Incoherent Scribblings

Today’s SBQ was suggested by Jennifer and is:

What is the most complicated piece you’ve ever completed?

Hmmm… I suppose I would have to say “Above the Clouds.” Although “Above the Clouds” didn’t have any one-over stitching or specialty stitches it had plenty of blends, confetti stitching, and quarter stitches… All the things that make TW designs (in)famous.

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 am so happy I am (almost) speechless, so I will let the picture do the talking.

Above the Clouds
by TW Designworks
April 2006-February 2008
32 count Self-dyed Belfast “Turquoise Sky” Linen
Stitch Time: 97 hours
DMC Fibers

Well, not only did I finish my ten-hour rotation on “Spring Queen” last night, my new camera arrived in the mail yesterday so I was able to take a decent picture of my progress. I would like to keep working on Queenie until I finish the rest of her chest, but since that is the way that I get off track with my rotation I won’t. Instead I will put her away and move on the next piece, which is… (drumroll please)

“Above the Clouds!”

Yes, the illustrious Confetti is next in my rotation. As I have stated the past three times that it has come up in my rotation, I would love to work on “Above the Clouds” until it is finished, but as most of you know I have nearly burned out with it and demoted it to a UFO each of those times. Therefore, this time all I want to do is to stitch on it for ten more hours.

However, since I keep putting it off, it is very likely that I will start the first in the series of Christmas ornaments that I want to do for my family instead.

In other news, since I stopped doing exchanges I have considered doing a PIF a couple of times as a way to continue to stitch small gifties for my fellow stitchers. Obviously I have never gotten around to doing so, but yesterday when I signed up to be PIF recipient at Cross Stitch Happy I decided the time had come to officially commit myself to it. Details concerning my PIF will come shortly in a sticky post…

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!).