Neck and neck at the finish line

 Earlier this week, I finished the stitching on Emie's Etui:

One of the habits I wanted to establish this year was to do the finish-finishing on any smalls I stitched as soon as the embroidery was done.  So why haven't I started putting this together?

Baby Girl and I had decided to work on this together, since we couldn't take the class together. That included the assembly. Then she was seduced by the lure of a bag of luscious plum-colored yarn and decided she would alternate projects, which means she's about a week behind me in stitching.

So I pulled another UFO out of the pile, the Strawberry Purse and Accessories from a class Catherine Theron offered through Shining Needle. I hit the wall on tent over one and put is aside a couple of months ago.

Now the embroidery is finished on it.

Now I have to decide what to do--pull out another UFO and finish the stitching, or start putting one of these together, or spend the afternoon in another pursuit entirely . . . I think I'll start a pot of vegetable beef soup while I think about it.

Almost on the home stretch

I stitched Sunday afternoon. I ripped out what I stitched on Sunday on Monday evening. I restitched what I had ripped out on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. And I finally got the second panel for the body of Emie's Etui stitched.

 I was under the weather for a couple of days, so no needle was threaded. However, I did dream, because this arrived in the mail this week:

There are a dozen projects in this book. I want to stitch nine of them.

Not sure I'm going to live to be 400, but I may need to plan for that.

lots of teeny tiny stitches

 I finished one of the panels for Emie's Etui this week.

I was muttering to myself about how long it was taking me to stitch this panel. In the middle of the night one night this week, I woke up still muttering. Then I tried to figure out how many stitches I was doing. 32 count linen, cross over one.

So I multiplied 32 by 32, which would be the number of threads in a square inch of fabric, and came up with over 1000 stitches if I just worked tent. If I worked cross stitches, it would be over 2000.

Surely not, I thought. After all, my abilities to do math in my head are more like inabilities to do math in my head, much less doing math in my head in the middle of the night. So when I got up the next morning, I pulled out the calculator--and, yep, still over 2000 if you do cross stitch over every intersection in a 1 inch square on 32 count linen.

No wonder it takes so long!

And that's also why the next two bands on the next section of the etui seemed to zoom by.

But the next step is tent over one and cross over one (again) to make the wreath for the center of the panel.

Over one again . . . sigh . . .

Ends and Beginnings

 Happy New Year!

This is going to be a red-letter year for me. I will be retiring. And this means that I will finally have daylight hours for stitching every day and not just on week-ends and holidays and vacations--time to create and stitch and do all the things that working full-time interferes with.

I've been online looking at all the projects people completed last year. I have piles of UFO's and WIP's instead, with not many completed projects to show for the time I've spent stitching. Now, there is no way at all that I can make a dent in those piles before I retire, but I can focus on them--so that is how I plan to start the new year.

I also want to work on some of my more challenging projects, and get some finishing done.

I am not making resolutions about this. I am not making lists, or setting up a rotation, or making rules like I have to finish five things before I can start something new. And I will likely start a few new things before I retire, and I know I have two big new projects that will be underway before the next New Year rolls around.

But I plan to start the year with UFO's and WIP's.

Today I did the gold and silver thread on the second of the Golden Accessories:

Just one more to stitch before I can start putting these together. I just have to wrap my head around plaited braid. My head doesn't want to wrap around plaited braid. It wants the stitcher who originally came up with this stitch to spend eternity in a very hot place. I've been watching videos and practicing, but there's a step that I keep forgetting to do which keeps the braid from plaiting. I am going to work on it again tomorrow and see if I can get it to stay in my head just long enough to finish the last piece of this set. Or I may sit in the corner and rock and drool.

After this, I went back to Emie's Etui and worked the bargello variation. That was much easier.

After this, there is another double running band, then a satin stitch band, then another cross-over-one band, and then this piece will be finished.

But first, I need to plait that braid.