Monday, April 1, 2019

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.

~~~~~

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:
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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!):
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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.
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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):
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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:
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Daily Stitch Counts: March 29 - 262, March 30 - 304, March 31 - 260.
..., and a monthly total of 5969 stitches! 

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