Incoherent Scribblings

SBQ: Complications

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.

Happy Confetti

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

Queenie and Confetti

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…

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.