End of year stitch summary and 2018 not-really goals

Sorry I've been MIA for a couple of weeks, I've been on vacation and have been on computer strike...happens to those of us in the IT biz when we get time off. Just needed some good 'ole decompression time sans what I deal with 60 hours per week with at work. So I've spent the week at home, in my nightgown, eating like a pig, binge watching TV and stitching like crazy with as little human contact as possible. I did get my haircut and colored this week...the purple is gone and I already miss it. It will be a while before I can go back blonde because of the purple residue, but maybe by summer.

It may have been a rough year personally (maybe my roughest ever), but it was a pretty good stitch year, at least towards the end of it. This might be a long one, so sit back and get ready for it!

I left off on Maleficent in Feburary 2016 at the end of row 3:

And I completed my goal of a row finish on June 11th, putting in 116.56 hrs in 2017 for a total of 504.63 hrs overall:

For Alice and the B's, I left off at the beginning of row 3 on December 30th, 2016:

And left off at the end of row 4 on November 8th, putting in 276.15 hrs for 2017 (98.28 hrs in October alone), for a total of 697.92 hrs, also with a completed goal for the year:

For Snow White, I left off in June of last year with a goal of the current row and possibly one or two more rows:

And I did manage to finish the current row on November 12th, putting in 58.03 hrs, for a total of 115.67 hrs:

Oh Night Wish, the all purple project that should be a joy because, well, it's purple, but it's been a bit of a pain because of the combination of the confetti and the mind-numbing white moon. I left off here back in May of 2016:

My goal was just to finish the current row, which I did on November 24th, 80.48 hrs in, for a total of 131.2 hrs:

When it comes to the proverbial thorn in my side, Suteki, I gave myself no goal because I wasn't sure whether or not I was even gonna continue on her. As of now, I'm still not sure, but I keep going on her for some reason. I left off here back in May of 2016:

I managed to finish the current row in March of this year:

And made it almost halfway into the second row by the end of November, putting in a total of 79.74 hrs for 2017, for a grand total of 168.82 hrs:

The last official goal was also a maybe finish - Tartan B. I left off on it way back in Jan of 2016:

And I put in a whole two days this year, the last of which was just December 23rd. I don't keep time on this since it's older than before I kept time, but I don't work on it for very long because I can't focus on it for more than an hour or so at a time for some odd reason. But anyway, here's the progress:

I didn't touch the other two pains in the tush...A Summer Ball and Disney's 35th Anniversary Celebration (which is funny considering 2017 was Disney World's 45th Anniversary). I hate both of those projects and it might take an act of the heavens to make me finish either one of them.

The first of the official new starts of 2017 was Happy Haunts and I didn't have a goal for it. It became my New Stitchy Start Blog subject, but since I stopped working on it faithfully pretty early on, I can't say I was too successful on that front. The total project will look like this when finished:

I put in 90.77 hrs for 2017, finishing the first row on December 5th. It's a lot harder than it looks! Lots of confetti!

The other new start for 2017 was Sleepy Hollow Mural. I've had it kitted up for years, but decided it was finally time and I decided to test out Q-snaps for the first time. I'm not enjoying the Q-snaps at all, but I'm doing fairly well on it. Here's the project in its whole:

Before I moved the Q-snaps over, I was here, tossing between pages 6 and 7:

And I barely made much more progress once I moved the snaps, putting in a total of 117.57 hrs for 2017 and last stitched on December 20th, about one-third of the way through the row, although it was nice to see a purple bat appear in the muted forest:

I ended up buying a surprise kit, The Bride Dollmaker by GeckoRouge (although there is some confusion to the name...some of the documentation says The Bride Doll Making, but it's just semantics):

I started her July 16th and stopped just tonight in the middle of page 4, 71.08 hrs in:

Her face is just absolutely gorgeous close up! It was touch and go there for a while because I couldn't even see it until I was almost finished with the page. I also lost a color...either I lost it or a dog stole it. I'm hoping a dog didn't eat it because that means a very expensive trip to the vet, but I would think if that was the case, then there would have be thread shavings around, so I'm not too worried about that (at least not yet, but I'm still on poo patrol just in case). It had to either be me, or maybe it was the chair...again, either is completely possible. I keep looking for it, but I've already got the conversion specks from GeckoRouge and replaced it. I've actually never lost a bobbin before, at least not for longer than 10 minutes.

I'm going to continue on her until I finish the row and I really only have about a page and a half to go. After that, I'm not sure where I'm heading back to. Maybe Maleficent since its been so long? Or maybe back to Happy Haunts...maybe row 2 will be easier than row 1. I want to finish at least one of these puppies by the end of next year and Happy Haunts would be my best choice. Tartan B is a lost cause I think. Besides, I want to finish it into a pillow and I still don't know how to do that. I don't want to start anything new until I finish at least one of my current projects. I have so many going now, it's just too much. There is no way to make any real progress with so many projects in tow. I often wonder how stitchers with dozens of WIPs ever finish anything.

I did have one finish this year, but I'm not sure it counts because it only took me two days and 9.02 hrs. I wanted to have at least one finish for the year so I picked a small one...Supernatural Exorcism:

I still don't have it framed, but once I do, you'll be the second to know! It was a nice distraction to stitch a project while you are binge-watching the show. It makes it more personal.

And that's it! All my stitching for 2017. It's roughly about 899.40 hrs for the year (still can't count in the Tartan B totals, so it's hard for accuracy). I might be down from previous years, but in my defense, it was a rough year, a REALLY rough year. I'm not going to set any goals for next year because I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants right now and I'm just not sure where life is gonna take me. I don't think I'm gonna have any new starts, if I'm going to join any new stitchy groups or if I'm going to continue on with my current ones, or where next year is gonna lead me stitchy-wise at all. It's obvious that the New Stitchy Start Blog isn't keeping me in check, even on one project, so I guess I'm definitely dropping it next year.

I am still keeping up with my orts though, even if I'm not posting it. Here is the jar for the year, in villains world:

I'm down from previous years, so either I'm getting better about frogging (doubt it), or I did stitch less this year:

2014 and 2015 are still my top years since I've been keeping up with orts. I still contest that OCD is nothing but organized hoarding.

I will say that my stash is through the roof from last year. If I had the money to kit them all up, I could probably easily do a year or two of starts, but I can't imagine how much it would cost to do that, let alone how I would store them in my tiny little house overrun with Disney crap.

I'm probably 60 to 70 lbs up from last year, I didn't read one single book this year (although I probably binge-watched numerous shows a multiple of times a piece), I'm still just as much in debt this year as last (if not more due to all these hospital bills), I'm isolated from just about everyone and everything, but hey, at least I have my stitching and my pups, right? So this year wasn't a total bust! Got to remain optimistic or I'll just crash.

What I can say is that for 2018 I'm gonna TRY to loose some weight, I'm gonna TRY to read more, I'm gonna TRY to pay off some bills, I'm gonna TRY to better myself, no matter the outcome for me or my family...that's all I can promise for next year. I think, after the year I've had, I'm through promising myself or anyone else anything (at least for the moment). I can probably say with certainly (although no promises) that I probably WON'T be going back to any therapist or shrink, I probably WON'T be going to my 30th high school reunion, I probably WON'T be going to Disney anywhere, and I probably WON'T be building a new house in 2018.

So here's to a MUCH better 2018 for not just me, but to all you guys, who have stuck with me through thick and thin, although I'm not sure why! A lot of my bloggy besties have some exciting things in store for 2018, so if I can't have a good year, maybe I can live vicariously through you guys!

And since I mentioned it in the intro and it's been ringing in my head through this entire post, let's ring in 2018 with a little Take That, a few years old and the video doesn't jibe at all since it goes with the first Kingsman soundtrack (but seriously, how hot does Mark look?), but it's how I'd like best to enter the new year, on a positive note looking toward the future one day at a time:

Gotta go now, time for Disney fireworks!