haven’t. I thought that if I ordered the beads for it I might get motivated to work on it, but that really didn’t help either. Therefore I have decided to remove from my rotation.

It isn’t a very large piece and I honestly think that if I get the urge to stitch it I can complete it in a relatively short amount of time. So instead of designating it as an official UFO, I am just going to let it be until I feel the need to complete it.

As for “Four Seasons Cats,” I originally bought it for a seasonal round robin that I was in, but when the chart arrived I felt greedy and decided that instead of using it for the round robin, I wanted to stitch all of the cats myself. Unfortunately as I worked on the borders for each cat the desire to stitch the entire piece diminished until I was completely uninterested in working on it.

However, given the state that the piece is in (one completed square, finished borders) perhaps I should organize a round robin and use it as I had initially planned. Anyone interested? (Actually, I am serious here. If I can get three people who are interested in joining me, maybe we could do a UFO robin or something. Leave me a comment!)

Christmas at Dawn’s

I had a very nice Christmas as I was the lucky recipient of some of Dawn’s lovely over-one stitching! She made me a little tin box and a scissor fob. I love the little tin and I put the festive scissor fob on my Gingers.

In addition to the stitched presents I received from Dawn, I also bought myself a little stash when we were doing our last minute Christmas shopping. I bought issue 194 of The Cross Stitcher and the January 2008 issue of Cross-Stitch and Needlework at Barnes and Noble. The Cross Stitcher has a seasonal Margaret Sherry cat design and Cross-Stitch and Needlework has a Mirabilia design. There are some other designs in both magazines that I might do, but the Margaret Sherry and Mirabilia designs are the reasons I bought them.

In fact, I decided to start the Margaret Sherry pattern, “Cool Cats,” right away so Dawn and I made a side trip to Hobby Lobby where I bought some 28 Lambswool Jobelan for it. I have decided to stitch “Cool Cats” as a vertical banner with the hopes that when it is finished I will make it into a bell pull.

Most of the day was spent stitching, so here is the progress that I have made on the winter cat. I think he is about two-thirds done. The magazine said the four cats should take about 48 stitching hours, so I am curious to see how long it will take me… Perhaps it will be my first 2008 finish.

Rotation Gripes

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!).

Thanksgiving Break Stitching

I know it has been a while since I had any stitching progress to show and while I could blame it on all the time I have been spending with a certain someone that is not the whole story.

As anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows, I am very, very close to finishing “Above the Clouds.” So close, in fact that I thought with a little concentrated effort I could finish Confetti by the end of November. That was my goal and I have tried very diligently to meet it. However, after almost 20 hours I was tired of Confetti and wanted very badly to change projects.

At that point I decided to start working on Outi’s belated birthday exchange piece. It was a good distraction from Confetti and I thought I was on a roll: I would finish Outi’s present in no time flat, get back to Confetti, and voilà! my November goals would be met and all would be well.

Unfortunately, things were not to be that way…

I was about one-third of the way into Outi’s exchange piece when I discovered a huge mistake. Because it was one of those boo-boos that couldn’t be fudged, I ended up having to frog out almost half of what I had stitched. As you can well imagine, by the time I was finished frogging I was so frustrated that I knew that it had to be put away for a while. (I am still going to try and get it to you by Christmas Outi!)

I keep saying that I am so close to finishing “Above the Clouds,” (and I am!) but it is a TW and as a result, needs full attention and unbroken concentration to really make any progress.

However, by Thursday afternoon I thought was ready. So with my tummy full of turkey I sat down and attempted to make some more progress on Confetti. Within fifteen minutes my desire for that after-Thanksgiving-dinner nap had taken over and Confetti was put away for the day.

The next day I tried yet again to make some progress, but I was restless and couldn’t find my stitching groove. After about an hour I gave up and began to wonder if I was in danger of temporarily losing my stitching mojo.

Disappointed at my lack of progress on Confetti, it was then that I started fondling my stash. I wrapped my DMC 100s, rearranged my bobbin boxes with the help of the kittens, and began flipping through my JCS Ornament issues.

I thought perhaps I needed a happy dance: Something simple and fast that would make me feel like I had accomplished something. Soon I was inspired. I found a scrap of fabric and within minutes I had started “Spool Ornament” by Sue Hillis from this year’s ornie issue.

After the errands were done and before the snow started falling on Saturday, my needles were flying. By the time I was ready for bed that evening “Spool Ornament” was (mostly) finished and I knew that I hadn’t lost my mojo, I was just sick of the things I was “supposed” to be working on.

Yes, I would still like to finish “Above the Clouds” before the end of the year, but I have decided that if I don’t it is no big deal. I will finish it when I am ready.

Distractions

As of tomorrow night, I haven’t picked up a needle for a week! I think I would be suffering from withdrawal if I hadn’t been distracted by a member of the opposite sex. Oh well, there is always next week, right?