A massive effort on Verandas

The right side of Verandas finished--except for the backstitching!



Close up of house #4



Close up of house #s 5 & 6

Well I put a lot of pressure on myself last week to finish House #6 and the whole right side of this cross-stitch by Sunday. I did it but only with a massive effort staying up late stitching many nights and working for hours on the weekend. I finally finished the bush to the right of the house on Sunday night at 11:15pm. I'm so glad I brought the piece to this point as it will be more encouraging to pick it up on the next rotation because I'll be starting on a new house (#3) back in the middle of the pattern. The downside is that I'm a little bit burnt out from cross-stitching so this week I've been taking it a bit easier and not pushing myself so much.




My rotation for this fortnight is the New England Sampler and I'm working on the middle pannel which focuses on nautical themes. So far I've done a couple of small boats and am working on a rocky headland with a lighthouse. It's a total refreshing change from the Verandas and I think that may be one of the keys to keeping the rotations fresh--that and not pushing myself too much all the time.

Coming to the end of my Verandas rotation

Just coming to the end of my second week on the Verandas. I've put in some late nights stitching in a push to try and finish House #6 and environs. I'm down to the bush on the right of the house and it's touch and go whether I finish it today. Because I'm going to be out all day Monday and Tuesday I thought at least I'd write about my progress and then wait and see how far I get today before I put up a photo of it.

The weather is very hot and sticky and it's been a job to keep my hands clean for stitching. I'm looking forward to the cooler weather.

I'm trying to decide actually how to use this blog. It's really no fun if I only post once a week but I don't want to be taking photos of my work constantly. I am finding that doing this blog again and doing fixed rotations is spurring me on hugely to make progess. I want stitching to be fun though. The purpose of stitching is the journey not the end product.

In addition to stitching I've also been decluttering. I've done the filing cabinet, which was so full I couldn't file anything away! Now it's got plenty of room. I've reorganised and tidied the papers in the kitchen which used to take up one whole bench. Then I've done the window seat cabinet in the study where lots of old papers were hidden. I'm now in the process of clearing out and tidying up the triple cupboard in our upstairs hallway. My tidying up is motivating my kids to also tidy their rooms and closets up. There's still lots more to do including organising all of our photos--digital and print. That's got to be a several months job in itself. Anyway, I keep plugging away at it bit by bit which is the only way to get things done.

Tomorrow and Tuesday my daughter is going to be at a gymnastics training camp so I'm bringing my stitching and hoping to get some done somewhere even if it's at a coffee shop nearby. Evidently parents aren't allowed in the gym to watch!

Update on my speedy stitching

I've just finished my third week back into stitching, my second week on the Verandas piece. I'm working very hard on House #6, the house on the far right. When I started on this rotation only two colors of the house were present--a dark brick red and the white balcony lines. Now I've just about finished the house proper and the palmetto tree on its right. As you can see from the photo of the finished piece, though, I still have a lot to do to finish this side of the pattern. There is the foreground which has a lot of colour changes and a large bush as well. These will take time and I don't think I'll finish them in the coming week. But maybe . . . Ideally, I'd like to finish the whole right side of the piece at the end of this rotation so that when I come back to it I'm back to the middle of the pattern starting House #3. You can see that I did do a lot of stitching since I blogged on this piece. I finished Houses #4 & 5 in that time. This was mainly in the second half of 2007. I was doing 1week rotations then. So far I like doing 2 week rotations as I can see more progress on each piece. Last night there was a pretty awful movie on TV called 'The Core' about a group of people who travelled to the Earth's Core to save the world. Absolute rubbish but a great background for stitching. Before that was on I also stitched through Ice Age 2, a much better quality movie.

I now need to decide which piece is going to be next in my rotation. There is the New England Sampler and also my bugbear the Australian map on linen whose border I'm trying to redesign. When I was last working on it it wasn't coming out well. I think the centre of the piece is pretty much finished. There are flowers in each of the 4 corners which I have to do. Gee I really should try to finish this one.

Over 3,200 views and no comments!

I've just looked at my webshots site which shows photos of my crafts and noticed that since it's been up there have been over 3,200 visitors to the site. And not ONE of them has left a comment! That is amazing! Did they find nothing they liked? Did they go to the site by accident? I think that is a shame that no one has shown enough interest in my work to say anything about it!

Oh the site is http://community.webshots.com/user/craftydiane Enjoy!

I'm stitching again

Well it's been a long time since I've added to this blog. From my recollection I was still stitching in '07 but just not blogging. But then '08 hit. What a frantic and frenetic year with work, study and kids. I totally abandoned stitching.

This year looks to be very different. Firstly, my uni position has not been reinstated and so far I haven't looked for any other work. I do have some weekend work as an English as a second language examiner so I'm doing that more regularly to make up for not having the other job.

Secondly, I finished my Graduate Diploma (major equivalent) in Chinese!!! Hooray!! However, I would still like to continue studying Chinese in some form but I haven't been able to find anything formal. And, really, after 9 years of Chinese what I really want now is to be able to speak more fluently and classes just weren't giving me that. So I'm continuing to meet my language partner from uni once a week and getting some Chinese practice in that way.

Thirdly, my daughter's gymnastics commitment is getting heavier and heavier to the point where it's going to be pretty difficult to find work around the times I need to be available to drive her to training. Right now she's doing 17.5 hours per week over 6 sessions and some of these impinge upon school hours. I haven't given up on the idea of weekday work but I want to finish things I'm doing around the house first.

So I'm home, doing a huge declutter of over a decade's worth of course notes from courses I've done and teaching handouts from classes I've taught. I started with the filing cabinet then progressed to numerous boxes stashed all around the place. I'm still not finished but I can only do it sporadically as I fill up the recycling bin quickly! I've also gone through the kids clothes and given away heaps to the bushfire appeal.

A couple of weeks ago I got out my stitching and started working on it. I'm going to rotate my pieces like I was doing before as I think that is a way to make progress and prevent boredom. I started with my smallish Golden Gate Bridge by Debbie Patrick. It was going so well that I kept with it for 2 weeks. Now I've just switched to the Verandahs of South Battery from Charleson. I'm working on my third house and in just one day have done heaps. I'll have to take photos as all the pieces have advanced from the last photos on this blog. I don't know which project I'll rotate into but I'd like to stick with the Charleston piece for a couple of weeks and possibly finish the third house.

I hope you enjoy reading my blog!

It's been a while but I've been stitching

Yes it's been a while since I've blogged but I have been stitching. I'm doing weekly rotations on three main projects--Verandahs, the Australian map and the New England sampler.

I also have the Golden Gate Bridge in my DMC carry bag and bring that with me when we go out and I think I'll have a chance to stitch. I usually work on it regularly on Friday afternoon while my son is having his tennis lesson.



I've just finished a rotation on the New England Sampler and am so excited that I started doing one of the objects on the sampler--a whaling ship--as I've concentrated so far on the word bands above the centre of the design.



The previous week I worked on Verandahs and I don't think I got very much done. I am working on one of the two larger houses so hopefully the next house won't take so long. Now that I'm rotating projects I have to drop the system of trying to finish one house per month that I was planning on doing. This way is better though as I get to work on more projects and finish off a few!

I am going to be doing some quilting over the next month as I am planning on making some lap quilts as Christmas presents. I bought an extension table for my sewing machine to make quilting easier so I hope that this will prove to be the case.

Much Progess Being Made

It's getting to be a busy time of year at both work and uni but I am continuing to keep motivated with my projects.

Cross-stitch

Most of my focus has been on cross-stitch. I have finished the cross-stitching of both of the Cottages am well into the backstitching of the first house.



I've also made a good start on the Verandahs and am well into House #4 in the middle of the design. It is the biggest house as well so once I have finished it I will be well on the way. My goal is to try and complete one house per month. I have until the end of May to finish this one. Here's hoping!



I've also decided that I need another small project to take with me when I'm out so I've chosen to work on Debbie Patrick's Golden Gate Bridge which I bought when we were in San Francisco. It isn't a big project. I've cut out some pale blue Aida cloth, bound the edges and copied the pattern so it is all ready to go.



One of the least glamorous things I've done this past week is to go through my whole DMC collection and to organise everything. My late mother's thread box, which holds a complete DMC collection, had lots of skeins of loose DMC which wouldn't fit on the spools in the box and my DMC collection is in labelled individual glad snack bags which are in numerical order on rings. I went through my mother's loose skeins, put them in order and then either added them to her spools or to my glad bags and I made up new glad bags for colours I didn't have. Then I created a set of colors on rings for Verandahs and put a set of the rings with colours I'm not currently using away. All of this took me hours and hours but I'm really glad I did it now.

Quilting

My flannel fabric for my nephews' quilts from the States has arrived. I bought thread for them this week but have decided to wait until I have more time in June to start working on them. For now I want to complete the China quilt--which still hasn't been touched--and label the quilts I've completed over several years.