A bit of progress and Fair results

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL'19 - Oct 2

Here it is the beginning of another week, and I have a little bit of stuff to show for the past week.  I didn't get as much done as I had hoped but also didn't have as much time as I thought to work on the various projects.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL'19 - this project got one evening of work, which was great.  I have at least started this piece, so now to finish working on the October section so that I can have it waiting for the November release, which is going to be the start of the border.

I hope to be able to get the rest of this piece done this week, but again, I will have to see how much time I have to sit and work on things.

Everyday Shawl - Sept 29

Everyday Shawl - Oct 6

Everyday Shawl - I had planned on working on this project each day, but I didn't get that done in the last week, so now to work on trying to get back to getting at least 20 minutes of knitting done each day.  I only got 2.5 inches knit this week, so I will see how much I can do this coming week.  The 20 minutes doesn't seem like a long time, but we were busy this past week, so when I had the 20 minutes, I was working on another project that had a deadline.

The shawl now measures around 13.5 inches, which is nice but still has quite a bit of knitting to go on this shawl.  I hope this week I can get some knitting in and see that I can make some good progress on the overall shawl.

TASK tags - Oct 5

TASK tags - here is a project that I was able to get done this week.  We are going to be helping at a booth at a conference and decided that we needed the website as part of our tags.   There are four of us at the booth, so I sat and designed and stitched the four tags for us, and then we have a centrepiece for the table, so it is also getting its own tag.  These were some very quick stitches which helped so now to get back to working on some of the other projects that I would like to achieve.   It is a lot of fun when you can work on something that appears quickly.  It will be interesting to see the reaction of the other guys at the booth as they don't know that I have done this yet.

Mystery SAL'18

Markham Fair - I can finally show that I have been working on over the last couple of weeks.  The big project that I was working on was getting three projects finished up so that I could enter them into the Markham Fair.  The two pieces that I am very happy with are Linen and Threads Mystery SAL'18 and Swans.  Both of these pieces were entered and in different categories.  Linen and Threads Mystery SAL'18 won the 1st place ribbon for the 11-18 count Aida category and Swans done the 2nd place ribbon for cross-stitch on other material.

I did enter Needleworker in the category of a piece of cross-stitch not framed as it was made into a bell-pull, and it didn't place.

Swans

Markham Fair is an interesting fair to enter pieces in as they hire people to judge the pieces, and after talking to the committee this year is interesting to hear about the judging.  It does make me happy to know that the ribbons I won were based on the work that was done on the pieces.  At Markham, they don't award all four ribbons if the work isn't up to a particular standard in a category, and only ribbons that are earned are awarded.  We saw that in some categories, there were only one or two ribbons awarded, and some of them weren't even a 1st place.


I am now going to get some work done as I have a bunch of things that need my attention.  I hope to find some time this week to get a bit of crafting done, but I will have to wait and see how things go.

I hope everyone has a great week, and you find some time to do the things that you love doing.

A good week and a finish

Swan - March 3rd

 Here it is the beginning of another week and I am happy with the stitching that I was able to get done this week. I was able to find a bit of stitching time each evening and some on the weekend and I have some progress on some projects this week which makes me very happy.

Swan - March 11th

Swan - now this is the project that once again was the focus of most of my stitching for the week. I have been working on getting this piece done and as of yesterday it is now done which makes me very happy.   I am happy to see this piece finished in a lot of ways but I was reall enjoying working on it so am a little sad as well to see it finished.

I am extremely happy with how it turned out considering it was based on a picture and I converted it into cross-stitch so there wasn't a finished picture of it for me to really know what it was going to look like before I actually sat down and started to stitch it.  Sure, I had the original picture but that was it so am happy with how it turned out.  It now needs to be pressed and framed but that will be in a little while.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - March 4th

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL 2018 - I am continuing to work on this piece two threads a day and am happy with the progress that I have been able to make on it. I figure this is gong to be a project that gets a little more attention now that Swan is finished but will see if that really happens.  I still have a plan to at least get two threads a day done on this project for a while to ensure that I can get it done. 

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - March 11th

I am thinking that the two threads a day will either be on this Mystery SAL or the 2017 version which I would also like to see some progress on soon. I figure I will do the minimum two threads a day on this piece until it is done and then while I am waiting for the next month to be released I will work on the 2017 version two threads a day.  I hope that being able to do that I will be able to see some progress on both of the pieces this year.

Temperature - March 1st

Temperature - after being a little frustrated at the beginning of the month with not finding the temperatures that I needed I have finally been able to get moving forward on it again and am happy with the progress that I have been able to do on it.  I have now got all the stitching up through the 9th of March done and now will be trying to keep up to date on this project.

Temperature - March 11th

At the beginning of this week I was still without a number of days so I decided to reach out to someone to see if they would be able to assist me with the information that I was looking for.  A quick email to a Chief Meteorologist got me a link to a source that I have now been using.  I am now happily working on the project again and am looking forward to keeping him updated on the project.  This project is a lot of fun and there are days when you can really see big changes in temperatuures and other days things stay fairly constant.


Now that Swan is finished I will be trying to figure out another project that will get some attention as I do have a lot of things that are currently sitting and waiting for some attention.  I will see what I can pull out and work on. Before I can pull out a project I have some work that needs to get done so that is what I am off to do now.

Hope everyone is having some great stitching time and remember that even a thread or two being used a day is at least a way to move a project forward.

A week of Olympics and stitching

Swan - Feb 18

It is another week and the closing ceremonies for the Winter Olympics have now been done.  The Olympics for me are a great time to spend most evenings sitting in front of the television and stitching and that is what I have been doing.

Swan - Feb 21

Swan - once again Swan was the project that got a lot of attention this week as I was able to work on it 5 evenings so that was great.  I have put three pictures up this time as I had to move the fabric as I have finished the reflection of both Swans so needed to move it so that I could now start working on the other main Swan.

Swan - Feb 25

 The second Swan is coming along pretty quickly and I have already been able to get to the stitch part of the neck of it and now see the top of the design so that made me very happy.  I am going to continue to work on this piece as I really do want to get it finished before the end of April so will see if that is possible.

Temperature - Feb 18

Temperature - Feb 22

 Temperature - I didn't work a lot on this piece this week but I was able to get all the rows stitched up to and including the 20th of February so that is great.  It was a lot of fun working on it this past week as I was able to add a bright colour which means that we had a temperature over 15C for one day.  Now to see when I will be adding that bright yellow again because it does look nice.  I have also seen that I don't have as many of the really cold colours and right now that makes me feel great.  I am not a winter person so seeing some of the warmer colours start to appear makes me feel good.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL '17 - Feb 18

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL '17 - I have worked on this piece a bit this week and was getting two threads done for the first three days and then this project was put down and I haven't worked on it since Wednesday evening.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL '17 - Feb 21

Linen and Threads Squirrel  Feb 25

I know that I will be able to pick up this piece at different times and it is going to be used as a filler project when I have finished each month of the Linen and Threads Mystery SAL '18 piece.  I know that this week we will be getting the next section for the current year and I am looking forward to seeing what it looks like and will see how much time I will have in March to work on the 2017 piece.

Linen and Threads Squirrels - this is a new start this week and it is from the same company that is doing the Mystery SAL.  This piece really isn't too big and I have been having some fun stitching on it.  This is what got my attention this week and where my two threads of floss have been going. The design was released when the Facebook group for Linen and Threads reached 10,000 members and I looked at it and decided that I had to stitch it and now to see when I will be getting it finished.


Most evenings I was able to find a bit of time to sit and stitch while watching some of the Olympics events.  I did find that I couldn't stitch during the Ice Dancing competition because that is where mistakes were made.  I was able to stitch during hockey and bobsleigh without an issue so that helped me get projects worked on this past week.  I am now going to make sure that I can continue to find a bit of time most evenings and on the weekend to do some stitching as I am happy with the progress that I have been seeing over the last while.

It is now time for me to get to work and see what I can get done during the day today so that hopefully I will have a bit of time to relax and stitch this evening.  Hopefully if you watched the Olympics you also got some stitching done.

A good week and a long weekend

Swan - Feb 17

 Here it is another week and I can honesty say that I did bounce between quite a few projects in this last week.  Some got lots of attention and some got just a little bit of attention.

Swan - Feb 19th

Swan - I am very happy with the progress that I have been able to make on Swan this week.  I have been trying to focus on this piece to see how much of it I could get finished in February and am happy with the progress that I have been making on it.  I have just about finished the reflection of the second swan so that means that I will just have the main swan to complete so now to see how much of it I can actually get finished this month.

I am still trying to get this piece done by the end of April so I hope to be able to do that.  I am going to continue to work on it more this month and will see what it looks like by the end of the month.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - Feb 11

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - now this project kept getting the attention of two threads a day until I knew I was very close to getting February finished and then I added a couple of extra threads to get the month finished and I am now sitting and waiting to see what the March section of the piece looks like.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - Feb 16

This piece is a lot of fun to work on and with working with three colours it does give me a bit of variety in the stitching but it also means that it works up quickly becuase I am not having to constantly change the thread colour.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL ' 17 -Nov 29

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL 2017 - After finished the other mystery sal I decided that I would pull out the one from last year and see if I could start making some progress on it.  I am going to try and work the two threads a day on this piece when I am waiting for the next month of the current Mystery SAL.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL '17 - Feb 19

Last year's version of the Mystery SAL was started at the beginning of last year but I restarted it in November when I realized that I didn't like the original fabric and how it was turning out.  This version is working up a little quicker and now to see how much of it I can get done during this year.  I am using two colours on this version with one being the main colour and the other being an accent.

Tiger Lily - Dec 21

Tiger Lily - now this project appeared for a couple of hours this week and that was it. I figured that at least adding a few stitches to the piece would move it forward a little bit so that is what I did.

Tiger Lily - Feb 12

This is a full coverage piece and it is going to measure about 6 inches square when it's finished so I still have quite a bit of stitching to do before it is done but that doesn't bother me as I will pick this up when I am in the mood to work on it.

Temperature - Feb 3

Temperature - this project put down for over a week and that meant that I had quite a bit of stitching done to get it back to being caught up.  After a bit of work I was able to get it back to close to being caught up.  I have now stitched up through the 17th of February so now I am only two days behind and will add rows through this week so that I don't get behind again.

Temperature - Feb 18

I am thinking that this week may be getting some of the yellow added if the forecast is going to be in the teens like the forecast it.  I will see what colours are added this week and then go from there.  I am enjoying this project as it is quick to work on and I never know what colour I will be adding next as it all depends on the weather that we get.

Erasmus - Jan 14

Erasmus - I started this project in January and worked on it a couple of days then.  I then put it away and didn't pick it up again until this month where it has got one day of work.  This piece has been for an art show that I was doing in July and as of this weekend I am thinking if I will be doing it or not.  I am not going to force myself to get things finished for it and if I can get some of the projects finished by then great but if they aren't finished I am not going to be upset.

Erasmus - Feb 14

Yes this week was a bit of bouncing between projects but that didn't bother me because it  also helped me get back to having a focus later on in the week.  I am now going to see if I can focus on a couple of projects and will see how that goes.  Swan will get attention again this week and I will see how much of it I can get done. 

I have some work that now needs to get done so I will focus on that today and will see if I can find some stitching time this evening while I sit and watch the Olympics.  Hope everyone has been having a good week of stitching and will see what I have to show next week.

Another week and some small accomplishments

Swan - January 31st

Here it is another week and now to see if I can continue working on getting things accomplished.

Swan - February 7th

Swan - this is one of the projects that I did focus on early in the week.  The picture doesn't show the amount of stitching that I accomplished as there was a lot of white stitches done in areas in front of the second swan.  I now know where the reflection of the first swan is so that makes me feel great.  I am going to work on adding more of the colours this week so hopefully then I will be able to see more of the reflection start to show up.

I am happy with the progress that I was able to make on Swan last week and not that I have taken a bit of a break from it I am going to try and focus on it more this week to see if I can get more of it done.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - Feb 4

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - this week I was able to continue with the two threads a day on the piece and am slowly starting to see the February section of it come alive.  I hope to be able to continue with the two threads a day through this week and maybe that will even mean that I will have the February section done by the end of next weekend.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - Feb 11

Once February is completed it means that I will have it all caught up and then will have to wait until the end of the month to see the next section released.  I hope to be able to get it done this week and then I will decide what I work on after that while I wait for March to be released.

Small blackwork - Feb 10

Small projects - this week I also decided that I wanted to see if I could get a couple of quick projects finished.  The first project I picked was a blackwork piece and it did stitch up pretty quickly so it is now done.  I hope to make this into a little pillow and it will go into my cookie jar that I have for my small cross stitch projects.

Autumn - Feb 11

After finishing the blackwork piece I figured it was time to stitch another one of the seasons that I wanted to do.  I finished Winter ages ago so figured it was time to add another season to the cookie jar.  Autumn was another quick project that I started yesterday morning and quickly finished it in the afternoon.


As you will notice that I haven't worked on my Temperature piece for the last week and that means that I am now behind.  I think that this week I will see if I can at least get that caught up again so that I can see more of it moved along.  I had planned to stitch on Temperature every couple of days but it didn't work like that this past week so now to get back to keeping it up to date.

This week I hope to be able to spend some more time stitching in the evenings while I watch the Olympics.  I have a bunch of things that I need to do for work so those have to get done first but the evenings I hope to be able to sit and relax.

My plans this week are to see if I can get Mystery SAL moved forward and maybe get February finished and then work on Swan and Temperature.  I will see if anything else catches my attention because it was nice to see that I was able to get a couple of little things also completed this past week. 

A week with some progress

Temperature - January 28th

 This week I am very happy to say that I have been able to make some progress on a few projects that that does make me feel very good.

Temperature - February 3rd

Temperature - now this project got some attention as I decided that I wanted to see if I could get it all caught up and I was able to do that so on the 3rd of February I had all the stitching done up until the 2nd of February.  I will always be a day behind because I don't get the high and low until the next day so that is fine with me.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - January 28th

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - my goal for this past week was to get the January section of the piece done.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - February 4th

I continued to work on the piece trying to do the two threads a day and then on Saturday I sat and finished the January section and Sunday I started the February section.  I love how this piece is turning out and now to see how much of the February section I can get done as I am now back to the two threads a day on this piece.

Swan - January 23rd

Swan - I am still keeping this my main focus as I really do want to get this piece done by the end of April. I didn't get as much done on this piece as I was working on a bunch of areas and some of the stitching that I did really doesn't show up on the picture.

Swan - January 31st

I am really happy with the progress that I was able to make in January on the piece as I had just started it in December.  It does feel good seeing that I have been able to get most of the first Swan finished including the reflection.  I am going to work hard to see how much of the remaining section I can get done in February.

Swan - December 31st

The piece does have quite a few colours in it so that is one of the reasons why it takes so long to see progress on it.  I don't mind all the colours as it really is helping to define the sections of the Swans.

12 Days of Christmas - January 12th

12 Days of Christmas - 12th Day - here is a project that I picked up and decided to see if I could get one of the days finished in February.  I decided to continue to work on the 12th day as I wanted to get this one day as I started it in January after finishing the first day.

12 Days of Christmas - February 3rd

The drums have metallic thread in the middle of each drum but the picture doesn't show that but in person they look nice and I look forward to making all of the days into ornaments once I have finished the other 10 days.


I am happy with the progress that I was able to make last week on the projects and I was able to stitch most evenings as I was able to get the work done during the day.  This week I am not sure what stitching I will get done other than I am going to try and work on Swan some and of course Mystery SAL might get a bit of attention.

I enjoy having some time to stitch most evenings but work always is the first thing that needs to get done so I will see what I do this week. I am now going to see if I can get the work done that needs my attention today so that I can have some stitching time this evening.

More progress

Swan - January 14

This week I decided that it was important to try and focus on just a couple of projects when I had the time to stitch.  Of course, a bunch of other project have wanted some attention but I was determined that I was going to stick with my focus and that is what I did for most of the week.

Swan - January 20

Swan - now this project got the most attention this week and that is because I would love to see it moved forward a little quicker.  I also have a goal of having this project done by the end of April so I need to work on it.

There are a lot of different colour changes in parts of the Swan so that did slow me down a bit but then I started working on the reflection and that is when I got to see some good progress quickly.  I am going to continue to work on this project as I hope to get more of it done this week when I have some stitching time.

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - Jan 12

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - as I said in the blog last week I was going to try and do two threads a week on this piece.  I have been able to work on this a little bit each day and most days it has just been the two threads that I added. I am enjoying working on this piece and hope to be able to continue the two threads a day for another week and see what the piece looks like. 

Linen and Threads Mystery SAL - Jan 21

I decided that after working two threads a day on this  piece since last Monday that I was going to spend a bit of time just working on the piece and not carrying how many threads I used. 


I have tried to stay focused on these projects this week and have done a pretty good job.  I know that there are a lot of other projects that I would love to be working on but I need to try and at least keep Swan moving forward so that I can get it done by the end of April.  I am thinking that I may try and add something else for a bit of variety but will see if that actually happens. 

Work is keeping me busy which I always enjoy and I have been finding time in the evenings and on the weekend to spend some time stitching.  I never know what a week is going to be like so I try and make sure that when I have a bit of time to stitch I try and do just that.  Having the different projects means that depending on how much time I have I normally have something that I can work on.

It is now time to get some work done and I will see how much stitching time I will find this week.