Sunday Craft Update -- September 4

The last couple of weeks have been devoted to cross-stitch. First, I finished (only 9 months late) the stitching for the 2010 Christmas cross-stitch ornament for my sister-in-law, Jill. I'll post photos after I do the finishing work. I'm looking forward to starting the 2011 ornament but am impatiently awaiting the arrival of some specialty threads in the mail. I also made progress on my Chatelaine Japanese Garden last week.

I finished Mirabilia's Deco Spirits a couple of years ago, but it languished in my needlework basket for a good long time. Now, finally, it is framed and on the wall. I added a close-up of Water, my favourite panel, above. Unfortunately, my photos don't do the piece justice. It is much more sparkly in real life. I guess the torture of working with those Kreinik threads was worth it. Having since discovered Rainbow Gallery Petite Treasure Braid through the Chatelaine designs, I much prefer using that to add the sparkle, though Kreinik has many more colours.

Sunday Craft Update -- December 5

It's been a busy few weeks, with holiday parties and concerts, including a solo recital, orchestra concert and strings school concert for Kate these past three weekends. We're also enjoying a visit from Todd's brother, Tim. Consequently, crafting time has been scarce, but I did manage to complete a hat for Kate (photos and patterns to appear shortly). I'm also more than two-thirds of the way through the cross-stitch ornament for Jill. It's going to be a challenge getting it to Singapore in time for Christmas, but I'm still hopeful!

Sunday Craft Update - August 24

My goal for Jill's Olympic Craft Challenge was to work on my cross-stitch projects a total of 12 hours. I actually managed about 16 hours by the time the closing ceremonies finished this morning. Here is a close-up of Aida, designed by Mirabilia. I've been working on this for ages and have finished about two-thirds at this point. The hand-dyed linen fabric was from Sugar Maple Fabrics which sadly seems to have closed its on-line doors at this time. I love the colours in this piece, but it is rather painful to stitch, as it involves lots of pesky little beads (many of which are hiding in the rug and under the seat cushion right now), metallic threads that fray all the time, and large, boring single-colour sections. I am determined to finish it though, hopefully before the next Olympics.

Sunday Craft Update - August 10

I am off to a slow start on Jill's Olympic Challenge. I'd committed to doing a modest 12 hours of work on my cross-stitch projects over the course of the Olympic games, and so far, I've put in about an hour and a half. My excuse is that I had a fun a busy week with my sister-in-law and nieces, and I'll write more about that later. However, now that the kids are off to camp, I should have plenty of time for stitching. Here's the current state of my "Fleur-de-Lys" sampler, designed by Jeannette Douglas. I've been working on this on-and-off (mostly off) for about two years now.

Sunday Craft Update

I've been mostly knitting these past two weeks. I finished the socks from the Christmas yarn I got from Laura, and I am making good progress on Todd's sweater. I haven't done cross-stitch in ages and am itching to get back to it, especially after seeing Jill's latest completed project.

Sunday Craft Update -- September 30

Didn't get much done this week, except for a couple of hours on my cross-stitch projects. However, I finally got Julia to model the short socks I made for her with Plymouth's Sockotta yarn. This is a cotton/rayon/wool blend available in lots of bright colours.

Rotation Stitching and Time Tracking

In a comment to my previous post, Jill asked me how and why I track the time I spend on my stitching projects. "How?" is easy to answer. I use Google spreadsheets for tracking many other aspects of my life, but I have a low-tech system for stitching hours: a notebook in which I record the time spent each evening, rounded to the nearest quarter-hour.

"Why?" takes longer to answer. Tracking hours accomplishes several things:

• It helps me predict how long it will take to complete a project.
• It helps identify certain projects that are being neglected and are deserving of attention.
• It provides a sense of accomplishment when I see a certain number of hours completed.
• It is one way of setting goals (e.g. "complete 10 hours" as opposed to "finish the front piece of the sweater").
• It is a good way to impress people. I usually get a stunned look when I tell someone I'd spent 200 hours on a cross-stitch project. This could be interpreted as, "I am impressed by your dedication!" or "You need to get a life!"

At work, we do time-tracking of our software projects for many of the same reasons. However, stitching projects, and cross-stitch projects in particular, have some characteristics quite different from those of software projects. Cross-stitch projects tend to take a large number of hours, many of them quite repetitive. (As one knitter has said, "I love the thrill of starting a new project and I love having the completed item. It's all that knitting in between ....") Unless you're doing a round-robin project, you work on them on your own. Unless projects are planned as gifts, they have no deadlines. Thus, it is a challenge to remain motivated long enough to finish a large cross-stitch piece. (There is nothing like an impending deadline or a frustrated customer to get me moving at work!)

For these reasons, there are a great number of on-line forums for cross-stitching, more I think than for most other hobbies of this sort. One really needs support groups for this activity. Where else would one get loads of praise and encouragement for an uploaded photo of a project that's only 5% completed?

My favourite forum is Rotation Stitchers. This is a long-running forum totally devoted to management of multiple stitching projects. Topics covered include time-tracking methods, styles of rotations, stitch-along (SAL) groups and even meta-discussion about whether rotation stitching or one-at-a-time stitching is best. If there's anything I like more than stitching itself, it's examining and analyzing the process.

For the record, I have about 10 cross-stitch projects on the go, with 5 of them "active" and the other 5 at some risk of becoming UFOs (Unfinished Objects). I have been pretty good the past two years about not starting new projects and consequently am not yet at the SABLE (Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy) point.

Sunday Craft Update -- September 16

I've been busy catching up at work, coping with the start-of-school rush and playing with Photoshop in my spare time. So there is not much to report for the week. I did a few hours of knitting on my various projects. The one bit of exciting news is that I decided to pull out Chatelaine's Japanese Garden again. I'd put in over 100 hours and completed about half of the project, but I stalled at the end of last year. The photo shows where I'd left off. Laura is also stitching this piece, on a different piece of hand-dyed fabric from Sugar Maple Fabrics.