Competitor's Spirit

WARNING: This blog post is really, really, really, really loooooooooooooong.

That's right, I am a little competitive.  Who knew that cross stitch competitions would be so intense?  Trash talking, trying to maintain one's composure when we get the win and failing, wondering what the next challenge twist or spot challenge will be.....it's stressful in a good way.

Thought I would share my accomplishments thus far so you can see what ridiculousness we have been up to.  Also, we are still in the lead as a team, but one person on the other team has more individual points than our teammate who was in the lead.

The number one rule throughout is the #teamjodyri (since I'm on that team) in your post.  At first that wasn't an issue, but after a few days...

Day 1:  NEW START

This was the 25 x 25 pattern SAL from Magical's Blog.  That was a start and finish situation.  My plan was to only do my SAL patterns, but dang it if the rules for each thing changed when they posted for the day...I'll show you that later.

Day 2: SHOW US YOUR STITCHING CORNER

So far, so easy right?  We are all thinking: WOW, this is easy!  We all had planned out our lists.  The list was given prior to the start of the competition so we'd have an idea as to what we could expect...little did we know...

Day 3: WORK ON A KLT CHARTING CHART

I had to go quickly and grab a freebie from the KLT Charting Group on FB so I could get this done...technically a new start.  I call it "the beginning of my new start frustration", but still keeping it positive I soldiered onward...

Naturally we have to post the starting picture and follow that up with an ending picture.  It was this challenge that showed our team leaders a few things and later they fixed our wagon! By now it's a definite rule that all posts need to have the team hashtag or no points will be given. 

Day 4: TELL US HOW MANY WIPs YOU HAVE

Technically I had 30 as of that day.  Now it's 34, but that will be remedied by the end of the month I hope.  Again...continuing on thinking this is easy, it's fun, we are all laughing and winning and enjoying ourselves...and yet....

Day 4:  Name that Floss!

Gorgeous thread isn't it?  This wasn't a spot challenge.  We had a few days to think of something.  I thought of Rocky Mountain Sunset and shared a picture of why.

Gorgeous isn't it?  I took this in September of 2017 when I happened to look out my window and see this pretty sunset happening.  When I walked out into the street to take the shot, this truck stopped and allowed me to take the picture!  That was super nice.  But it does have the colors of that pretty floss doesn't it?  More on that later...

Day 5:  SHOW US AN OLD FINISH

Endangered Youngin's Bear Cubs.  I have all the patterns and will eventually stitch them to make quilts for my potential grandkids, but this one was stitched  after the birth of my second son..so I think it's 30 years old-ish.  Still feeling confident, the challenge is still easy....

Day 5: BONUS CHALLENGE! 

Show me the size of your Jodyri Stash!

Arrrgh!  I was at work when this one hit and couldn't possibly show anything!  It's okay, I tell myself.  Just breathe, it's fine.  Right?  It's fine! (seriously, just breathe you competitive jerk!)

Day 6: WORK WITH JODYRI THREAD

Now things get interesting here.  We have to post the starting picture.  We have to include the hashtag for our team.  We have to hand write the date on paper and make sure it's in the picture...told you things were getting "interesting"!  Once we do a bit of stitching, we have to post again with another handwritten note.

Because I'm a serious jerk, I put the time in there to make sure all bases were covered.  I'm using Jodyri July 2017 Limited Edition "Galaxy" floss.  I have been saving it for something special and this pattern "GeoStar" by KLT Charting is perfect for it. (there's another geo pattern that would make a great sequel to this one I'm going to get and stitch later)

See what I mean?  It's super pretty.  It's my favorite floss out of all of the floss I have made by Michelle (she's the owner/operator of Jodyri).

Day 7: SHOW US YOUR STITCHING BUDDY

This challenge was so fun!  We were shown pictures of dogs and cats, stuffed animals, best friends, husbands, children....a definite fun one!  I was torn...do I show Roy?  Do I show Lucy?  Roy was hiding in the basket of biscornu, so I chose Lucy who is so adorable and I had just taken the best picture ever of her.

Dang it she's adorable!  Just look at that happy face!  I can hardly stand it she's so wonderful.  After that bit of fun we were given the winner of Day 4's Name That Floss and it was my good friend Krystal!  She came up with Sunset Hibiscus.  A lovely name and the picture she shared was glorious.  I think I was more happy she won than if I had, ha, ha.

Day 8: WORK ON A JODYRI PATTERN

Okay, so in the team chat room, Michelle created two patterns for just the team.  We had also decided en masse that we would change our FB icons to be the same just to mess with the other teams head.  That happened and it was glorious.  We are borg.  It was awesome.  

For some reason, this particular morning I was tired, running late and had written the wrong date and time down so there were two start posts.  Thankfully, by the end of my work day I was in even worse shape but did manage to throw in a few stitches for the end post.

Seriously, I was bone weary and that was all I could do.  It would sit like that for a few days more.  But then...scores came in and #teamJodyri 300 points #teamKLT 240 points. That's right...we are winning.  But wait...

WEEK 2 CHALLENGE: Please add a picture to the week 2 challenge album of a design that you have had a hand in. This could mean you designed the entire piece, changed something in an existing design to make it relevant to you (or the recipient), changed the suggested colours or used hand dyed threads and/or fabric to make the piece stand out from anyone else finishing the same design. It seems some people didn't understand the word album and then couldn't figure out how to add the picture.

I shared this biscornu I had made for my friend Alonya who lived in Kamchatka (Russian Far East) at the time and it was the first time she and her family has received a post from anywhere other than locally.  At that time Kamchatka was having some really hard times and living in Alaska it was news.  I was happy to send them something pretty and it made the family very happy.  I Frankensteined parts from two patterns and made up the rest. 

Day 9:  SHOW US YOUR STASH

Finally! A reprieve from new starts and messing around trying to take pictures and remembering to write things down correctly...

This is 90% of my stash and I have to say, looking at it like this makes me so very proud of myself.  It took years to downsize from the room of giant totes to this and I couldn't be happier.  Both teams tied this day.

Day 10:  DO 200 STITCHES ON A BUTTERFLY CHART

Starting off where I left off but having to write the handwritten date (with time because I'm just covering my bases here and I'm a jerk ha, ha)...

This was before work and I put in a few stitches and thought I'd go back to bed until 7:30 am. I was dog tired from work but still, that competitive rage fire still burned in me to get it done. This day we were told to go home early from work due to weather.

As it turned out, here in Colorado was what these good people refer to as a BOMB CYCLONE. I'm like "seriously?"  Someone at work said "another one?" and I was like "when was the first one?" and then remembered it was, like, that last time it snowed and was a bit windy.  The lower 48 is definitely great for making a blizzard sound super scary.  You go live in Alaska for 35 years and then tell me if that BOMB CYCLONE was really necessary as a name for that day's weather.  Yes, the weather was not good to drive in.  All these people have to do is say "the weather is making the roads very unsafe"...not cause heart attacks , strokes, anxiety and serious fear by calling it a dang BOMB CYCLONE.  so stupid

Pondering this idiocy, another moment of panic as I realize...

SPOT CHALLENGE! This will award 5 points to the first commenter, 3 points to the second, 2 points for the third and 1 point for the fourth.

Which is your favourite SAL from either Kim or myself (so it has to be KLT or Jodyri but does include those designed by Vik at Jodyri as well)?

You must post a picture of the SAL stitched by you to qualify and if it is finished you earn double points! GO!

Drat.  Nowhere for me to go as I had neither.  Not doing well on the spot challenges but luckily I have teammates who are.  Our team is still in the lead and still winning.

Day 11: NEW START

Now this is where I, for some reason, start getting grumpy about the new start situation.  There is a twist to this new start. It's getting brutal!  The new start had to be on a clean, un-stitched on piece of fabric.  I spent the day at work trying to think of what this could be.  ALL DAY LONG, pondering.  When I got home from work it hit me:  I could stitch one of my Frosty Forest patterns.

There are advantages to this new start; participating gets 10 points, stitch 200 you get 15 points and over 400 you get 20.  

Yep, 63 stitches.  It's all I could do because of time constraints.  See, the challenge starts about noon UK time on the day of and ends noon UK time the day after so that everyone around the world can have the time needed.  Pretty smart thinking on their part, but as you can see, I didn't have enough time to really go crazy stitching this one.  We still won this round as a team though.  #teamJodyri 525 points, #teamKLT 480 points.

Day 12: SHOW US YOUR FAVORITE KLT CHARTING NEEDLE MINDER

The rules state you must own it and show it on something you are working on.  My original plan was to show the one I owned (purchased from someone else) and show it with a picture from the KLT website as the same minder is now there as well, and it is my favorite on her site.  Apparently, we are not allowed to be smarty pantsies about this. POOP. #teamjodyri did not win this round and closed the gap slgihtly on the total point difference between teams.  We are still winning overall.

Day 13: WORK ON A DESIGN USING HAND DYED FABRIC 

FROM EITHER JODYRI OR KLT CHARTING

Pfft...too easy and I'm grateful!  I almost had a hard time deciding which one as I now have a few to choose from.

I decided to blog first before giving this one a finish.  I'm hoping to finish all of these new starts by the end of the month.  My SALs are on the side line for this month. My current WIP rotation is on the sideline too.

Here is a shot of the other piece I could have worked on, it's a larger version of the mini Jodyri.

I have another opportunity to stitch on this one later this month which makes me happy.  However, there is yet another new start AND two TO BE ANNOUNCED situations in the competition.  I'm nervous about those...what horrible torture will the team leaders come up with??

For today, I'm going to the movies with a girlfriend to watch a chick flick and gorge on popcorn and soda.  It will be a nice break from work and frantic running around doing things for the competition.  When this competition is over I will go see Endgame....it only seems right.

Hopefully you haven't given up on this lengthy blow by blow of the KLT vs Jodyri competition!  I will try to do a shorter version next time, maybe four days at a time to keep it interesting.

Please help me to hope the snow away and let spring come on for real!  It seems we deserve it after this winter being so heinous.  Be safe my precious friends.

Until next time.....KEEP ON STITCHIN'!