Stitching participation 2015 and a question

My head is still in the pain zone, but it's tolerable today. I tried to stitch last night on A Summer Ball and managed all of maybe 20 stitches, most of which were white, so it still looks like no progress. It was just too much for my throbbing brain to handle. But that's not the subject of this post.

Even though I kept an ORT jar last year, I didn't do the monthly posts of the TUSAL and I kind of missed doing it, so I signed up for it this year! For those that don't know what a TUSAL is, Daffycat has the full explanation HERE, but I'll try to give you a brief overview. Basically, you keep your thread scraps in a container and post pictures of how full your jar is on each new moon, tracking your progress throughout the year. I think there is a drawing involved as well, but since I never win anything, I don't worry much about that.

I was "reminiscing" through old ORT pictures this morning and ran across this gem from March 2013, around the time after I first adopted Bam:
DSC03812

Wonder if he'll be a willing model much this year? I know Zach won't, heck, he runs and hides when I'm taking my nightly cross stitch status pics, but I'm gonna try and trick him at least once.

Of course, if Joysze over at Random Ramblings decides to keep up with the International Hermit and Stitch Weekends, I'll definitely be involved in those as much as I can. They are typically the third weekend of every month (but pretty much every single one of my weekends is spent locked in the house stitching, so it's not that big a feat for me).

I somehow managed to miss pretty much every single WIP signup this year, something I've never done before but wanted to do this year. Oh well, guess I'm just stitching toward my goals again and hopefully I might actually complete one or two of them.

I do have a question for everyone. I notice that some of you keep track of how many actual stitches you've done and keep progress bars showing such. I do stitch in page rows but I do typically "cross country" stitch one color at a time. Despite my orderly OCD existence, I just can't do grid by grid stitching...to me it makes it boring. I have seen some people that stitch the same way I do and still manage keep track of their totals. I don't have the focus to count every single stitch and the only way I can imagine it would work out would be to go row by row, but since Maleficent is 6 1/2 pages across and Alice is 8 1/2, it will be a long time between updating stitch counts. I was thinking that, besides the hourly count, if I had progress bars and I knew how much I had left to go, it might help some projects go faster. I'm way too impatient to wait until I finish an entire row to post a stitch count though. Sometimes I might finish the first couple of pages before the last couple and I could post it then, but again, patience is not one of my virtues and that's a long time to wait to change progress bars. For those that keep count, how do you do it? Do you count individual stitches or are you just patient and wait until you have blocks finished? I'm really curious to know how you guys do it!

Comments

Linda said…
What an adorable picture. I don't count - to much trouble.

Linda
Heather said…
I do a grid so I just update when I feel like it counting the number of blocks done. Otherwise just an estimate would be fine.
Ewa said…
I have a tally app on my phone that I keep open when I stitch and as I highlight the stitches I've done I count them in my head and then just tap the tally app. I thought it'd be a pain when I started but it has become second nature. Then I created a spreadsheet where I put in the total number of stitches by date and it calculates my average stitches per night, the anticipated date of completion, how many total stitches I have left, and the total percentage complete of the project. I love seeing numbers like that and it makes me feel super accomplished.
Vickie said…
I keep a count. I keep it by each block I complete. You could use a different colored maker and count your stitches as you go. Just get a huge box of crayons or colored pencils. That way you can keep track.
Miamina said…
I don't count, I'd rather spend the time stitching a few extra stitches!

You could just do a rough count of the blocks you stitch and either don't count the blocks until they are complete or just do an estimate as to how many blocks the random stitches would make.
Sasha said…
I tried stitching block by block, but I couldn't stand it, either. I do cross country stitch now, and it makes me much happier.
The way I keep track is by block, though, even if I don't stitch by block. Since most patterns will still show the 10X10 blocks I will only update my progress on the counters as I finish each 10x10 block. Even if I am missing just one stitch from that block, I don't update it until all 100 are completed.
Yes, this makes for some slow beginnings, and some days may appear to have more progress than others, but in the end it all evens out.
A big example is my Wizard picture. According to my counting, it shows less than 10%, but you can see from the picture that I actually have more than that done. I just haven't counted it all since I haven't completed all 100 stitches from a bunch of the blocks.