2009 Stitching Review and 2010 Plans

Many stitching bloggers do a review of their needlecraft year, so here's mine for this year about to end:

Finished projects can be seen in the sidebar on the left of my blog, under the Feedjit thingy. Altogether, there seem to have been 11, of which 4 were started the year before (2 C&G samples and 2 WIPs that took a bit of a long time!!) and 1 was stitched in early 2008, but just finished up into the casket this summer gone. So, there have been a grand total of 6 pure 2009 finishes. Not really a very productive year, but it's been a busy one with the international move and dealing with the boomerang 'flu in the spring and repeated viruses out here since October.

My goals set for this year at this time last year were:

* Finish all WIPs, including C&G stuff - I pretty much managed this as far as it went.
* Get my C&G work done in time, (mid-May for this year's work) - I didn't succeed here thanks to lousy health from January-May and then moving away. Might well come back to C&G in 2011.
* Do a hardanger cushion for my Taiwanese friend - yes, I did this, only I haven't given it to her yet!!
* Stitch something for my 2nd sister before she goes abroad for a year, preferably something with practical use. - I didn't get to this, I was just not up to it at the time, but she doesn't live too far from me at the mo and I have chance to do something special for her soon.
* Take several kits with me when we go back to Taiwan in late August/early September, should all go according to plan, that is!!! - Yes, all this went to plan and I've even worked one of the kits - the stumpwork bee and flowers from the last post.
* DH's 10th anniversary card - probably a CQ heart. - I did a strawberry heart in silks instead.
* Do some small pieces that I want to do. No more obligation stitching! - Ha! No, this didn't happen, I was just just busy or too unwell. Actually, I've decided that obligation stitching isn't such a bad thing after all. It gets stuff done and the 'need' for a gift gets my creative juices flowing, frankly, when I stitch something for the sake of it, I then have it hanging around whilst I think of something to do with it!

I also stitched 2 Lizzie*Kate seasonal thingies and that Anchor Creative Embroidery kit with the dragonfly and waterlily and was featured on Mary Corbet's listing in the summer, which caused an enormous increase in site traffic for 3 days!! Many thanks to Mary and to all the others who've listed me in one way or another over the past year. My blog made it onto Sharon B's 'S' list too, but that was in December 2008 and also created a fair amount of fresh traffic over a few days.

So much for 2009, what about next year? Well, mostly I'll be carrying on working through the kits and designs I've brought with me, but there are a couple of openings for some more design work. I have the Brazilian kit I posted about recently out to do soon, but I've realised that the fabric is really too yellow for my needs. It doesn't match the threads anything like as well as white will, so I need to organise another piece of fabric for that, (there are some pieces of silk in other kits I have with me that I don't think I'll want to do on silk, so one of those will probably do) and get the design re-traced. I also need to source some tracing paper.... There's also a goldwork string instrument kit out ready which also needs tracing and, as I neglected to bring the photo with me, an image sourcing as well!!

Whilst waiting for those to get going, I've set up a hardanger needlecase, a green version of this one (scroll down past the chaffinches cross stitch), and a cross stitch which you can see the floss tosses for below as well as a small pic of what the XS will be - a couple of cute field mice with some blackberries.



The only question now is which to start on first?? We're away this weekend, so I want to take one of them to work on whilst we're sat on the coach for 5 hours.