Moving projects forward

Coffee Quaker - August 19

Here it is another week and yes I was able to find some time to do some stitching and am happy with the progress that I see on some of the projects.

Coffee Quaker - August 24

Coffee Quaker - well this project got a little bit of time and it would have got more if I hadn't had to restitch the bird.  of course, when I started the bird I had it in the wrong place so after finishing it and moving onto the next motif I discovered I had placed it wrong so that meant that I had to take out the motif that I had started and the entire bird.  As you can see the bird is back and it is now in the correct place and next time I pick this project up I will try and get some more of the motifs completed.

All Dogs Go To Heaven - July 20

All Dogs Go To Heaven - This is going to be a very long project and I understand that because it is a full coverage piece and there are 89 colours in a piece that is going to be around 13 x 16 inches when it is finished.  I am enjoying working on it but right now with basically three different shades of blue happening is sure doesn't look like much.

All Dogs Go To Heaven - August 26

I am thinking that next time I pick this project up I may see if I can add at least one other colour to the piece as it would help a lot.  As this piece is so large I ended up putting a spreadsheet together so that I can track the progress that I am making on the design.  It is 24 pages of pattern and of course, the page I am currently working on has the most stitches on it so that is going to take me some time to get through.  As of Saturday evening, I have finished 22% of the first page and 1.4% of the entire design.  Yes, it is going to be taking me quite a while to see some really good progress on this piece but considering some of the Heaven and Earth Designs can take people two or three years to complete I understand.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - August 19

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL '18 - Of course, this piece needed some attention this week because I wanted to make sure that I got the entire August section done before the September section is released.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - August 23

The Phoenix did seem to take quite a while to do and I am not sure why but at least by Thursday evening I was able to say that the August section is now complete and I am waiting to see what the September piece is going to be like.  I am thinking it might be a border design to break up the design but we will have to wait until the end of this week to see what it is.  I figure I will try and get the September section started as soon as it is released and then see how much time I have in September to work on other projects.

Temperature - August 18

Temperature - I am still working on getting Temperature caught up and that is taking some time but at least this week I was able to get June finished up and have just started the July temperatures.

Temperature - August 23

I am continuing to try and get four of the temperatures done each day and it seems to be helping as it means that I am slowly getting caught up on this piece.  I decided that I am going to try and continue to get four of the temperatures done each day through September and maybe then I will be a little closer to being caught up by the end of the month.  I know that I want to have this piece completed in early January 2019 and the only way that is going to happen is if I can actually get it all caught up and then just be adding the two temperatures from each day as they happen.


I am still working on a few other projects and am happy with the progress that I have been able make.  Just seeing that things continue to move forward is great.  I am busy with work as well so that means that the crafting time is the evenings and weekends but I don't mind.  I enjoy sitting in the evenings doing some crafting and I have something to show for it at the end of the evening.

I hope everyone has a great week and if you are also a crafter, you can find some time to do the things that you enjoy doing.

Moving things forward and a new start

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - August 10

Another week has come and gone and at least this week I was able to find some time to stitch some evenings.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - August 19

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL ' 18 - I continue to work on this piece and yes I am starting to see that I am getting closer to the other side of the design.  I am happy to see that I am finally making some good progress on it and if things go well I might even have a chance to finish the August section before the end of the month.  The Phoenix does have a lot of detail so they do take quite a bit of time to stitch but as I only have one left to stitch I should be able to get it done.

I am thinking that if I can focus on stitching this piece I might even be able to get the rest of it done before the end of this coming weekend if work and everything else allows for it.

Temperature - August 12

Temperature - now again I am trying to get the June section of this piece done so that means that I am working pretty hard to get the rows done that I want to get done each day.

Temperature - August 18

All of the high rows have been completed for the June section and I now just need to finish getting all the low rows done.  I have around 20 more rows to go and hopefully will see all of them done this week if I can focus on getting them done.

My goal before the end of this month is to have a few rows of July done and that means that I am slowly getting caught up on the piece and that does make me feel a little better.

Coffee Quaker - This piece is my Heartstring Sampler and I have to admit that as soon as I saw it I wanted to stitch it. I quickly got the fabric to use on the piece as it is a light beige/brown and it then sat for a few months until this weekend when I finally decided that it was time to at least get it started.

Coffee Quaker - August 19

The first goal that I had was to get all of the words stitched and that meant getting at least one motif also completed so that I knew where the last row of words would go without having to do a lot of counting.

I hope to be able to work on this project one motif at a time and I will be stitching this piece a second time as it is going to be for my sister.  We are both coffee lovers and get that from our mom.  I am also using some of the floss that my mom gave me so we both going to have a project using mom's floss or at least some of the floss.  I will be adding the rest of the floss that is needed for the project.

Thread X-Mas Ornaments

Other projects - well what do you do with all the ends of threads that you have from your stitching?  Well, if you are like a lot of stitchers you collect them for a year and then either throw them out or you do something like I did.  Yesterday, I finally sat down and decided that it was time to fill the glass ornaments that I had picked up last fall.

What is nice is I can see the different colours and sometimes I even remember the projects that I did to get all of a certain colour.  The ornament that is filled with a lot of red is from the two projects that I did early last year for Canada.  I can then look and see that all the other projects that I worked on last year are now put into different ornaments and that makes me feel great.

I do have some other projects that I have been working on and I am getting closer to get them done.  Some of the projects will be going up on ETSY once they are all done so that is why I haven't shown any pictures yet.  I figure that I am going to take all the pictures at once and then will have something to show.


This week I am not sure how much time I will have to stitch but I hope to be able to at least spend some time on both Temperature and Mystery SAL.  I know that I have a long list of things to complete for work so that is what needs to get first and then I will see what time I have to craft in the evenings.

Temperature is moving forward

Temperature - August 6th

Another week has come and gone and yes I was able to find a bit of time to get some stitching done and I am pretty happy with the progress that I was able to make on two projects this week.  Sure it would have been nice to see some more progress on them but I am not complaining because I have been able to get something done and that is what is important.

Temperature - now I have been trying to work on this project most days and I am continuing to try and get at least 4 half rows done each day through the end of August and I have been able to do that.  I am currently keeping up with that stitching and it makes me feel great as I am now seeing that June is starting to come together or at least the highs for June are getting completed.  I decided that I was going to try and work on one colour at a time instead of constantly changing colours and I think that is helping me because it means that I just work on one colour until it is done for the month and then I can start the next colour.

Temperature - August 12th

I am happy that I have the line at the bottom which is July 1st as it shows me that I am getting closer to having the highers done and then I will be able to work on getting the lows all stitched and then I will be able to get moving onto July and maybe getting a little closer to actually being caught up on this piece.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL'18 - August 6th

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL '18 - I was able to get a few threads done on this piece this week as well.  I haven't been able to focus on it as much as I would have liked but at least it is continuing to see a bit of attention and that does help.  I am thinking that if I can spend one evening this coming week working on this I might be able to see some better progress on it.  I am not sure what evening I will be able to work on it but it would be nice to see that I am getting closer to having this section finished before the end of August.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL'18 - August 10th

I have tried to figure out how to get this piece finished quickly so that I will have a bit of a break from it before the September section is released.  I figure focusing on it for a couple of evenings might help so that is why I have said I am going to try and work on it at least one evening this week and then I will see how things go.  For the size of this months section there is a lot of detail and maybe that is what is getting me.  I haven't been able to get into a rhythm on the piece yet so will see how things move forward.


I continue to get on a few other projects but until they are closer to being finished I haven't taken a picture of them yet.  I hope to be able to get these other projects also moved forward and then I can take some pictures and let you see what else I have been working on.

This week I again have work that needs to be done and then I am going to try and get some crafting done in the evenings.  Hopefully, I will have more to show you on the projects that I have been working on next week.  Until then, have a great week and hopefully, you will be able to also find a little bit of time to craft as well.

Things getting moved forward

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - July 28

Another week has come and gone and the weather has been extremely hot and humid here so that means it is difficult to really get a lot of things done.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - August 6

Temperature - July 19

 Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - the pattern was released on time as usual and it appeared around 8 am on the 31st of July which is August 1st in Australia where the designer lives.  I had decided that I wasn't going to put any stitches in the August piece until August 1st here and that is what I did. 

The pattern is of two phoenix and they look amazing so now to work on getting the two of them done over the next couple of weeks.  I know that being able to continue to see progress on this piece would make me very happy and that is what I am going to try and do.  I try and put at least two threads a day in on one of my projects and sometimes it is Mystery SAL and other days it is something else.

Temperature - now, this is the project that got a lot of attention this week and that is because I decided that I wanted to try and get it  moved forward.  I am behind on the stitching of this piece as before I picked it up on July 30th I only had through around the 12th of May done which didn't make me happy.  Yes, I am really behind on this project so it does need some attention if my goal is to have it finished early in January 2019.

Temperature - August 5

After sitting down and figuring out how I was going to get this project moved forward and caught up I decided to just work on May and see how quickly I could get it stitched and on August 5th I am happy to say that May is now done an dI have just started working on June.

Temperature - August 6

On the third picture that is where I stopped last night and I had decided that I was going to try and mark where July 1st was so those are the red and orange lines that are appearing at the bottom of the piece. It does make me feel good knowing how big a month is and then I can work on getting it all filled in.  I hope that I can get June finished up this month as well because I want to see that I am finally getting back to where I can stitch the day befores temperature and that's it.  Right now I am trying to stitch two days temperatures each day so that might help me get it somewhat caught up quickly.

Other crafts - I have been working on a few other crafts over the last couple of weeks and now I am just waiting to have them finished before I take pictures of them.  I have been having a lot of fun figuring out the various ideas that have been bouncing around in my head and some of them are now getting made and hopefully the end results will be what I expected.


The forecast for this week is another hot and humid week so will see what actually gets done.  I have quite a bit of work that needs my attention so that is going to be the focus and then will see how much stitching/crafting time I have in the evenings.