Big Progress on Two Projects

I've been continuing with my rotations despite not posting and have made big progess on both the New England Sampler and Sydney. On the Sampler I've completed the band with the flowers--I think these are the state flowers of each of the New England states. I've then done just over half of the band below that with some more New England historical and cultural scenes. I am getting very close to finishing this project which I bought in 1996. I can't believe it. Without the rotation system I don't think I would even have started it yet. Rotations are amazing!




New England sampler with flower band finished and half of cultural band done.




Close-up of left side of bands worked on.



Close up of right side of bands worked on.

I also bit the bullet with Sydney Rocks project which never seemed to really get going. I've nearly finished half of it now! I breezed through the large tree in a few days and previously I thought I'd never get through it. Then I went on to another page and have done the bulk of that with only minor bits to finish it off.



I'm now backstitching Cottages at Oak Bluffs. I did some at a gymnastics competition but it was hard to follow sitting in a folding chair without anywhere to rest my pattern. I'm back to dragging my feet again but at least I am on the second house of this project. Too many of my projects are at the backstitching phase!!!!

When she was good she was very, very good . . .

When she was bad she was horrid. So goes the nursery rhyme. Well here I am trying to get my crafting back on track and trying also to make up for being so bad.
Firstly to the photos!!



Here is where I am up to on the New England Sampler. Kind of gave up/put aside doing some of the fiddly patterns and went for the simple outer and inner borders. At least I got some work done. Most of my recent progress was completed while on holiday in Sydney including on planes and trains so easy borders were the go. At any rate it is coming along nicely.



Since returning home from holidays I've hardly picked up my cross-stitch. When I have it's been this one--The Rocks, Sydney. I'm stuck in a tree at the moment. I've mainly worked on this while at Jarrah's baseball games. Oh, bad Mum again not watching the game!!!

Now I'm ready to go on with a new rotation and to get back into the swing of things. Next in the rotation list is Cottages at Oak Bluffs II where I'm working on back-stitching. That sounds easy enough! Let's knock that off before the next two weeks is over!!

Since I also blog a bit about what I'm reading I'll mention that I'm on the third book of the Millenium trilogy--The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. Brilliant books. I put off reading them for a while despite the hype because I was worried about having to read/pronounce all the Swedish names. It hasn't been a problem at all and I'm loving the series. I hope one day his 4th book will be finished and published.

The longer I stay away, the harder it is to get back

Yes it's been a long time since I've posted. Three months in fact. The end of the year is just such a crazy, busy time. For those of you in the northern hemisphere I don't think you can appreciate the chaos that occurs when both Christmas and the end of the school year coincide. Add to all of the shopping and preparations for Christmas all of the end of year school concerts and celebrations plus work functions plus, in our case, preparations for our main summer holiday away. Then top it off with birthday celebrations for one of our children plus attending other children's parties. Then add in a minor day surgery (for me) with recovery.

This past year we also had my mother-in-law's ill health and hospitalisation and then finding a nursing home for her. She moved in to the nursing home in October but from August onwards we made an effort to visit her very frequently and since she is 30-45 minutes away from us this took up a lot of time. She's settled now and doing well but with her dementia she really has no idea where she is. At Christmas we took her out of the nursing home for the first time and she was confused especially when we brought her back.

Another extra function which occurred in October last year was deciding to change my son's school due to dissatisfaction with the education he was receiving. I was very fortunate to find him a good private school which had a general intake at his year level. He's not happy about this change so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

So does life get in the way of crafting.

I have lost a lot of forward momentum but have tried to pick projects up at random and keep going.

We had our end of year holiday in Sydney this year and I decided to take the New England Sampler with me and I actually worked on it! (How many trips have I taken including long cross-Pacific flights where the stitching never made it out of my carry-on?) I got it out on both plane trips--which were only 1 hour--and a number of evenings and mornings in the room where we were staying. I've continued with it since at home but have decided it is now time to put it away and to get back into my rotations.

I chose to take this project rather than the obvious Sydney one because it is on Aida which is much easier to work on when on the go and because it has simpler regular areas of pattern to do. So I stitched straight lines and finished the alphabet area at the top. Photos to follow.

I just checked to see what my current rotation should be and it is Sydney which follows the New England Sampler so I have to steel myself for working with linen, and on tree branches with half stitches all over the place. But first I'm going to really finish LaTrobe Terrace which only needs to be initialled and dated.

Oh and I forgot to say I framed a few projects myself just before Christmas! Photos coming.

Chinese II finished!

I managed to whip through the remaining three patterns of Chinese II in just over a week. With most of a week to spare in the rotation I decided to get out LaTrobe Terrace and try to finish off the backstitching in the remaining time. I managed to get through about 2/3 of it, which was good but a bit disappointing. I always think that I'm going to get through things quicker than I do!

Then it was back to the proper place in the rotation which was the New England Sampler. I think I spent three weeks on this because I didn't get around to doing anything with it for a week or so. I've finished the top border including the corners. (Just delaying having to do more of the internal pattern which is going to require some concentration.)



Here are details of the corner designs. I think they're really pretty.






I don't have any photos but I'm also working on the possum/wool scarf. I'm on the third and final ball now. Will have it finished just in time for the end of winter!!!

What else is new?

Well I went to Adelaide for a footy weekend with my son Jarrah and we also saw the pandas.



And our kitty Nimbus is getting cuter and more lovely every day. Here he is sleeping in his basket on the scratching post.



I'm also doing a lot of reading and have finished the first three volumes of the Twilight series. Now I'm reading Dan Brown's latest book The Lost Symbol.

Lots and lots of updates!

I've got a few weeks to update with photos now that I'm well on the mend.

I finished the first of 4 designs on Chinese II.



Sorry it's on it's side.

I also finished the hooking of my lighthouse rug hooking. Only the hemming to do.



I then did a two week rotation on the New England Sampler. Just managed to finish the right side border and the line along the top separating the border area from the centre. Since I was spending some time in bed I worked on rug hooking while I was there because the light wasn't good enough for cross-stitching. When I came down and sat in the TV room with my lamp I did cross-stitching. Hence, more rug hooking got done than cross-stitching.



Since I finished the lighthouse so quickly I pulled out a hand-me-down project from my mother's house which was only partly done and worked on that. It's a small rug hooking and it had a few problems with fraying edges and it was also worked from the top instead of the bottom so I had to decide how to tackle it.



When I started on it there was nothing done along the bottom but most of the left edge had been done. Don't know why. I will need to buy some rug hemming tape to stablize the edges. It's too bad someone trimmed them!



Here's where the rug is as of this morning. You can see it won't take long to finish it off. It's a big help that the left side and top were already done. I'm planning to put it in the dryer with a damp towel once I finish it to fluff up the older hooked areas. They don't lay nicely.

Now I'm starting on a new project The Rocks, Sydney. This will replace LaTrobe Terrace in my rotations. Yes, I know I haven't finished LaTrobe Tce yet but this is the weekend I'm going to Sydney and we're staying in a hotel in The Rocks so I just have to bring this project and work on it so at least some of it is done in the place it's named for. I'm also going to have a look out for the buildings in the cross-stitch and see if I can photograph them.

A bit of a hiccup

Well things don't always run smoothly with craftwork. I've been working on the last house on my Charleston streetscape Verandas and ran out of DMC #762, a light grey. Fished around my various stash locations and came up with the end of a skein in my mother's craft box and used that on about 3 window frames. Then I looked at them and saw they were noticably browner than the other window frames. Oh. It must be the nicotine staining. My mother was a great crafter. But also a heavy smoker. So what to do? Well I guess the perfectionist in me says to undo the new stitching and re-do it with a new skein. Only I didn't have time to go to Spotlight to get some. So I tried washing the canvas and also the end of my mother's skein. Both came up lighter but still not as light as what I had been using.

So on Thursday night I had a wet project I couldn't work on the next day and no more 762 anyway. My son Jarrah was going in very early Friday morning to have his wisdom teeth and another baby tooth taken out and an impacted tooth exposed. The op was going to take an hour plus the recovery time. So a great time for me to do some cross-stitch while waiting. I'd just finished my small Daydreams project Life is a Journey (hooray!) and the next project in rotation was also basically finished except for doing long stitches on the matting which I didn't want to do in the waiting room because it is too fiddly. So I decided to go on to the project beyond that in rotation--the New England Sampler--and work on the border. Nice and easy and a repeating pattern easily followed when out and about. So that's what I did.

Now I'm back home taking care of Jarrah giving him ice packs, pain relief and mashing up food and I kind of don't know which project to pick up again. I have three new ones waiting at the sewing machine for me to bind off their edges. But the machine is set up for machine quilting (with a quilt in it)so I haven't done those yet.

I have to make an executive decision about what to do.

New England Sampler progress

I decided to end my rotation on the New England Sampler after a very satisfactory two weeks. As previously reported I completed the lower panel in the first week. In the second week I finished the lower border including the bottom two corners and also stitched the boundary lines on the bottom and both sides of the sampler.

This seemed like a good place to stop. I could have carried on and worked on the side borders but decided to leave this to next time. The borders are relatively easy to do as they follow a regular pattern so they make a nice break from having to carefully follow the pattern on other areas of the sampler. So we'll see where I decide to pick this up next time.



In the meantime I think I can safely revise my estimate of completeness of this project to 65%.

I'm now working on LaTrobe Terrace.

A small finish and a major section of another completed

Going well with the rotations with some help from it being school holidays and Easter! I finished the second small cross-stitch on the Chinese project in less than a week. This left me with the second week of the rotation on the project free. The project comes with a patterned matting (but no glass or framing--darn) and there is some weaving of thread to do on the matting. But I didn't feel like doing that. I felt like cross-stitching. So I decided to go on to the next project a week early and maybe spend 3 weeks on it.



Well one week on with the New England Sampler and I've finished the botttom panel. I did the whole right half of it in one week. This included a number of long days of cross-stitching. Easter Sunday was the day I spent the longest on it--about 10 hours. It's worth it though to have that part done. I'm now going to work on the bottom border and see how long that takes me. If I'm enjoying it I'll stick with it, maybe doing some of the side borders, next week. If I'm ready for a change then I'll go on to LaTrobe Terrace.



I think it's time to estimate the completness of my projects:

Cottages at Oak Bluffs II--5% (this one has a lot of colour changes and is fiddly)

Verandas of South Battery---90% (looking good)

Chinese I--97% (only matting to do)

New England Sampler--55% (over half way!)

LaTrobe Terrace--70% (but could finish it off in one rotation)

With the quilts:

Jade's flannel quilt--85% complete (need to get back to this)
Houses wall hanging--75% (partly taken the front apart to straighten out the rows--fiddly!)

This is the first time with the rotation system that I've gotten so close to finishing most of my projects. So there could be a major turn-over of projects with new ones starting and I'm beginning to think which ones I'm going to bring in to replace completed ones. There are a few waiting.

Reluctantly time to move on to next project

Well my Verandahs rotation is up. This is my favourite project so I'm really sorry not to be continuing on it. I didn't finish the house I was working on but I'll finish it next time for sure.



So now it's on to the New England Sampler. I feel reluctant to pick this up again because I'm enjoying the Verandahs so much but also because I have to start a new section of it and, since I've finished the middle of the design, I have to decide whether to go up or down. I think I'm going down.

There are definitely projects I like more than others and I wish I could spend more time on the ones I like--but then the others would never get done. So there it is!

Now about my poll--it looks like LaTrobe Terrace, Brisbane is narrowly leading Sydney. LaTrobe is the most colourful of the designs so that's probably not surprising. I'll have to decide where I'm going to fit it into the rotation. I'll do another rotation on the Fabric collector sampler then probably slot it in after that because I'm hoping to come close to finishing the Fabric collector this next rotation.

I'm going to have a push this week on the decluttering I've been doing. I just want to get it done and I also have guests coming next week so it would be nice to finish it before they come and to have the house looking really nice. My DH is also having a big declutter in his junk room. He must have 20 + boxes of papers in there plus other stuff spread all over the place. The decluttering he's doing now is the most I've ever seen him do. I just hope he either finishes before the guests come or keeps it up after they've gone. Well I'd best get back to sorting through piles and deciding what to do with them.