WIPocalypse, October 16, 2016 - The Hunter’s Moon

This month’s theme question is “What online stitching communities do you enjoy?”

Well, I do belong to a number of online communities and some of them are stitching-related. 

I am still enrolled in the Cross Stitch Crazy forumhttp://crossstitchcrazy.yuku.com, a closed group which is now more active in private Facebook group. I am active on the Facebook page, not in the Yuku forum any more. Having been a member of this group since the days when it was tTHE most active group on the late lamented iVillage, I feel that I know most of the people in it and feel most comfortable there. 

I am enrolled in, but inactive in, The Stitcher’s Village. I receive the newsletter and read it through but rarely participate in the forums and do not post in the galleries. I used to but as the format changed over the years, keeping up with it became more trouble than it was worth to me. 

I am enrolled in six needlework groups on Stitching’ Fingers. I receive occasional notifications, usually from the crash quilting group, but again, rarely post. It also went though a “reformatting” a few years ago and I find it hard to follow threads the way they are formatting, have found and even harder to participate for that reason. (The last I heard from Stitching Fingers was in September and the moderator/sponsor was bowing out and saying the site might close by December if no-one else came forward.)

I am also a member of Craft Bubble 2, a successor to Craft Bubble which went under some years ago. It covers all sorts of crafting but does have a needlework section in the current version. Again, the change in format has pretty much put me off and I rarely visit.

I know that I am still considered enrolled in a few others but since I never go there, I can’t remember the forum names, and in the event I get an email notification, I can’t remember my user names or my passwords so I can’t get in without a big hassle. 

I am no longer active in the Quilt Journal Project or the Bead Journal Project (which has also moved to a closed Facebook group). I decided to opt out of their challenges this past year to recharge and rethink my interest in these needlecrafts.  Primarily, however, they were just a place to post progress on the yearly challenges and not really a community, per se, in the way that Cross Stitch Crazy was/is.

I do subscribe to a large number of newsletters, thanks in part to having been a member on the now defunct iVillage.com, where I was a community leader on a cross-stitch forum. Most are from online and redbrick shops and that is how I keep up with what is new in the field. 

And I subscribe to a number of blogs written by other stitchers as well. While I don’t always comment, it feels to me like more of a “community” feel on a blog these days than on forums. Guess I have evolved form the days when I preferred forums to blogs! ;-)

Basically, I find that online stitchery communities have less to do with stitching and more to do with a) public galleries of one’s work and/or b) small talk about all things going on in the lives of people I do not know. Simply said: a lot of time for little return on the investment, in my opinion. And based on the lack of recent activity on some of these forums, I think others must feel the same way. 

~~~~~

Last WIPocalypse, I was:

• planning to have the birth sampler framed and sent off to my niece = DONE. She received it and liked it
• hoping to start on a wedding sampler for a different niece = Started but it’s embarrassing. I haven’t stitched enough to blog in October. I just seem to dislike this WIP so much. But I shall persevere!
• hoping to maybe get out “save the Stitches” and make some progress there = NOT done. The stitching mojo needs some real work!

Here is where  the wedding sampler, “Love Is…”,  now stands. Not quite halfway…

This coming month, I will continue to plug away as the wedding sampler but I make no promises!

Week Thirty-Nine - September 29, 2016

I took the birth sampler in last week to be framed and it was ready on Saturday:

Husband mailed it off to our niece on Monday and it should be there by now…

I am having to force myself to work on this wedding sampler/belated gift. It is all in red on white and it is all backstitch. Each letter has to be started individually so as to not have loose ends showing through, which is using an awful lot of floss. What is more, it is just plain tedious counting. Still, I have finished a third full strand of floss (I suspect the pattern is being a little skimpy when it called for only two skeins of the variegated ad I can see running out of the first skein VERY soon… with not even two lines of the sampler finished!) and here is where it stands right now:

I will keep plugging away at this as I really feel that, once started, it MUST be finished. But it won’t be my favorite-ever stitched piece.

Week Thirty-Eight - September 22, 2016

Having completed the birth samplerand taken it off to the framer, it was time to get to work on the wedding sampler. I chose “Love Is” by X’s & Ohs (by Jo Gatenby). It is the passage from 1 Corinthians (13:4-8a) that I read at my niece’s wedding back in April (before I took a flying header off the podium and sprained my ankle!). I thought it would work in the variegated red DMC floss called for and chose 32 ct white linen as my fabric.

However, this is as far as I’ve gotten in the last three days:. 

I hadn’t realized how much of it was backstitch, in two strands at that! And it is a constant stop and start, complete with waste knots, in order to keep that red thread from showing behind the white linen. I think I shall HATE this before it is done!

WIPocalypse 2016 - September 16

The discussion topic for this WIPocalypse period is “Tell us a story about the journey you took through one of your completed pieces.’ Sadly, I can’t answer this as, for me at least, what I stitch doesn’t necessarily reflect a story about me or it’s stitching. It just is/was… It may have traveled with me (usually a needlepoint piece) but that is just in case I am left alone in a hotel room while husband is out on his conference duties and I need something to fill the time if I’ve run out of reading material. My traveling pieces may take years to complete (for example, the last completed traveling piece was “Butterfly Beauty”, started in May, 2005, stitching completed in May 2006,  and finally finished as a pillow in January 2012!) and may have been all over the country and even on a cruise or two. But it doesn’t reflect any specific “journey”.

In my last WIPocalypse report, http://210920746822434353.weebly.com/my-stitchery-journal/week-thirty-three-august-18-2016-and-wipocalypse  I had proposed the following goal - to finish the birth sampler and send it off to my niece. Well, it is finished (except for blocking and pressing, that is):

Once framed, THEN it will be sent off to my niece… So I didn’t meet that goal… but I came close!

My next project is a belated wedding sampler for another niece. I need to kit it out, my plans for today. 

The long-term WIP onboard is the “Save The Stitches” blackwork sampler, designed  by Elizabeth Almond (in the works since February 2014). I MAY or may not get it out and work on it. 

Week Thirty-Seven - September 15, 2016

I set myself a goal to try to have the birth sampler ready to frame by the end of this week. So, once I finished all the cross stitch, I set right in to the backstitching and now have all the basic backstitch and French Knot bits done:

All that remains is the personalization, which I will have to chart out before starting.

Meanwhile, that wedding sampler  (for the wedding last April!) I ordered needs to be kitted so I can start on that. It’s only one color so it ought to move along nicely… just need to decide on fabric and color.

Saturday will be a day lost to stitchery — home football game!

Week Thirty-Six - September 8, 2016

Some progress made this week on the birth sampler, mainly on the single-stranded cross stitching of the grass and waterr, despite one night of stitching foregone in favor of binge watching the last series of "Lewis"! Only three more pairs of animals to stitch (one is started) before the backstitching. Man, do I ever dread that!

This coming weekend is going to be a real test of my mojo since there is quilt guild tonight and the Friends of the Library book sale and the Volunteer Firefighter’s “steak out” on Saturday. That means at least two days where I won’t have the energy or time to stitch. Sure am hoping to get this done and to the framers as the kid is already a week old!

Week Thirty-Five - September 1, 2016

What a week! Here I was, stitching away on the birth sampler for a great-nephew who was supposed to be born next week. Naturally, he must have heard I have deadline issues because he was born on August 30! And I am nowhere near finished. Oh well, at least I have all the data needed to finish the sampler when the overall stitchery is finished!

Here is where I stand so far - only three more rows of the sea to do in the single-strand cross stitching and a flag on the flag pole and the I can move on to the left half.

Oh, by the way, I’ve been calling it “Two by Two” and I got that wrong, it’s “All Creatures Birth Sampler”, a “lite” version of “Two by Two”! Good thing it's a "lite" version too! I'd NEVER have attempted the full-blown version for this deadline!

Back to the stitching grind-stone — there’s a lot of green grass on the left that will probably take several days (all that space in one color! AAARGH!) and several pairs of animals before I can move on to the backstitching!