I put in three days of stitching and the third color in the inner border is now roughly 75% complete (the two sides and the top):
When I reported in last week, we were in Louisville, KY, at the National Hermerocalis Society National Convention and the hotel room was less than salubrious re stitchery. Not a comfortable sitting situation and the lighting was atrocious. I was thankful that I had my needlepoint traveling kit ("Palm Tree Elegance") with me as it was way easier to see the weave than cross-stitch would have been. Still, I had to bring out my magnifying glass to check sometimes to see if, indeed, that was a stitch that needed to be put in! I put in three days of stitching and the third color in the inner border is now roughly 75% complete (the two sides and the top): When we got home (Sunday), we had houseguests arriving — they got here roughly 30 minutes after we did - so there was no stitching for the next two nights. But I did manage to pull out “Return” of the Roll Your Own Mandalas and complete color 7 (of 12) and roughly 50% of color 8: An eye appointment, and the likely dilation of my eyes, means o stitching today, but I hope to be back on track with “Return this coming week.
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Sitting here in a hotel room in Louisville, KY, where even the bathroom light are less than 20W, there is only one flat surface in the room to put my laptop (a tint round table with legs in all the wrong places, and a large “leather” chair with no wheel that is too high of the table!), and no free breakfasts (so I’m drinking the in-room swill that passes for coffee). Oh, and it has a HUGE balcony (overlooking a parking lot and an airport runway) with NO FURNITURE on it! Needless to say, this blog post will likely be very short, as my back will not tolerate much more of this! I did stitch this past week, a little at least. I am finished with color #6 and a little more than halfway through color #7 (of 12): Needless to say, there will be no cross stitch in this hotel room, because even though I did bring my portable Ott light, there is no place with a plug close enough to where I can sit and stitch that will allow me to place the light, so... But i do have my traveling needlepoint piece, “Palm Tree Elegance” with me and it will take center stage, at least until we depart this lovely Airport Hotel and Conference Center. (See Louisville, you say? Well, this place is in the middle of the most awful spaghetti junction of interstates you may ever have seen and Louisville proper is at least more than 10 miles from here. Can’t walk anywhere and I don’t drive my husband’s car so…)
See you all next week! After making my WIPocalypse report for June, 2016, I decided to “force” myself to put in at least two hours every night until this report was due. And I was successful, completing color #5 (of 12) and a little more than 50% of color #6 by last night: If I could keep up this pace, and it we weren’t traveling for the last weekend of June, I possibly could get “Roll Your Own” ready for framing and entry in the 2016 county fair. But I doubt my resolve, I really don’t want to make any mistakes (when I hurry, I often end up frogging as much as I stitch) and a road trip and hotel room are not suitable places for good progress on this BAP. So don’t expect good progress next week!
This full moon, we are asked: “Do you find yourself more productive with stitching in summer or winter?” And I have to answer that there is probably no difference. I stitch at night for the most part, with my daylight-quality lamp, so longer days in summer don’t really make a difference amor the shorter days of winter. I stitch indoors so temperature is not an issue. There are different demands on my time and impacts on my mojo with each season: I really can’t stitch effectively when I’m suffering from a full-blown sinus headache (winter colds and summer allergies bring that on) or a nasty cough (winter colds again), winter holiday events take away from stitching time as do summer road trips, etc. But all in all, I think it balances out. Last WIPocalypse, my goals were stated as: “to keep plugging away on “Return” and see how far I can get this summer”. Other activities on my agenda were:
Pretty good considering I probably only stitched two nights a week on average since the last WIPocalypse. Here is where the entire piece is today: Given issues with my quilt guild website, I’m thinking of creating a new one on Weebly and I intend to put some of the hotel time in Louisville in on that, to say nothing of my traveling needlepoint piece. Still, that trip is only for six days (including travel time) so there is plenty of time left in the next reporting period to make some progress on “Return”. I’ve two charts on order - one for a late wedding gift for one niece and the other for a birth announcement for another (startitis is lurking in the corner) and since I don’t expect to get “Roll Your Own” ready of this year’s fair, I may just start one of those if it arrives before we leave.
So we shall see in July just how far “Roll Your Own” has come! Can we say “Keep on keeping on!”? Color # 2 is complete and color #3 is 25% done on “Return”! Progress is slow but sure - counting all these partial patterns is always an issue with me, and I always seem to miss one out and only find it one or two colors on.
It's been too darned hot to stitch, especially for early June. I dread what July and August will be bringing if this continues... Meanwhile, I so have a case of start-itis — even though I don’t have a pattern picked out that appeals to me. Maybe it’s not so much start-itis as “tired of all this blue and green”! Road trip in two weeks and the needlepoint is back out, Maybe that will cure the issue… I really didn’t feel like stitching this week but I forced myself to put in roughly two hours per night for three nights and got almost all of color #1 (of 12) into “Return”. It’s a very dark blue so it may be hard to see against the black outline, but there’s only one small line in a motif in the upper right corner to go (and a missed black stitch in the same corner ) and then I’ll be ready to move on with color #2!
Quilt Guild tonight and husband’s garden is on a tour on Saturday so there will be some interruptions to stitching… Outline complete! I didn’t make it by the end of May like I had hoped, but it was all down to a massive frog that crept in while I wasn’t looking (the entire left side had to be redone due to a miscount!) which lost me a day. Still, now "Return" is ready for it’s color! And here is the final layout: Now, if only I can keep up the progress on this.
Two more nights of stitching after the WIPocalypse check-in and here is where the outline for “Return” is now. One page of six (top left corner) complete and parts of pages 2 and 3 (top center and right). A lot of Ripping (I always seem to miscount somewhere along the way) but not too much, so long as I don’t push the stitching to the last two strands from a six-strand-length (that is when my eyes start to rebel and I miss holes, etc.).
I still don’t expect to make the deadline for registering for the fair this summer, but at least it looks like this piece will soon be in the “to be framed” pile! Then the decision will be either to finish up “Save the Stitches” or start something new, smaller and NOT in blue and green! This month’s WIPoclypse discussion topic is “What were you stitching this time last year and have you finished it?” Well, last year at this time, I had three projects “in progress”: the “Roll Your Own” Mandala series (the “Jan” mandala”), the “Save Your Stitches” blackwork sampler (I was at block 13), and a crazy quilt block for my Crazy Quilt/Bead Journal project combination . The one I was actually stitching on the WIPOcalypse report day for 2015 was …none of the above! I was fighting a serious, long-lasting respiratory illness and simply had stitched for almost a month. Did I finish any of these? Well, sort of.
Last month, my goals were to “do better “ and in a way, I did as I finished “Rematch” and got started on the outline for “Return”, the last of the nine mandalas in “Roll Your Own” (although, since I thought today was the report-in day, I have to admit that the stitching done on this outline is probably better saved for the next WIPocalyose, since I stitched on both Saturday, the 21st, and Sunday, the 22nd) : The stitching mojo is still in hibernation — I feel as if I am forcing myself to put in a hour a day (or every other day, more like) but I am plugging along.
Next month? Well, “do better” still applies. I need to keep plugging away on “Return” and see how far I can get this summer. I know it won’t be done in time to enter in the fair (That is usually late June, early July) but maybe next year? Meanwhile, I planted my veggie garden yesterday (six different tomato plants, two eggplants, six summer squash and a row of bush beans) and it is going to take some of my attention this summer, as will my paper crafting (two challenges were issued today… and more are coming by the end of the month). I am reading again (two more books in the Maggie Hope series by Susan Elia MacNeal and I have several series of television programs on DVR that I MUST catch up on during the summer hiatus. Also, there is a road trip in the books for the end of June (the American Hemerocallis Society annual convention, this time in Louisville, KY), so I am going to be busy between now and the next WIPocalypse check-in! Strange as it may seem, even with four days totally messed up by colonoscopy prep and procedure (my tummy was not happy with either - I know, too much information), I did manage to finish “Rematch”! Here is what "Roll Your Own" looks like now with only one mandala left! Only one more doctor’s appointment (on the 31st) and some hassle with insurance over my sprained ankle (you don’t want to know what I think of insurance companies right now) so I should be able to make some decent progress in the next week. I’m sorely tempted to start something new and totally different but I will try to resist the impulse and keep plugging’ on (to quote Sir Winston Churchill as often written in the series of historical mysteries I am reading now by Susan Elia MacNeal).
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AuthorBorn in New Jersey, I grew up in Southeastern Ohio. Attended university at Bowling Green State University (B.Sci in biological science, 1964), University of Southern California (M. Sci in biological science, 1967) and University of Florida (Ph. D in zoology, 1971). Archives
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