Carol Harper's articles with the keyword: wrap-up

After making my WIPocalypse report for June, 2016, I decided to “force” myself to put in at least two hours every night until this report was due. And I was successful, completing color #5 (of 12) and a little more than 50% of color #6 by last night: If I could keep up this pace, and it we weren’t traveling for the last weekend of June, I possibly could get “Roll Your Own” ready for framing and entry in the 2016 county fair. But I doubt my resolve, I really don’t want to make any mistakes…

Color # 2 is complete and color #3 is 25% done on “Return”! Progress is slow but sure - counting all these partial patterns is always an issue with me, and I always seem to miss one out and only find it one or two colors on. It's been too darned hot to stitch, especially for early June. I dread what July and August will be bringing if this continues... Meanwhile, I so have a case of start-itis — even though I don’t have a pattern picked out that appeals to me. Maybe it’s not so mu…

I really didn’t feel like stitching this week but I forced myself to put in roughly two hours per night for three nights and got almost all of color #1 (of 12) into “Return”. It’s a very dark blue so it may be hard to see against the black outline, but there’s only one small line in a motif in the upper right corner to go (and a missed black stitch in the same corner ) and then I’ll be ready to move on with color #2! Quilt Guild tonight and husband’s garden is on a tour on Saturday so…

Outline complete! I didn’t make it by the end of May like I had hoped, but it was all down to a massive frog that crept in while I wasn’t looking (the entire left side had to be redone due to a miscount!) which lost me a day. Still, now “Return” is ready for it’s color! And here is the final layout: Now, if only I can keep up the progress on this.

WIPocalypse 2016 - May 21 This month’s WIPoclypse discussion topic is “What were you stitching this time last year and have you finished it?” Well, last year at this time, I had three projects “in progress”: the “Roll Your Own” Mandala series (the “Jan” mandala”), the “Save Your Stitches” blackwork sampler (I was at block 13), and a crazy quilt block for my Crazy Quilt/Bead Journal project combination . The one I was actually stitching on the WIPOcalypse report day for 2015 was …none of…

By gosh, I stitched. Every night this last week! I can hardly believe it! And I managed to complete the fourth through the seventh fill colors “Rematch” and get nearly half of the eighth one done as well! This meant a lot of binge watching (a season of “Hawaii 5-O”, a season of “Blue Bloods”, a season of “Major Crimes”, a season of “Rizzoli & Isles”, and two movies - “The Hardy Girls” on Turner Classic Movies and “The Monument Men” on Sundance! - to say nothing of catching up with “Elementa…

This month’s topic for discussion is “What do you listen to while stitching?” For me, it’s always the television on. I stitch in my bedroom where there is an HD television hooked up to a DVR and the satellite as well as local on-antenna channels so I have a wealth of choices. I might “listen” to something I DVR-ed or it might be “live” — it all depends. Can I concentrate on stitching while “listening” to NCIS or do I need to concentrate on the program? Can I enjoy a classic movie while stitching…

Well, as you can see from my title, I didn’t blog for the last three weeks! Oops! But I have reasons! Maybe not GOOD reason, but reasons nonetheless! Mainly, I didn’t stitch. At least not until last night. And I didn’t stitch because a) my mojo was missing and b) life got in the way. The week of April 7, we were preparing for out-of-country visitors, who arrived April 6 and stayed through April 10. Needless to say, it was difficult to do any stitching while entertaining our Saudi frien…

I’ll merge these two topics this week because there’s no point in making a weekly wrap-up different from the WIPocalypse wrap-up. I really haven’t stitched enough this week to make it worth the extra blog space! Anyway, the topic for this WIPocalypse is: “Do you use hoops, stretcher bars, lap stands or Q snap frames and why?” My answer to this isn’t all that straightforward, and somewhat lengthy . I use both hoops, Q-snaps and in hand pretty much equally. I do NOT use stretcher bars or…

I did stitch this week! Honest! Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…four days of roughly 2 hours each. Although you might be hard pressed to see any progress… What has happened is I finished the outline for “Rematch” in the roll Your Own Mandala series. Well, mostly finished, because as I started with the color filling, I did discover a few places where I missed out a few black stitches and had to go back and fill them in. So where I stand right now is one color finished and a second rou…

As I said in last week’s update, we had been in Florida for a three-week “holiday” and my stitching was pretty much limited to my traveling piece, “Palm Tree Elegance”, a needlepoint of a pal in a pot which I had hopes for for my oak-tree inspired bathroom. Not sure it will work now (not real fond of that leopard-spot border) but, being who I am, I WILL finish it! In the last week, in between visits to the University of Florida Natural History Museum/Butterfly Rainforest exhibit (where a Bl…

Between Week Five and AFTER the 11th, I didn’t stitch at all. We are in Florida right now, in the middle of our second week of a three-week stay, and I have managed to get in some stitching on the porch when it is warm enough to sit outside (it’s darned cold for Florida, even in the winter!) and enough sun to be able to see the holes in my needlework fabric (I forgot my magnifier! AAACK!). Since we are traveling, I am working on my traveling needlepoint, “Palm Tree Elegance”, a kit by Dimensi…

The fourth in what looks like a long series of short and boring, repetitive weekly updates on my stitchery. I spent one stitchery night preparing the mess made two weeks ago when I had to forge a whole lot of stitches due to a count count miscount. The repair required the removal of a whole skein’s worth of additional stitches but now the back if fine and the outline is back on track. So, to date, four of 6 pages of outline complete and more than half of a fifth:

This will be my fifth year participating in WIPocalypse; I find it useful in keeping me on point, as it were. There are a lot of activities, ranging from the mundane (household chores, for example) to the creative (I’ve taken a major interest in paper crafting add mixed media in the last year), often interrupted by the odd road trip (I don’t stitch well without magnification and decent light, none of which seem to be available where we spend out “holiday” times, and my Ott floor light is a littl…

After all that progress last week, I backslid this week. There was quilt guild on Thursday night and another computer glitch (and long telephone conference with Apple Care: upgrades to the operating system aren’t agreeing with my laptop, for some reason) on Monday and just general mailaise the rest of the week… In all, I stitched only one day and made little progress: just a thin strip of outlines along the tops of page four of the pattern… It's been snowing but, luckily, we seem to be eith…

Got a little sidetracked this week, and ended up spending an entire stitching session ripping out a massive mistake in the lower right corner (I really have issues with multiple pages sometimes, matching up pages with each other, and in this case, I was a whole ten stitches off! AAACL!). Anyway, I did manage to complete the top half of the outline, all of page 6 and a part of page five (until the ripping started…) in “Rematch” of the “Roll Your Own Mandala” series: Quilt guild meets tonig…

I pushed myself but I did it --- got back into the groove and stitched every night on the outline for "Rematch", the eights in the series of mandalas in the "Roll Your Own" series by Tracy Horner. And I have finished on page (of six) in the pattern and nearly finished two more! Since I am opting out of doing Crazy Quilt Journal Project and Bead Journal Project for this year, there we no other stitchery pieces competing for my time so I'm feeling pretty good about the completion time for "…

I pretty much wrapped up the year in my WIPocalypse report for December, but I have made a little progress since. I feel like I am a broken record because, in December 2014, I said "Like in 2012, I'm not that happy with my completion rate for 2013". There was a list of fifteen completed projects and/or classes for 2013; and a list of eleven in 2014! Well, If I wasn't happy then, I am miserable now because completed even less in 2015. I blame it on road trips, a protracted sinus infection…