WIPocalypse Check-In: April 28, 2019

This month's topic for discussion is:

"Talk to us about your longest-running WIP or UFO."

I had to go back into my files to find the longest running WIP... it is a round robin I participate in on Cross Stitch Crazy, a long gone forum on the now defunct iVillage. I started in January 2007. I stitched it on full yard of Silkweaver's 28-ct Jobelin, in the "Carol's Meadow" color.  It is a 12" x 12" square stitched with a knot garden in "blackwork" from Stitchin'spirations ("Brandon", designer Sally Rudkin) . The outlines of each individual garden plot were stitched in two strands (over two) of WDW Juniper (2158) while the blackwork fill and the plants around the outside were stitched in one strand of Caron Waterlilies "Distant Hills" (153). The garden "fence" was stitched in two strands of DMC 310 (black); the four urns at the central "gates" on each side were stitched in one strand of DMC  356 (terra cotta) and the pineapples at the remaining gates were stitched in one strand of DMC 61 (a variegated yellow-brown) with leaves in the WDW Juniper.

I sent it out to on its rounds (five other participants) with patterns for 18 possible Victorian house designs, all Nancy Spruance Victorian miniatures from three brochures: 3 copies each of Victorian Side Streets, San Francisco Scenes and Cape May Victorians, to be placed in the squares defined by the running stitches. In addition, I included a copy of fences, gates, urns and lamp posts (from Spruance's Victorian Miniatures pamphlet) which could be substituted for the embellishments shown in the house charts.

​When it came back to me in August 2007, it had five houses stitched:

And I have never gotten around to finishing it. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure "how" to finish it, other than adding at least one more house to the bottom right.  I know I have the house patterns somewhere -- that is only a matter of digging them out. And I had thought to make four blackwork motifs for the four corners but that wouldn't work if I don't compete the six "lots" on the sides...

What to do?

​~~~~~

So on to my progress in April - and yes, hard as it may be to believe, I did make progress this month! That would make it to months running of stitching and...

​A finish!

Well, sort of.. it still needs to be "finish"-finished (probably framed).

May I present "Palm Tree Elegance", a Dimensions needlepoint on mono-canvas, started in 2010, put into UFO mode in 2016 when I broke my wrist, and started up again this March:

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I absolutely HATED the idea of backstitching this huge piece in hand (no frames here) and put it off for three days but, in the end, it only took an hour (not counting the untangling - the floss for the backstitching that came with the kit was NOT quality like DMC or Anchor, was too long and tangled terribly - and the juggling of the chart to see where the stitches were supposed to go...). The chart only called for one strand so I'm not even sure you can see it but it is backstitched on the leaves, trunk and on some pot details.

WIPocalypse Check-In, March 31, 2019

This month's question for discussion is:

"What newer designers and product creators (fabric or floss dyeing, etc) out there have you discovered and recommend?"

Well, given I have taken over two years "off" from stitching, I have to say I am not really following designers/stitching products these days so I haven't discovered anyone/anything new, nor would I dare to recommend any.

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In March, we were challenged to do one stitch a day minimum, every day and I decided it would be one way to test my hand's endurance (it cramps badly after about one hour of trying to grip objects) and get back into a stitching routine.

Because I can't see that one stitch blackwork a day makes much sense and I wasn't sure I could guarantee more than that, I decided to go with my travel needlepoint and see how far I could take it. Since there is at least one road-trip/long weekend away form home in March, this made especially good sense (in my mind at least).

Here is the starting point:

Yes, it is going to HAVE to be blocked. Hand-held mono-canvases, especially when using basketweave, skew badly when I do needlepoint. 

The outer and inner borders had been completed as had a  portion of the middle border before I started.

After seven days, and 1570 stitches (minimum daily count was 145, maximum was 387), the middle border is now complete (with less than one half or a single pre-cut strand of the called-for color left! Whew! This is an OLD kit and I don't have any yarn in my stash of left-over needlepoint yarns that matched that color!):

Daily stitch counts - Week One: March 1 - 308, March 2 - 358, March 3 - 307, March 4 - 154, March 5 - 145, March 6 - 219, March 7 - 387

Weeks 2 (were I forgot to take a photo) and 3 were spent on the pot and the palm. After an additional     2005 stitches (maximum 272, minimum 15), I had all of the pot done except for the small pale circle (which is also a background color so I thought I'd hold on it until I got to that color) and all of the palm except the reddish areas on the leaf bases.

​There will be backstitching on both the pot and the palm but I will leave that to the very end, perhaps after blocking the piece, as it is clearly VERY distorted by being hard-held while stitching.

Daily stitch counts - Week Two: March 8 - 272, March 9 - 277, March 10 - 194, March 11 - 271, March 12 - 121, March 13 - 109, March 14 - 54 Daily stitch counts - Week Three: March 15 - 52, March 16 - 57, March 17 - 15, March 18 - 142, March 19 - 115, March 20 - 248, March 21 - 168

Not bad, if I do say so myself, since I had a really nasty sinus infection/cold (which had the focus-destroying  symptoms of mild fever, hacking cough and persistent headache) during those two weeks; and the three days in the hotel at the end of week 2 were hindered by a busy schedule AND terrible lighting. Still, I gulped down masses of DayQuil and Alavert and made it a point to stitch at least one strand each night.

Now to the background...

​Week four was essentially dedicated to the first and lightest of the three background colors, although there were a few stitched on March 28 that started color two... The weekly stitch count was 1511 (maximum - 315 , minimum - 25):

Daily stitch counts - Week Four: March 22 - 25, March 23 - 257, March 24 - 162, March 25 - 289, March 26 - 315, March 27 - 161, March 28 - 302

The final days of March were spent on the background... where one side of the second color was completed... A three day total of 826:

Daily Stitch Counts: March 29 - 262, March 30 - 304, March 31 - 260.

..., and a monthly total of 5969 stitches! ​