Very good progress this week and a cross stitch retreat

Here it is the start of another week, and I can honestly say that I have been able to make some good progress on things over the last seven days. Part of the progress is because we decided that it was time for a retreat where I could focus on moving some of my cross stitch forward. You will see that I was able to make good progress on things and I also introduced cross stitch to someone that had never heard about it until this weekend.

Pandemic - here is the cross stitch piece that was my focus for the last week and I can honestly say that it was my focus and I was able to make some really good progress on it. During the treat I was able to get over 1,900 stitches in on the piece. Before we left for the retreat, I had already done almost 1,000 stitches so that means that this week I was able to add another 3,000 stitches to this piece. It feels good seeing that I was able to make some really good progress on this piece.

This was one of the WIPGO projects for the year, so I was required in March to add another 500 stitches to the piece, but I surpassed the total by a lot and that makes me happy. Seeing that when I can focus on a project, I can get lots of stitching accomplished makes me feel good. This project is now going to be put down again as I will be picked up a different project for this coming week.

Beaded Wizard Bookmark - here is a project that I started in 2005, and it didn't get much progress on it. I think I might have had around 40 stitches done before I picked it up this week to give it a little bit of love. It did get a little bit of attention during my cross stitch retreat this weekend so we will see when it comes out again and how much more of the piece I can get finished.

This project isn't very big at all so I know that being able to focus on it for a few days would get it done but it also means that I need to focus on it which I don't seem to do on the smaller projects. It is nice having some smaller projects that I can just pick up and work on at various times, but I am not going to work on them until they are finished within a short time period.

Ex-boyfriend shawl - here is one of the knitting projects that I have been trying to move forward and I must admit that it has been a challenge given the yarn that I picked for it. This past week I was able to pick it up and work on it at least 30 minutes a day but given we were away for three days it didn't get quite as much work as I would have liked. At least seeing some good progress on it was nice and this coming week I hope to be able to continue to move it forward as I have some webinars that I need to attend so this might be the project that gets some attention.

It does feel good seeing that I have at least been able to add some rows to this project and hopefully in the next week I can maybe finish the first ball of yarn that I have on the go and will see how big it is. I do know that I will be using at least part of the second ball if not all of that ball to get the shawl to a size that makes me happy.

This week I hope to get back to the 30 minutes of knitting on this project each day because that has helped me move it forward. It doesn't seem like a lot of time, but it is amazing how much progress you can get done when you just set aside 30 minutes to pick up a project and work on it.

Scarf in the round - here is the other knitting project that did get some progress this last week. It is nice having this project on the go as it is an easy pick up and work on it for a little while. Instead of having two pictures for this project I have left the markers in for each week that I have worked on the scarf. The top marker is for this coming week to show me where I started. So, I have worked on this scarf a bit each week so now after three weeks I still have a long way to go before this scarf is finished but I have been enjoying just getting a few rows done at a time. 

This week I have some webinars that I will be watching so either this project or the Ex-boyfriend shawl may get a bit more attention as these are both good projects to be working on when I am watching webinars.

Retreat goodies - when my husband and I were talking about doing a cross stitch retreat, I mentioned how when you go to one, you normally get a goodie bag with cross stitch stuff in it. So, of course, hubby said that's still possible, that he could go down to the cross stitch store and pick up some stuff.

We talked about different things that could be in the bag so he asked me to put together a list of things that I might want in my bag, and he would see what he could do. On Friday morning, he left the hotel and headed down to Gitta's and by the look of what I got he had a good time. He also mentioned that all the staff thought the idea of the retreat and retreat bag were a great and they loved helping out.

Other projects - this past week I didn't have a lot of time to work on a lot of other stuff but I did some a new project but haven't got very far along on it so it will be shown when I get more progress on it.

I hope everyone is finding that little bit of time to recharge your personal battery each day. For me my crafting does help a lot. This week the list of things on my to-do list is rather long so that means that I need to get working on them so that I can also find some recharge time later in the day.

Hopefully next week I will have some progress to show you on some projects.