Ten Years of Blogging - the tenth year, 2014/5

Whoops!  Hit the publish button a few hours too early.... =)

The tenth and final year of our blogging review, the home stretch!!

It's been a fairly slow year on the whole for embroidery and arts blogging (with a six week silent patch from January to March 2015), but it got off to a good start with a number of big finishes early in the blogging year.

The first was the Tudor Lady cross stitch in all her finery with rayon and metallic threads trimming her up.  She was interesting and sometimes challenging to work, and I plan to do the Mediaeval Lady to go with her next year.  I entered this one in the Sheffield Fayre as planned and she won third prize (of only three - sob!) in the category.  I entered the green sampler in for fun too and it walked off with first prize honours!!

The next big piece was the wedding ring cushion for my friends' wedding.  This one also got third prize (of seven this time) in the 2014 Sheffield Fayre and, again, a piece I'd entered for the sake of it, the stumpwork bunny, was awarded with the first prize!  As you can imagine, I was rather pleased with my first year in the Show!

After that, I worked a couple of smaller bits and pieces, including this one that I turned into a simple stumpwork face tutorial.

Early August saw me complete all projects on hand for the first time in years!  I had no WIPs, no UFOs and was celebrating the completion of the feather piece you can see here.

In September I documented my re-vamp of my thread storage system, brought about by the advent of the Really Useful Box rack I'd been eyeing up for the previous four years.  I also finished up the Needlequest as best I could, but with little to show for it.

After the busy summer, things really slowed down stitchery wise, with only a couple of smalls being done.  I certainly did a good deal more buying and organising of threads than using them!  However, it was around this point that I began to do a clear out of a lot of my clothes, which led on to other areas of my possessions and that's all been documented on Fluffly Little Idiot.  For a change, that blog has been almost as busy as this one for much of the blogging year as I started doing some monthly goals and checklists, half of a 30 Days of Blogging Challenge, (which I've yet to finish, but can't really convince myself is more urgent than a number of other tasks!!), and then the big stuff downscale project.

However, back here, in January I made a hardanger bookmark from part of the pattern for a larger piece, and finished up an old hardanger project I'd unearthed into a little ring cushion for another old friend's wedding.

The last projects to be featured this year were a bookmark and card for my hubby for our anniversary but, as that was posted recently, I won't re-post here (esp. as I wasn't terribly pleased with either piece!!)

Works in progress at the moment are still the Painted Ladies piece from Helen M Stevens' 'Embroidered Butterflies', which I started for the 'Autumn' Needlequest theme last September and the 'Paradise Island' cross stitch I put into commission as my WIPW piece after the Tudor Lady, the ring cushion and the feather were done.  Both of these have been crawling along throughout the calendar year so far and I hope to complete the butterflies fairly soon at least, as I'd like to enter it in the Sheffield Fayre this year (although I doubt it's of the style to win a prize).

And that's it!  Feels a little like finishing on a low note, but that's the last year as it's truly been.

As I hope to have something to enter in this year's Show, whilst we're still resident in Sheffield (although I've never seen residency conditions in any Show schedule), I also hope to have something more to share with you over the coming weeks, but, having said that, I've given myself permission NOT to enter if I feel it's too much time and energy to produce pieces for the competition when I have other, more pressing things to do. I'm trying to keep a balance though and need to get the butterflies done as they're for a local friend, so there may be something to enter yet.

I expect things will get back onto more of an even keel once we get re-located and settled.  Until then, just enjoy others' blogs if mine is quiet for any period of time.=)  It takes quite a long time to produce decent quality posts, especially tutorials, which can take many hours, and cuts into time needed for both the creation of things to post about and other things in life.  So, although some readers may prefer very frequent posts and features, (and I take that as a great compliment), being realistic, it's not likely to happen whilst I'm just a hobby blogger who isn't making a living (or even a single penny) from it.  I have plenty of needlecrafts planned for the future, but of course, other things may have to come first.  The rest will happen in due course. =)

Thanks everyone for following along and for all the nice comments you've left.  Looking forward to sharing more with you over the next decade!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2015