Not exactly Needlequest....

 

...because I'm sorry, but not in the least surprised, to say that I haven't done a stitch on my feather yet!  To be honest, I fully expected not to do any of it, although I did/do intend to try.  Actually, I haven't been able to get to any stitching of late. I have done some related things though.

When Sir got home today, he found this waiting in his room.  This is a piece that I finished almost 9 years ago and is featured WIP in the first extant post on this blog!  (I say 'extant' as the very first post has long since been deleted.)  I finished and posted a photo back in early September 2005.  That post tells me it was WIP for just shy of 2½ years!  (You can also see how awful my blog was in those days....)

That's nothing when you know that it had been waiting to be framed ever since then and was just completed this afternoon!  So, it's nothing to do with the Needlequest (leave any NQ links you have on this post anyway, do!), but it is the completion of a long-term project and one more item to cross off my current goal list.=)

He's already hung it on his room wall (where it screams at the magnolia painted wall.  Sigh!).

The other stitching related thing I've done is to put in an order from Sew and So, which is on its way, will necessitate a thread storage overhaul (planned for tomorrow) and which I'll post about later in the week.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

YIPPEE! It's FINISHED!
Yeah! The Chinese Junk is finally done and, just to prove it, here's a photo, look:

What a relief to have that one done. It's been in progress since 2 April 2003, so 2 years, 5 months and one day! OK, so I did a few dozen other things during that that period too, but I hope to never have one piece on the go for that long again!

I plan to get re-started on the dog portrait this afternoon whilst at my mum's place, but before that, let's get Martin's other job done......

Getting there, getting there.....

Almost completed the bottom half of the Chinese Junk picture. The chart is in two halves so I thought I'd complete one half before moving on to the next. Gives a sense of achievement too! So, I'm pleased with progress this weekend as I'd set the target of only finishing the mid-blue on the bottom half, but I did that by Saturday evening and went on to do the pale blue as well as starting on the black scroll work. Should be all done this week.

No intellectual work done this weekend, but I didn't expect to. Plenty to do from today until Thursday though. I hope to have a few smaller things totally done and off the list. I counted 17 projects of both types altogether. 2 are finished, 3 are almost done and another 2 are in progress, so not bad! Of the others, 5 aren't really promised anyway and 2 others aren't urgent, so life is looking brighter and stress levels are coming down. It's working! Hurrah!=)

I decided to work on only one stitching project at a time, so the dog won't be coming out for walkies until the Junk is completed and away for framing. I'll be listening to the complete Pimsleur Mandarin course whilst working on the doggie, so I can resurrect/practice my Chinese at the same time. There are 45 hours worth of tapes altogether..... Multi-tasking rules, OK!

Progress Update - Tuesday

This is the story so far on the rose heart piece. Yesterday, I did all the buds and the greenery near them. I also made a start on the blue flowers at the bottom.

Here's the current state of the Chinese Junk cross stitched piece:


I hope to get the florals finished on the heart piece today and maybe get a few stitches in on the Junk. We'll see...... I also need to design the initials to go in the centre of the heart, which will be a bit of a challenge, but I've let fear stop me from getting on with these things for WAY long enough, so no more procrastination.

On the academic/linguistic project side of things. Yesterday evening I set up a simple, temporary (as it's very naff.....) homepage for the Phrasebook project and have got out the file for all that and related projects this morning. I'll do some sorting through that and make a plan of work for pushing them through to completion.=)