Hi, everyone. I'm Carol Harper, AKA thatyank, and I've been stitching since graduate school "way back in the middle ages" as my old high school Latin teacher Miss Reed used to say! I started by helping a friend complete an eyeglass case as a gift for her mother (until then, I had only done crewel and needlepoint) and was immediately hooked. And for the longest time, I was pretty good about keeping up and finishing what I had started before taking on a new project.
However, due to the fact that we moved from Houston, TX to London in 1992, and from there to Beijing in 1996, and then to Saudi Arabia in 1998, before returning to to Ohio in 2002, our personal belongings (including my stitchery supplies) had been, in stages, packed and put into storage with each move until we finally settled down in 2003! I believe I started WIPoccalypse in 2011 (although the first post on my blog that references WIPoccalypse was in January 2012 so I can't be sure...) with an attempt to rectify the huge collection of WIPs/UFOs that has resulted from these intervals of packing/storing away between moves. Wipocalypse was partially successful in rectifying this backlog. However, I still have a number of needlepoint canvases (most requiring backstitch although one is in need of cleaning, and another, a painted canvas of a leopard that was a bequest from a deceased friend, is barely started), and one set of crewel pillow covers left over from that accumulation. In addition, I have one major blackwork piece by Elizabeth Almond ("Save the Stitches", roughly 60% complete, which was started in February of 2014 and languished through periods of physical therapy ( resulted from a broken left wrist followed two years later by a ruptured left thumb tendon) . Odds are, the blackwork is the only piece I will take out this year as a long-term WIP. Here is where "Save the Stitches: is now:  I have two SALs in progress at present: 1. Faithwurks/Just Cross Stitch Magazine's "Christmas Quaker", on 28ct Sage Jobelin, Anchor floss as called for in the chart. The first installment of six is complete:  and the second is due out with the April issue of Just Cross Stitch (although the digital version pattern will likely arrive in March). 2. The fifth and final SAL in Stitchonomy's Year os SALs: "Winter 2020", stitched on 16 ct Riviera Aqua Aida, using DMC threads as called for in the chart. The first four installments are now public:  with additional installments being released every three days. I am considering two additional SALs - one by Peppermint Purple which is a blackwork sampler intended as a companion for the one I completed in 2020 and the other a mystery sampler by Linen & Threads. I'm also contemplating starting the Long Dog "Pandemic" which was released last year - I have thread and fabric, just not courage (that is one HUGE piece). And of course, my stash isn't just overflowing with WIPS and UFOs (and finished pieced waiting to be "finished") but also with charts (some kitted up, some not) and kits accumulated over the years. Oh, and stitching isn't my only "craft". I dabble in Mixed Media and am heavily into paper crafting and I maintain a blog for this as well as a blog for a quilt guild I belong to. Add to that an addiction to reading (primarily crime fiction but also history, biography and a little science fiction), and I sometimes have to budget my time! In all, I'm just going to go with the flow! |
