An Actual Stitch Year In Review (I'm so proud)!

I can't believe I've started stitching again! It's very surreal. Stitching used to be therapy for me, my mind dealing with various issues, but now I can't let my mind go there because my headspace doesn't work that way anymore. Now I try to just keep my head clear and work on the project at hand. But sometimes I catch myself wondering why I'm stitching in the first place. Once I'm dead, what will it have been for? I stopped stitching for other people because they didn't seem to care. And now, my life is pretty void of humans in general and I'm very happy with that decision. But I can't help but dwell on all my stitching and my collections getting scooped into a dumpster by whoever trashes spinster old lady's stuff when I turn into worm food. I've considered selling some of my more valuable Disney items, but the thought just makes me sick. Some of my biggest regrets in life are things I've gotten rid of for one reason or another or lost (or got taken away). It's just the Asper in me, I need my stuff. I keep telling myself it won't matter when I'm dead, but it does matter to me now, oh well, can't cry over milk that's not only not spilt, but not even from a birthed cow, so moving on.

For the first time in quite a few years, I have made some New Years resolutions...the typical "stick to the diet" one (that's going pretty well, although it's more eating healthy than a diet, per se), but I'm also going to try to keep a positive attitude about as much of everything as I can (despite the above paragraph, which might have sounded negative, but I prefer to think of it as "realistic"). I'm going to try my darnedest to make 2024 better than the past several years and despite whatever bad things might happen, I'm going to smile my way through them, one issue at a time. I'm also going to make a pledge to pay down as much of my debt as I can (but the HVAC...that one is just too big for one year). I'm pretty sure I can do it (or at least come pretty close, excluding some other financial nightmare that might arise). It's time to start preparing for my future.

So, with talk of paying down debt, wanna see what $700 worth of stitch thread and fabric look like? It came in a very small and very light box, but here it is, and there is another batch coming, but it will be much smaller.

It's also ORT jar report card time. Up until October, it was completely empty, so I'm happy to report this year's "bagging":

Especially compared to the past two years:

Of course nothing beats where I started keeping them up to 2017 (the GLORY that was 2017 in general, the year that shall not be named, so to speak), but I'm still keeping them all for some reason (cough, hoarder, cough):

All my full progress on all that I worked on will be at the end of this post including Maleficent. She's still hanging up in my spare bathroom on the shower curtain where I hung her to dry over a week ago after her bath. I took last week as a home-cation week, so I decided to spend the entire time on Happy Haunts. This was a test for more than one reason. I wanted to see if I could finish the row (I failed), but I also wanted to see how I felt about 2x1 (for tent stitch practice for the Aimee Stewart bookshelf), which Happy Haunts is (although the context is different, it's 2x1 full on 18ct Aida). I very quickly remembered how much I absolutely HATE working 2x1, so I'm pretty sure I'd rather do 1x1 full crosses on the bookshelf than 2x1 tent stitch. It also solves the issue with tent itself. I just can't break my head from thinking that tent is like cross stitch cheating! I don't know why, it's absolutely ridiculous! I tried to convince myself it's just another type of stitch, but my brain rejected it absolutely, so problem solved, hate 2x1, hate the idea of cheating stitching, so full 1x1 on 28ct. Anyway, I left off on Happy Haunts in April of 2020 here:

And there were days I had to take breaks, but the days I did work, I worked over 8 hours per day, so I should have finished the row...I didn't. I hated every second of this. The Haunted Mansion wallpaper to the left was a nightmare and I even fudged a lot of the colors simply because I wanted at least one page finish. I could not get those colors filled in to save my life! By Sunday, I got it done, but barely and I literally had to force myself to stitch some days just to get it all in. It's going to be adorbs when it's finished, but heaven knows when that will be.

So come Monday, instead of continuing on, I was ready to move on, New Year and all, so back to Alice and the B's I went! Alice and the B's is in the scroll frame built for my old lap stand that doesn't need the clamp:

And I was excited to go back to the old stand again just to compare it to the new one, but I very quickly realized that, at least in the recliner (where I stitched for dozens of years), Alice and the B's was just too long (or I'm not as wide as I once was, take your pick) and it was very uncomfortable stitching in that far left side, because it hung too far to the left and I was reaching at odd angles, speaking of, guess I should show where I was back in December of 2020 when I left off on them:

And I started with a new approach, filling in the missing areas of the first couple of pages first, instead of whatever weird method I was trying to do back in 2020 (and that's the shadow of the clamp of my new frame to the left):

I got quite a bit of Cinderella's left arm and chest done. A couple more days should do it. I don't know if I'm going to finish the entire row before moving on to the next project, but I might get a good chunk. I sure enjoy 1x1 on 28ct...that's my jam, I guess.

Speaking of "moving on", the new starts...when will I be starting them? Right now, I'm not sure. I have the stuff, I'm just in no hurry to start kitting them up, I have the stuff to make the scroll rods, but again, I'm in no hurry to do that either. It might be March or so. I think my brain thinks I need to get my tax money in and pay off the debt before I can feel "comfortable" with actually stitching them, but we'll see. I might get a wild hair one weekend and kit one or two of them up. Right now, those bags of thread and fabric are just sitting on my living room table and the bobbin boxes are also just sitting around, waiting. I think there's a bit of guilt in there right now.

I worked on The Bride Dollmaking from a clean row to just a bit (dipping my toes back in the water so to speak), but she got me thinking about a new stand and getting my rear off the couch for the first time since 2017:

I went back to Snow White, who's fabric I thought I hated, but turns out, she's not so back after all. I still may have to do something with that weird patch in her cheek (it's driving me nuts), but we'll see later). I went from a partial row finish, to a full row finish, but got more determined to get a new stand:

And after one night with Night Wish, a project I hadn't touched since 2020, I knew I couldn't work with my current stand anymore, although I'm gonna visit her again pretty soon. She deserves some love!

And during transition between moving back to the recliner and getting a new stand, I worked on Maleficent. I left off on her in September 2022, and I finished the page row I had been working on and then the final page row (which was one ten block row from a full page row), for a full finish! Quite proud of her! Still need to get her framed though.

And that's 2023 in review, I'm pretty proud of myself for the amount of work I got done considering I only stitched from October thru December! I got quite a bit done stitch-wise all things considered and, if I can keep it up, 2024 is looking good for a couple of finishes hopefully!