Incoherent Scribblings

It’s that time again…

For April, I planned to:

1. Continue my Sunday “Harvest Witch” SAL with Dawn. - Yep!
2. Participate in the April SAT. - Yep!
3. Work on “Fairy Flora.” - Yep!
4. Work on “Poet’s Heart.” - Yep! Finished it too!
5. Stitch (and finish) a Christmas Ornament for my 10 Ornies Challenge - Yep!
6. Order the Kreiniks and charms for “Harvest Witch” and the beads for “Spring Queen” and “In Cupid’s Garden.” - Yep!

All in all a very successful month if I do say so myself!

I think I will stick with “Fairy Flora” as my focus piece in May and go from there. So, for May I plan to:

1. Continue my Sunday SAL with Dawn. (While we wait for her Kreiniks to arrive we may go ahead and start our new SAL piece “Summer’s Magic” by Dragon Dreams.)
2. Participate in the May SAT.
3. Work for at least 10 hours on “Fairy Flora.”
4. Work on (and finish?) “The Bookshelf.”
5. Work on “Spring Queen.”
6. Stitch (and finish) one of my PIF gifts.

I was getting ready to sit down and stitch when I realized that I was ready for a new round in my rotation but hadn’t yet decided what to work on because I am at a bit of an impasse concerning it right now.

While the ten-hour rotation has been successful by and large, I am kind of tired of it. I enjoy giving each project a focused amount of time, but have been slightly frustrated at how long it takes me to get through my rotation. This was particularly apparent to me when I was working on “Fairy Flora” a couple of weeks ago because I realized that I hadn’t seen her since December. Unfortunately, at the rate of working on her for 10 hours every three months I will never get her finished by the end of the year.

This led me to consider changing my rotation to one with a focus piece and I got a lot of great advice on how to implement such a rotation, but I am not exactly sure if that is what I want to do either.

However, as I glance through my goals over the past few months I see that on average I tend to work on two of my WIPs a month (not including my “Harvest Witch” SAL), so what I have decided to do for now is work on one other WIP a month in addition to “Fairy Flora.” Although I keep track of my hours I am not going to confine myself to working on these projects for X hours. Instead, I will work on each project throughout the month as I see fit.

So, without further ado, here are my March/April goals:

For March:

1. Finish “Bearly a Wizard.” – Yep!
2. Continue my Sunday “Harvest Witch” SAL with Dawn. - Yep!
3. Stitch for 10 hours on “In Cupid’s Garden.” - Nope.
4. Stitch for 10 hours on “Fairy Flora.” - Yep!
5. Order the Kreiniks and charms for “Harvest Witch” and the beads for “Spring Queen” and “In Cupid’s Garden.” - Nope.
6. Have a blast with my sister and niece who are coming to visit me over Spring Break! - Yep!!!

For April:

1. Continue my Sunday “Harvest Witch” SAL with Dawn.
2. Participate in the April SAT.
3. Work on “Fairy Flora.”
4. Work on “Poet’s Heart.”
5. Stitch (and finish) a Christmas Ornament for my 10 Ornies Challenge
6. Order the Kreiniks and charms for “Harvest Witch” and the beads for “Spring Queen” and “In Cupid’s Garden.”

It’s time for my March goals, but first let see what I accomplished in February.

In February, I planned to:

1. Finish my 10 hour rotation on “Spring Queen.” - Yep!
2. Work on “Above the Clouds” and/or “Cool Cats.” - Yes to working on both! In fact, I believe one was a Happy Dance!
3. Continue my Sunday “Harvest Witch” SAL with Dawn. - Yep!
4. Participate in the February SAT. - Yep!
5. Stitch and finish Christmas ornament #1 for my “10 Ornies in 500 Days” Challenge. - Yep!

Very nice! I accomplished everything. Kudos to me!

Here is what I plan to do for March:

1. Finish “Bearly a Wizard.”
2. Continue my Sunday “Harvest Witch” SAL with Dawn.
3. Stitch for 10 hours on “In Cupid’s Garden.”
4. Stitch for 10 hours on “Fairy Flora.”
5. Order the Kreiniks and charms for “Harvest Witch” and the beads for “Spring Queen” and “In Cupid’s Garden.”
6. Have a blast with my sister and niece who are coming to visit me over Spring Break!

I have had a strange sense of time this month. In some ways I feel like January 1st was a long time ago and in other ways I can’t believe February starts tomorrow. I suppose this is directly related to the fact that the first half of the month was relatively slow since it was the interim at West Texas Town University but when classes started the second half of the month practically flew by.

Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is tomorrow is February 1st and that means it is goal day!

January’s goals (which I believe I wrote while Dawn and I were sipping strawberry daiquiris on New Year’s Eve) were as follows:

1. Mail Outi’s belated birthday exchange. - Yep! She got it last week.
2. Work on “Fairy Flora.” - Yep! I finally started her wings and though I still have quite a way to go, I might actually finish her this year.
3. Work on and maybe finish “Cool Cats.” - Nope! I was going to but I decided I needed to get back to some sort of rotation so I was a good girl and put it away when I was done with my ten hours.
4. Participate in the January SAT - Yep!
5. Start “Harvest Witch” (Sunday SAL with Dawn, start on SAT weekend) -Yep!
6. Start and finish a “small.” - Yep!

Actually, January’s goals really don’t do the stitching I did this month justice. I worked on four of my WIPs, started three new projects as part of Guilt-Free January, and finished a small. In fact, I would wager that January 2008 was one of the most productive stitching months I have had in quite some time.

So, what goals shall I set for February? Well, since I have added some WIPs to my list I suppose one thing I should do is reorder my rotation and then continue to work through it in an orderly fashion. So, with that in mind, here is what I propose for February:

1. Finish my 10 hour rotation on “Spring Queen.”
2. Work on “Above the Clouds” and/or “Cool Cats.”
3. Continue my Sunday “Harvest Witch” SAL with Dawn.
4. Participate in the February SAT.
5. Stitch and finish Christmas ornament #1 for my “10 Ornies in 500 Days” Challenge.

First of all, in December it was my plan to:

1. Stitch, finish, and mail Outi’s replacement Birthday Exchange piece before Christmas. Sort of – I stitched and finished the exchange, but decided to hold off on mailing it.
2. Participate in the December SAT. Yep! I didn’t get a whole lot of stitching accomplished since I was traveling, but I participated nonetheless.
3. Work on “Poet’s Heart.” Nope!
4. Work on “Kitty Cat Row.” Yep! Finished it too!

For January I hope to:

1. Mail Outi’s belated birthday exchange.
2. Work on “Fairy Flora.”
3. Work on and maybe finish “Cool Cats.”
4. Participate in the January SAT
5. Start “Harvest Witch” (Sunday SAL with Dawn, start on SAT weekend)
6. Start and finish a “small.”

Here’s to Great Stitching in O’Eight!