Tale of a Shooting Star…

I actually feel like stitching again, instead of forcing myself. It’s amazing! Having finished that Flight 93 quilt panel this weekend was a huge load off of my shoulders. Plus, things are going well at work, so I feel like my project deadline is finally well within my grasp.

All of that stress removed and no immediate stitching deadlines equals a serious burning desire to go home right now and stitch my heart out!

Honestly, the bug has a pretty good hold on me right now. The startitis bug, that is. I want to stitch everything I see. My eBay addiction has gotten fairly far out of hand and my notorious leap off of the wagon a couple of weeks ago just seems to continue without end. I’ve found in the past that the way to get past an eBay problem is to stop looking. Because inevitably you will find something to buy every time you go out and look there! Recently, it’s been a run of really good bargains and/or patterns, etc. that I have never seen anywhere else that has been sucking me in. But now that I’ve bought items spanning the realms of stitching, scrapbooking and even artwork, I think it’s time for me to hand in the towel for a little while. No more watching items, no more stalking Lorri Birmingham items because very few stores seem to be stocking her anymore. That’s it. I’m done. Right after the auctions I’ve bid on that end tomorrow. 😉

Plus, I think I should stop looking at people’s stitching albums. That’s another point that’s been landing me in hot water as far as wanting to buy and start new designs. Really, it has to stop somewhere.

I did allow myself a new start last night after I posted all of the August SAT progress. I kitted up and started a design that will be made into a biscornu for a Christmas present for my mother. She saw the biscornus that I received in the SBEBB exchange a few months ago and really wanted one, though she has since forgotten that she asked, so it should be a surprise. 🙂 Add that to needing to start my Strawberries So Faire piece soon if I stand any chance of of SAL’ing with the rest of the group, the piece that I have picked to stitch for Catherine-Michele’s RR and the blackwork piece (#4) that I started in the car this morning and I should be good with starts for a little while.

Speaking of Catherine-Michele’s RR piece, it promises to be a nightmare of color changes packed into this little 64 x 85 stitch design. Over 20 colors in that space! Ugh. I had fun trying to kit it up when I have no organizational system for knowing what floss colors are with which projects at the moment. Oh yeah, that Java program I was going to write to help keep myself organized. In my spare time. 😆

Hmmm… I’m going to stop that line of thought dead in its tracks before I start feeling anxious again. I’d like to enjoy at least one day of minimal stress!

Yes, I feel a stitching weekend coming. This is a go-live weekend for work, so Terry will be busy. Fortunately, my deadline has been moved back by a few weeks, so I don’t need to work. I might choose to help them in any way I can, but then again I might not. 😉

At any rate, I am going to concentrate on stitching this weekend. That and weed extermination outside. I haven’t been weeding while it’s been hot (i.e. several weeks) and the weeds have grown out of control. So, I need to spend a couple of hours on my knees worshipping the gods of the garden. But, more importantly, I’m going to stitch.

My primary focus for stitching this weekend will be my Flight 93 quilt panel. It is taking forever to get a name onto this piece of 11 count aida with 3 strands of floss. I’ve never worked on 11 count aida before and it feels like an absolute monstrosity to me. Not to mention that 10 names are going to take more than the two full skeins of floss that I purchased for the project. I have 4 names completed already and I’ve started the 5th, so I’m nearly at the halfway point. I think I have roughly 10 hours left before I finish the piece. I think I’ll break it up a little bit by stitching a name, then putting in an hour or less on another piece before switching back to stitch another name. That way, I hopefully won’t get totally bored with the piece.

This week, as my traveling projects, I’ve been stitching up some quick little blackwork projects on fabric that I dyed last Friday night on a whim. The first two stitched up fairly quickly, but this third pattern I’m working is taking a lot longer. I’ll slot these in between names on the Flight 93 panel, I think, since I have 6 total that I want to get done. I might be convinced to take and share scans of the ones that are already done, once I get home. That way, maybe people won’t forget that I also stitch from time to time! 😀

In addition, I need to pull floss for the design I’m going to stitch on Catherine Michele’s round robin fabric that I received last week. I’ll hopefully get some stitches into this one, as well.

And finally, thanks to a friendly reminder from Heather, I need to pull all pending and intended Christmas projects out of my stash and bring them downstairs to my stitching area so that I can be constantly reminded that they are there and waiting to be worked on. 😆 While I’m at it, my mother has requested a good-sized tuffet pincushion (biscornu) for Christmas, so I have two different possible designs pulled for that, plus one on order from Bobbie at Stitching Bits & Bobs. I might stitch two for her, depending on what I decide. I’ll probably pick one of the existing designs that I have (in fact, I think I just made my choice) and kit it up for a later start.

I want to curb my startitis, if possible, and get some more stitches into the gifts that I’ve already started (including one for my mother that I started last year and the one for my grandmother that I just started last week). We’ll just see how successful I am… 😉