I seem to be on quick the streak lately. I finished yet another piece over the weekend. That makes three finishes for me in as many weekends. Since I have a long weekend next week for Christmas, perhaps I’ll try to keep the streak alive.

Here’s my latest finish. As always, click the biggify.

Designer: Primrose Needleworks
Fabric: 34-count Oaten Scone linen
Fibers: DMC & GAST
Finished: 18 December 2011

After I finished that piece midday on Sunday, I picked up another WIP from my pile that I’ve not worked on in several months.  It’s Needle from the dictionary series by CherryWood Design Studios.  Here are my before and after progress pics from the weekend.

Designer: CherryWood Design Studios
Fabric: Graziano Celery & White 28-count gingham linen
Fiber: Tortoise Shell Belle Soie
Stitched 1 over 1
Progress as of 18-Dec-2011

I had a productive week for work and school this past week, too.  I passed my final for my project management class.  The cool part was that the final was a certification exam, so not only did I pass the class, but I earned yet another professional certification in the process.  I am now Project+ certified.

In other news, I received a beautiful Christmas package this week from my dear friend Tracy.  She stitched this awesome quote by Oprah Winfrey for me.  I love it!!  She also made those awesome Thank You cards for me.  She creates incredible hand-made greeting cards!

I also wanted to point out a new page listed in the navigation menu at the top of the page.  It’s the 2012 WIPocalypse page.  You can read more details about what it’s all about on that page.  In a nutshell, I’ll be focusing on trying to get in some work on my outstanding WIPs coming up in 2012 as part of the WIPocalypse SAL group organized by Measi.  So, be sure to check out the page.  If you want to participate, there’s information on that page on how to sign up.

Hope everyone has a great week!  Until next time …

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It seems I’ve been on a bit of a roll this month finishing up some Little House Needleworks pieces that have been in my WIP pile for a while.  I’ve been traveling about half of the month, some for vacation and some for work, so I had some great stitching time sitting in hotels.  I guess I need to just perpetually travel to keep myself stitching.

Here are the pieces I finished. As always, click images to biggify.

Design: Acorn Hill by Little House Needleworks
Fabric: 36-count Vintage Maple Sugar by Lakeside Linens
Fibers: Recommended Belle Soie silks stitched 1-over-2
Finished 16 October 2011

Design: Winter Band Sampler by Little House Needleworks
Fabric: 28-count Summer Khaki Lugana
Fibers: Recommended DMC (subbed 321 for 355 except for the house) stitched 2-over-2
Finished 27 October 2011

Both of these designs were part of the 15 projects I selected for the 2011 Crazy UFO/WIP Challenge.  After finishing these two projects, that puts me at …. three projects of the 15 completed.  I somehow doubt I’ll meet my goal at this point.

Speaking of WIPs, I also came to some startling realizations lately regarding my quantity of stash & UFO/WIP pile.  Let’s just say I failed miserably at my 2011 stitching goals thus far, especially the one about no stash spending.  I’ll give a full recap of my goals in late December, but to give you an idea of just HOW miserably I failed in the no stash spending department, I spent over $400 on stash in the past month alone.  Oops!   So, I’m going to try again.  I’ve set some new goals & challenges for myself to try and reign things in and get them back under better control.  I’ll share more about that in my next post.  Since I’ve already shared about them on Facebook, I guess I’m committed to actually following through on them now.

Until next time …

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Woo Hoo!  I can’t believe it, but I actually managed to finish a piece tonight!  Sadly, given it’s late August, I think this may be my first finish of the year.  On the good news front, at least it was from my 2011 WIP/UFO Challenge list.   As always, click to biggify.

Snow Garden
Designer: Blackbird Designs
Fabric: Recommended 30-count Creme Brulee (R&R Reproductions)
Fibers: Recommended GAST & WDW
Stitched 2-over-2
Completed 24 August 2011

In closing, I know many of my long time readers know I’m a big fan of Pat Summitt and the Lady Vols from the University of Tennessee.  My thoughts are with Coach Summitt and her family during this difficult time and I wish her the best in facing the challenges ahead.

Until next time …

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Happy New Year! Can you believe we’re already a new decade in this century?! It seems like all the Y2K commotion was just a couple of years ago. It’s amazing to realize it’s been 10 years already. Where does the time go?!

As you can tell, the new year has also brought a new theme for my blog. After years of blogging, I finally found what I believe to be the perfect theme for my blog. This is so “me” that it’s unbelievable. What you think?

As I’ve been reading everyone’s blogs over the past couple of days, I’ve been seeing lots of people posting a recap of their 2009 goals and setting new goals for 2010. This left me wondering if I actually set any goals for 2009. It’s probably not a good sign that I didn’t even actually remember, eh?

As it turns out, it looks like I only set one stitching-related goal for 2009 which is a little surprising. Unfortunately, I didn’t even meet the one. Oops! The goal was to keep my WIP list down to 15 or less, but it’s currently sitting at 19. Maybe this year.

2009 Recap:

*As far as projects moved to UFO, I borrowed a concept from Annette. If I haven’t worked on a project in the preceding 12 months, I’m no longer considering it a WIP (work in progress), and will move it to UFO (unfinished object) status instead. This doesn’t mean that I won’t eventually finish it, but if I haven’t worked on it in over a year, I just can’t justify in my head calling it a WIP any longer.

Here is a list of all the finishes I had during 2009:

1. Snowman’s Quaker Christmas (Midnight Stitching) – Completed 1 Feb 2009
2. NEEDLE heART (Margaret Bendig) – Stitching cruise piece – Completed 8 Feb 2009
3. Christmas Joy (Little by Little Design Co.) – Completed 25 April 2009
4. Rosemarkie (Long Dog Samplers) – Completed 29 April 2009
5. Rudolph (The Stitcherhood) – Completed 2 May 2009
6. Boo (The Stitcherhood) – Completed 3 May 2009
7. Letters from Nora – Madeline Melissa (Nora Corbett) – Completed 27 May 2009
8. Ink Circles May 2007 freebie – Completed 7 June 2009
9. Spooky Treats (Part 1 of 6 of Lizzie Kate’s Boo Club) – Completed 11 June 2009
10. Anonymous RAK – Completed 25 June 2009
11. Patriotic Quaker Heart – Completed 27 July 2009
12. Multiplicity – Completed 14 August 2009
13. Hagatha’s Slipper (part 1) – Completed 11 September 2009
14. Boo to You House (Fair & Square exchange) – Completed 10 October 2009
15. West Coast (Sea to Shining Sea series) – Completed 19 October 2009
16. Moon Witch – Completed 4 November 2009
17. Noel Naturally – Completed 5 November 2009
18. Joyful Night- Completed 14 November 2009
19. Indian Summer – Completed 25 November 2009

2010 Goals:

1. StRIP (Stash Reduction Implementation Plan)

This is the year that I really want to get my WIP list under some semblance of control. I know that I give this goal a bit of lip service every year, but I’ve never really followed through on it. This year is going to be different!

How am I going to accomplish this task you ask? My rule for 2010 is that I can’t start a new project until I complete at least three existing projects. I do have a few exceptions to this rule:

1. Little House Needleworks ornament of the month series
2. Exchanges
3. Class projects (probably only the Shepherd’s Bush retreat this year)
4. Guilt-free January (GFJ)

For those who aren’t active on stitching message boards, the concept of GFJ is that one is allowed to start as many new projects as they like, free of any guilt about existing WIPs or UFOs, during the month of January. I have decided to slightly modify GFJ and only allow myself this caveat during this first weekend of the new year. If it’s not started by 11:59pm on Sunday, January 3, then I can’t start it until after I have completed three other finishes.

The downside to this StRIP plan is that most of my current WIPs are BAPs (big ass projects), including several samplers. The upside is that now I’ll probably get some of them actually finished.

Once I have my WIPs under control, then I’ll work on coming up with a plan for the UFOs. I’m not even going to worry about them until I have my WIPs down to single digits.

2. Little House Needleworks Ornament of the Month series

I signed up with Drema for the automatics on this series a couple of months ago when Diane first announced it on the Little House Needleworks website. Since these are ornaments, they should be pretty quick stitches. My goal is to stay caught up on stitching this series throughout the year as they are released.

3. Stash Stitching

Along with trying to get my WIPs under control, I definitely want to get back to stitching from my stash again for my new starts. I have so many gorgeous pieces already, with probably about 40 already kitted even. I am always so tempted by the new pretties that come out that I end up buying more and more and then never get around to stitching them.

My goal for this year is that 80% of my new starts, excluding the LHN series and any class pieces, will come from my existing stash. Given my first goal, it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to have more than 5 or 6 new starts this year. By making the goal 80%, it does give me a little wiggle room for something that might be released that just screams at me to stitch it right away.

As you can see, I have my work cut out for me this year with my goals. Wish me luck because I know I’ll definitely need it. I’m weak!

Until next time …

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Since Corinna posted a comment letting me know that she received her ornament from our Fair & Square exchange, I am able to share a photo of it now. I combined the front & back views into a single pic.

Click to biggify

The design is by Shepherd’s Bush and is called “Joyful Night”. It’s from the 1998 edition of the Just Cross Stitch magazine annual ornament issue, but also appears in their 10th anniversary collection book.

Even though finishing is not included in a typical Fair & Square exchange, Corinna and I agreed between ourselves to do the finishing for this round. It worked out wonderfully because this way we were able to enjoy our ornaments this year. Otherwise, we would have needed to finish them ourselves after receiving the squares and then wait for next Christmas to roll around to enjoy them.

I did the finishing for the ornament while I was on vacation up in San Francisco with my friend Tracy. Even though she’s a scrapper at heart, she also stitches. She recently asked me to teach her how to do ornament finishing, so I took the opportunity of finishing this one to show her.

This was my first time making a two-color twisted cord. I was pleased with how it turned out. It’s not very easy to tell from the photo, but I used the same two colors for the cord what were the stripe colors in the hat in the design.

That’s it for now. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas yesterday. Until next time …

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