A different week for me

Here it is, the start of another week and another year. I am going to say that given it was a holiday week I was able to spend some time stitching, so this is going to be a longer than normal post.

We did take some time this week to relax and enjoy the time to do some of the things that we enjoy doing. If I can look back at what I have been able to work on this week, I am happy.

New Doors - here is a project that I decided to see how much I could get done in the last week. It felt great seeing that I have been able to make some good progress on it. I still have quite a bit of stitching to do, but at least I have moved it from under 60% completed to now around 73%. 

My goal is to have this piece finished before the end of March, so will see how things go. It was nice to see that I am getting closer to getting all the inside completed, and it will just mean that I have the border left to go, so will see how things go with this project. Of course, there were some other things that I ended up working on as well, so now to see when I go back and pick up this and move it forward again.

Let's hope that this one will come back out in January, and I see how much more of it I can get done.

Elizabeth Wood 1850 - this is my New Year New Start for 2023 and this is what I was able to get done on January 1st. It is always fun to have a new start for the new year, and it is once again my aim to have this one finished early in the year. I would like to get more of this done before my new post, but will have to see what happens.

This isn't too big a piece, as I think it is around 7 x 8 inches, so will see how things go. It is going to be nice to have another red sampler finished, and I have now decided to work all my red samplers with DMC 816.

Joy - one of the things that I wanted to do in the last little while it was having a quick finish on something, so of course that meant it was time to start a project, so that is what I did. I found this ornament that was in my stash and figured it was time to get it stitched. 

It was a fun little thing to do and given this week was all about taking time and trying to relax, it was great. Now what I have to do is go through all the projects that I have finished and get them fully finished so that I can have things hung on the walls and other things ready for hanging on a tree next year.

Mini The Forgotten - here is the piece that has been my focus for a while, and the main thing I wanted to do before the end of the year was to get all the black finished on the entire piece. When I first thought about this idea, I wasn't sure if that was going to work too well, but then I sat down and started working on it and I have been able to get all the black done. Of course, there is still a lot of stitching to do on this piece, but at lest I have an idea of the entire size of it.

It felt good taking the picture of the entire piece as I haven't really seen the entire design as I have been working on the various sections and just quickly moving the q-snap when I needed to do that.  Currently not sure how I am going to move the stitching forward on this yet, but I am thinking that I might at least try and work on one colour for a while and see how much of it I can get done.

I have now moved this project from a q-snap to a scroll rod as I am thinking that this might because a focus for 2023 as I would like to see more of this done. I don't think it will be a finish, but at least getting more stitches done would make me happy. There is still 42,000-stitches left to go on this piece, so it will be a while before it's done.

A Year in Flowers - February - I had started this piece earlier in the year, and then I put it down and didn't get the February section done until this week. It was a lot more stitching that was left than I thought because there was quite a bit of back-stitching. It is a nice piece once it is done, but it was just sitting and making a point of moving it forward.

Of course, I still have the remaining months of this project to do, but I think for now I am going to be happy seeing that I have the first two of them done and later this year I will try and pick up some of the other month's and see how many of them I can get done. 

Cross stitch in general - this last week was nice as I was able to spend quite a bit of time working on the various projects and seeing what I can move forward. Yes, I did get a couple of small projects finished which is nice, so that means that I ended 2023 completing 19 cross stitch projects. It felt good seeing that I was able to make some good progress on things this week and now to see what I can get done in 2023. I haven't set any goals for myself this year, but instead I have given myself targets to aim for, so will see how it goes. My overall target has me trying to get more stitches completed than I did this year, but I will see how it goes.

If you have cross stitch goals/targets, do you set how many projects you are going to complete or how many stitches you are going to do? I do have both of these kind of figured out, but will see how things go.

Simple Scarf - this is the last project that I worked on in the last week. I was able to pick this up some days, and just being able to get a few rows done was nice. I have finished two out of the five balls of yarn, so will see how things go moving forward. I would like to see this scarf finished off quickly, so that means that I am going to have to work on getting more of it done. It's a fun, simple project, so that means that maybe spending bits of time on it will help me get more of it completed.

I do have other projects that I have started, and I need to get them completed, so they will come out and get some attention once this project is finished. I have found that I don't want too many projects out at once because then I just don't work on them, so focusing on once at a time seems to make me the happiest.

Other notes - now that 2023 is here, I am going to be working on moving things forward and seeing how things go. I may not reach everything that I want to achieve this year, but I know that I am at least going to try and do most of them.

I hope everyone had a good holiday, and now it's time to get back to work and see how much time we have for your crafts or how we relax each day. Have a good week, and hopefully I will have some progress on something next week to show you. There won't be as many projects worked on this week as work is calling me to get things done.