Saturday, January 11, 2014

Christmas Challenge Segment 7 and Stuff

My 2014 Stitcher's Diary is already full for the entire year and it's only January 11th!  If I didn't have work interrupting things I could pack more into it, but work = paycheck so hi ho, hi ho and all that.  As of  January 5th I was at that point in this WIP to really get excited...THE HOME STRETCH! Three more snowmen to stitch up and then the "lights" and string to add and DONE.  

Happy snow dudes
Lovely beads in this mess!
Instead of cross stitching the lights, I'm going to use beads to brighten things up.  Since our local bead shop closed it's doors, I am unable to just walk down the street and pick up the perfect beads for this project but I think I found some that will work very nicely.

Before you ask, I just noticed the 12 cents in the picture.  No I will not be using the 12 cents in this project, ha, ha.  I have no idea why it's on my craft table.  You can also see I'm halfway through with snowman number 8.  Up to this point I have put in 49 hours.  I really thought it would take twice as long, but then I'm not done yet so who knows?  I'm still struggling with the time keeping, but getting better at it.  Put a stop watch app on my phone that works much better than the one that was already on the phone.

Nerdy Expando-File for WIPs and UFOs
I have found more WIPs and UFOs but have put them into my super nerdy expando-file folder to keep them handy.  It also keeps them together so things don't get lost or forgotten.  I will not have hidden UFOs littering up my totes again! Frankly I'm shocked that I came out of 2013 with any WIPs and UFOs after cleaning up years of mess last year.  I'm still coming to terms with it, but it's not all my bad.  People want "things" stitched or I get distracted by pretty things...but mostly people want things stitched.  I've told you how my brother has "ideas" and yet there is only one of me and I already have a list of things to stitch.  I will be doing a blog on Jan 16th for the Wipocalypse 2014 so you will get to see what else found it's way into the file.

My first REAL project for the 2014: Year of the Magnificent Teresa Wentzler is The English Cottage Sampler, and this morning I ordered the fabric!!  It turns out to be the very LAST piece in stock because it is discontinued.  Whew!!  For £20.89 I'm very okay with that order.  This translates to $34.00 USD, so I have already gone over my $25.00 budget for January on the Stitch from Stash but I can carry that extra $9.00 over into February and already know I won't be needing anything in February...but we all think that don't we and I am probably kidding myself about how that won't happen and then I tell myself to stop being so ridiculous and follow the rules!!  

Anywhoooooooooooo, Once I receive that lovely piece of fabric from the UK I can begin.  In the meantime, once I finish the Christmas Challenge I will stitch up Stretch.  Last time we brought him up I thought I would use some delicious chocolate fabric, but when I pulled the colors out, I realized it wasn't going to happen that way.  I dug around my stash and found a poly blend napkin that has a kind of shine to it, and it's green! 

 Do you see what I mean about the brown being all wrong?  Delicious as it is, it is not for this project.  Maybe for one of the ornament patterns, but not for Stretch.

There you have it!  I have read some blogs this morning and am THRILLED to see where my GF's are on their TW Projects!  Feeling a little behind here ha ha!

Until next time....




8 comments:

  1. That brown is a beautiful colour, you're correct that it's not right for stretch, but still, some lovely fall themed thing. My Stretch is planned on some dark grey, but I'm not even thinking of been worried about that yet. And there's still a part of me that thinks I should biscornuize the 12 Days of Christmas.

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  2. Yes ma'am. Even though "biscornuize" is not a word, I believe it is a technical term that you and I will coin to refer to what will happen to the 12 days of Christmas, and yes, we should both biscornuize those patterns either in a twelve sided or six separate, or even 12 separate biscornus! Have you picked up those patterns yet? Did I miss them somewhere? And whichever way it turns out I do have enough of that chocolate linen for any of those three ideas. I do like your dark grey for Stretch, it will give him an olde pewter look I think, share pictures please :D

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    1. Inventing new words is fun. I do not have those patterns yet, haven't even looked at a price, might compromise my stitch from stash though.

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    2. Okay, turns out I do have the pattern, but the reason I forgot was due to it being from Patterns online where you can download it, but you need PCStitch to do so and then you can print it out. :D

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    3. HA, we are corrupting people, it's awesome

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  3. It's good to hear from you again - I was a little worried, you didn't write anything in some time, and the radio kept telling me how very cold and dangerous the northern parts of the US are right now.

    Your Christmas no-longer-challenge is coming along really nicely. I hope being on the home stretch will give you the motivation to finish quickly, and than start into your TW stuff. As for timing yourself...I don't think I even wanny know how much time I put into some of my projects. That would only make me wonder if there isn't a wiser way to invest this time, and we all know there is no good answer to that question xD

    Also, hooray for finally ordering that fabric and hooray for Strech's green background - I agree, fits him much better than the brown. Although I could imagine some color variation of him that would indeed look good on there...

    Also #2, booo on both of you for getting me hooked on yet another awesome pattern with your comments - I don't even know this song, but they do look great *sigh*

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  4. I'm still laughing "Christmas no longer challenge"! ha ha! Thank you :D I'm glad you both think the green is better, I want to start that now but I'm so close to being done with the snowmen it wouldn't be right at this point.

    As for wiser ways to invest time, I have to say that creating an heirloom is very wise. 100 years from now someone will either have it handed down to the them through the family or spend quite a few Euros to purchase it, so when you are stitching your beautiful TW designs remember that you are creating a place in your family's history :D Besides that, it's just good for the soul!

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