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.

First week of Verahdahs rotation

I thought I should update my blog to show that I've really been working on my cross-stitch. Well here it is. I've just taken a quick photo without removing my work from the hoop. This is a photo of House #3, the house just to the left of the middle of the piece. I really love its colours even though they are in the light brown family. I think it just looks superb. The roof is is a dark brownish purple which just sets the house off beautifully. Here it is.



What you see here in the hoop has all been done this week. This includes the light green bush to the right of the house. With one more week to go on this rotation I think I'll be able to finish the lower part of the house. It does have a flowering bush or tree in it to make it a bit tricky but I still should be able to complete it. I may not be able to do all of the foreground because it's got a lot of colour changes. But we'll see how I go.

Now I'm starting to think about starting another project and adding it to the rotations. I'm thinking of doing one of my Juniper Designs street scenes. I have four of them--Strahan, Tasmania, Beechworth, Victoria, Sydney and Brisbane. I've had Strahan the longest--about 10 years. Brisbane is the most recent one I've bought but even that must be 5 or so years ago. You can vote on which one I should do first!



Strahan Tasmania



Beechworth, Victoria



The Rocks, Sydney




LaTrobe Terrace, Brisbane

Naughty, naughty!!

I can't tell you how many times I've intended to update this blog!!! Each time I got sidetracked. I've been doing a bit of eBay selling lately and much of my computer time has been taken up with that. But it's gone a bit quiet for now so here goes.

I'm not very proud to say that the Aussie map didn't go very far. I did some work on it the first couple of days of the rotation but then couldn't bring myself to pick it up. So that was a very unproductive 2 week rotation.

I did much better the next 2 weeks working back on the Golden Gate Bridge (Debbie Patrick pattern). In fact that has really come along. I haven't posted a picture of it for absolute ages so here it is!



As you can see I'm working all over the place. Sometimes I decide that I want to complete one area--such as under the bridge. At other times I decide that I want to follow one colour and do it wherever it is on the pattern. On this rotation I finished under the right bridge support, the water section between the two supports and then I started doing DMC#775 (very pale blue) all over the sky. There is a lot of that colour so I didn't finish it. No idea where I'm going to decide to pick up next time.

That rotation went very quickly and now I'm back on the Verandahs one from Charleston. I think this is really my favourite piece right now. I don't know why. I just love doing the houses. I've started working on House #3 which is the house just to the left of the centre of the piece. I haven't done heaps but it is going well. I'm working from the roof of the house down and I've done some of the bushes between it and the completed House #4 to its right.

This is still my first week of this rotation and I want to make the most of it. Next week my son goes away on a music camp for 3 days so they'll be a bit less driving around for me and maybe a bit more stitching?

Not doing very well

Well so far this week I've only worked on my cross-stitch one day. The concentration required to work on this project is so great that it is not an enticing project to pick up in the evenings when I'm tired and during the day when I'm on the go there's no way I can pick it up and work for a few minutes. It takes me a few minutes to even figure out where to put the next stitch! I know I'm whinging. It has been a busy week so far and I've been out quite a bit. Maybe next week things will settle in a bit and I'll be at home more and work on it during the day a bit.

The Cross-stitch from Hell!

Here is the picture of the completed cross-stitch that came with the kit.



This is where I'm starting from.

Well I've delayed and procrastinated and now my rotations have finally taken me to the project I dislike the most. This is the cross-stitch from hell--the map of Australia. Why is it such a problem? There are a couple of reasons. First, it is loaded with half and quarter stitches. Thank goodness I'm using linen or I would have had to abandon the project before this as I couldn't have done it on Aida. Second, the kit as it was originally made up was to commemorate the torch relay around Australia for the Sydney Olympics. So it has a lot of Olympic stuff on it that I am not including as all I wanted was a map. You can see I've done quite a bit on it. I'm working on the border now and the bunches of flowers in the corners are a real pain in the pitoozie. I'm trying to push through it all.

What I'm not including are: the backstitching showing the route of the torch relay, the guff about number of athletes, etc in the border, most of the stuff on the bottom where the Olympic torch, etc is. I think I'm going to include the word 'Australia'. I'm not sure about the flag yet.

Is it going to be too plain with this stuff removed? I'm not sure. I've never altered a cross-stitch pattern as much as I'm going to do with this one before. So I just don't know. I'm going to start to do the backstitching within the map area as well as working on the corner flowers. I'll see how I go.

New project half done!

It's been a busy two weeks with the kids being home for the school holidays and Paul and I (but mainly Paul) painting two rooms in the house--including the room where I do most of my cross-stitching. I was really only excluded from the room for a couple of days so it didn't affect my progess at all. In fact, I had lots of extra stitching time while my son Jarrah was having some catch-up French tutoring. Last year Jarrah decided to change languages three quarters of the way through the year because his Chinese teacher wasn't teaching to his level but was teaching at a beginner's level. Because he's studied Chinese for 7 years already he found the class too boring. These holidays were really his first opportunity to get some tutoring to catch up for the three terms of French he missed last year. So each day I took him to his tutor and sat outside in the car and stitched while I waited. I started on a new project called The Fabric Collector and have finished about 50% of it. So I hope a good run on my next rotation of it should finish it. It would be wonderful to finish a project so quickly because I mainly work on long-winded projects!



Thanks to everyone who participated in my poll on how to leave a project at the end of a rotation. I see that the majority prefer to leave a project at some sort of a 'finishing' point rather than at the start of a new area. I'm going to take that on board and try to do that each rotation when possible.

Now having said that I have to admit that this rotation I didn't quite finish off the last area I was working on and last night I just didn't have the desire to keep going. So I thought it was better to stop rather than really force myself. I reluctantly have to admit I made a mistake on this piece and I've decided that it doesn't matter so I'm not going to undo it. So much for my rules!!!!

Actually I first made a deliberate change to the pattern when I was doing the quilt on the wall of the sewing room. The quilt was not symmetrical in its design. I was really surprised about that and, being a Libra, just couldn't live with it. So I added 3 columns to make the quilt symmetrical. I was really happy I did that. However, what I mucked up was the placement of the quilt on the linen. Somehow I got it two rows too high and didn't realise it. Then I counted from the quilt to the top of the bookcase and didn't double check this by counting from another part of the pattern so the bookcase ended up being two rows too tall. Whereas all the shelves are supposed to be the same height, now the second shelf is two rows higher than the other shelves. I'm annoyed about that but I've just added more fabric on that shelf so that it doesn't look empty compared with the other shelves. You can see this below. At least the mistake I made involved full rows and not half rows as can happen when working with linen. I know now I should have used more guidelines. If I make this piece again--and the kit came with enough fabric to make two more of these!--I will use more guidelines.



Chair, Quilt and Sewing machine. Note the 3 added columns on the quilt's right which made the pattern on it symmetrical.



Bookcase with extra tall second shelf.

So the rotation on this piece is over and what I didn't finish was putting all the fabric on the bookcase shelves. That will be where I'll pick it up next time. After that there is one small quilt above the sewing machine on the right then it is just the sampler border and saying.

Finished my Sampler rotation

Well it's Monday morning and I'm at the changeover from one rotation to the next. Last night, later than I'd expected, I finished working on the New England Sampler and I finished it at a good stopping point. I'm sure it took me more than the 2-3 hours I predicted and it didn't help that I made a tiny mistake and then had to undo stitches. But I have left it at a 'finishing' point without starting a new area and I've also left it without the mistake in it--another one of my 'rules'.





Can you see the single stitch gap in the purple row? Not leaving that was the mistake I made last night. There is a church steeple that goes through that gap. Anyway, I'm really glad I fixed that up!




Maybe I should put in writing some of the craft rules I've come up with over the years.

1. Always finish a project. (I guess most of us have this rule.)

I used to have a corollary to this which was Don't start a new project until you finish the project you're working on. ie only work on one thing at a time. I don't follow this rule anymore! (And sometimes this bugs me--but the results--getting things done that I otherwise wouldn't do--speak for themselves.)

2. Don't leave a project with a mistake in it. (You won't want to pick it up again because it will be a pain figuring out what was wrong and undoing it. Of course the longer you leave a project untouched with a mistake in it the harder it is the next time to remember what the mistake was and figure out what to do about it.)

3. Always, always, always go back and undo mistakes and re-do it right. Even if the mistake is invisible to 99% of the people who will look at your project YOU will always know it is there and your eye will be drawn to it whenever you look at the project and you will regret not fixing it. The amount of time it takes to fix a mistake is tiny compared to the volume of regret you will feel later.

Those are the main rules I can think of now. I have a particular cross-stitch rule which I guess most of us also have--Wash hands every time before working on a cross-stitch. Recently when I was working on a hot day and sweating and I was away from home I had to compromise about this rule. I've tried using hand sanitiser when I couldn't wash my hands. I don't know if this helped with cleanliness but at least I wasn't getting germs on my work!



This is my next project. I was looking at the pattern last night and it really looks like it will be a breeze to finish. One can always hope! Oh, it comes with two sayings. I'm going to do 'she who collects the most fabric wins'.