hey floss tube. this is brian. welcome back. this is my tenth video and my plans for thisvideo are to have a combined december 2016 and annual 2016 update of where i am withall of my projects. i also plan on briefly discussing my plansfor 2017, such as they are. this is a little bit late. part of the reason for that is that we wereout of town for the week between christmas and new year's and only got back a coupleof days ago.
we have been trying to get back into swingof work and school and all that kind of stuff. so i have finally found some time to actuallyfilm a video. i hope everybody had a great holiday. we did. christmas was nice and quiet, we just stayedhome. we went to church for about an hour and thencame home and spent christmas with just our family. one thing that made it really special is thatwe got to talk to my son. i have a son who is in mexico right now.
we trade emails back and forth but on christmasday we got to talk to him. we actually skyped him for about an hour. that is the first time that we have been ableto do that since last may. so it was really neat to see him. he has been in mexico for just over a year,about fourteen months. it is interesting to see him and see how he'sgrown and matured a little bit. it was just really great to talk to him. then we went up to utah to spend time withfamily for the rest of the christmas break. we took my daughter back to school.
she goes to byu. while we were up there we went to a byu basketballgame. we thought that the marriot center would bepretty empty because it was right between christmas and new year's and there wouldn'tbe very many people around. but the marriot center was pretty full andwe ended up on the benches in the nosebleed section. we were so far up that my wife and my mother-in-lawand i could put our backs against the wall of the marriot center. it wasn't much of a game.
byu won by over thirty points so it was reallyquite boring. i actually went to utah state so i'm not muchof a byu fan i just go along just to be with my family. but it was kind of fun. we've lived down here in arizona for twelveand a half years now. going up there in winter time proves to usthat we are true wimps. it was just really cold. we didn't really want to do much of anything. we just kind of hunkered down in the houseand hung out with my mother-in-law.
if you saw kay's last video, she showed snow. i was up there in that snow storm. i got a couple of chances to fire up my mother-in-law'ssnowblower and dig her out of the snow. i think that while we were up there, therewas a good six or maybe even eight inches of snow that fell. that just reminded me of all the pain thatsnow is. it was cold. it was snowy. we are glad to be back down here.
it is interesting. living in arizona really turns you into awimp. i grew up in idaho and in the winters thesnow was an inconvenience and you just dealt with it. it didn't matter if it was storming or anythinglike that you did your stuff. now in a snow storm i don't even want to goout in it. i don't want to deal with it. but anyway, we're back home and we had a greattime. i hope that you did too.
one of the things that i haven't told youis that i also know how to knit and crochet. my mom taught me how to crochet when i wasa kid and there was a time when i kind of put cross stitch aside and taught myself howto knit. since then i have given up that, partly becauseit's too hot to knit in arizona. you only have about a week or so where itis cold enough that you can actually wear a sweater or something like that. this is one of the sweaters that i knit. it is a fair isle sweater. i only have another sweater to show for itand i also have several pairs of socks.
but i decided that i could only have one craftyhobby and decided that cross stitch was what i really wanted to do. so i haven't knit for a long time. my wife seems determined to not let me giveit up. one of her grandmothers was a prolific crocheter. she crocheted afghans for all of her childrenand all of her grandchildren. she had eight children and my wife has a tonof cousins. one of the things that she did that my mother-in-lawhas is she crocheted a nativity scene. my mother-in-law used to bring it out andlet the kids play with it because it was something
that was kind of more robust that the kidscould play with. my wife has decided that she wants somethinglike that and she wants me to make one of those. i told her that i wouldn't be able to figureout how to do it just by looking at that nativity set but that i would have to have to finda pattern. so i am asking you guys. i found a book on amazon that has instructionson how to knit a nativity scene. if any of you know of any patterns out thereor anything nativity scene related i would be interested to see if you have any recommendations.
i guess that i am going to have to do thatfor my wife. that is kind of the life update. so now i just want to review my stitchingfor 2016 and talk about also what i did in december. december was a great month as far as crossstitching goes. i was able to stitch quite a bit. since i was on vacation and we weren't doingmuch i got a lot of time to stitch in utah and was able to accomplish quite a bit. so i am pretty happy with with my progressfor december.
as i look back on 2016 i had three finishes. that seems kind of pitiful. i have decided that counting finishes isn'treally a good metric for me because most of the projects that i work on are huge. so it takes a long time to get a finish. what i am going to do is i am going to showyou my graphs. i am going to show you what i accomplishedbecause it is kind of cool. first of all we'll look at the years. this first graph that i am showing you isthe trend of the number of stitches and the
number of days that i stitched in each month. you'll notice that i recovered from my dismalnovember progress. i actually worked on stuff where i could countstitches and i had more days where i stitched. the next graph that i am going to show youis a graph that shows everything that i worked on in december with the number of days thati spent on it. you'll see that i worked on quite a few projectsand that i had a lot of days that i stitched. there were only two days that i didn't stitchin december and i was able to do quite a bit. also, here is a graph of the number of stitchesthat i put in in december on each project. as always you'll see that corazon samplerhas a huge number of stitches and of course
that is misleading because there is so muchspace in that piece that it is really easy to do a lot of stitches. then here is the same thing for the entireyear. here is a graph of everything that i haveworked on in 2016 with the number of days that i worked on each project. you'll probably see a couple of things thatare interesting about this. first of all you'll see that there were fiftydays in 2016 when i didn't stitch. that kind of surprises me. that means that i had over a month, abouta month and a half--oh a month and two-thirds--where
i didn't stitch. it didn't feel like i had missed that manydays. you'll also notice that there are two projectson here that i haven't shown you or that i haven't ever talked about. one is is called "noah's ark sampler". that is the noah's ark sampler by teresa wentzler. that is one of my old wips that i decidedthat i was going to start working on. if you have seen that piece, it's a pictureof noah's ark in the middle with an alphabet and then it is surrounded by blocks and eachblock has a pair of animals that are stitched
one over one. i stitched one pair of animals and i don'tlike the fabric that i am using for it now because it is really gauzy. you can see through it. i don't like that. and--the story behind that piece is when mykids were little and barely born--when they were really small, i had a goal that i wasgoing to stitch some kind of noah's ark piece for each of them. i did one.
then i started on this teresa wentzler noah'sark and i stopped cross stitching for a while. now my kids are old and i think that theywouldn't think that noah's ark would be all that wonderful. so i don't really have a lot of motivationto work on it. i am really hating it because of all the over-oneanimals. as of right now i believe that i am goingto stop working on that piece. so i guess that's a "give up". the other piece on here that i haven't talkedabout is o jerusalem. that is a cross stitch kit by bucila.
it is another project that i started yearsand years ago. it a cross stitch adaptation of a paintingby greg olsen. i love that painting. it is a picture of christ sitting on the mountof olives looking over the old city of jerusalem. i really wanted to stitch that. i pulled it out and started working on it. i decided that i was going to start workingdiagonally. i made the really stupid mistake of countingover to a corner and working from that corner. when i got close to the area that i had stitched--icounted four or five times to make sure that
i was right and that i was starting in theright position. but when i got over closer to the area thati had stitched i found out that i had counted one stitch over. i just don't know how i can fudge that. if i was one stitch closer i think i couldfudge it because i could take out stitches along the column all the way up. but i am not sure how i could add stitchesto make it look good. what i am planning on doing is i am planningon restarting that project. i have already bought--with new dmc floss.
i converted that project to dmc. and i bought a new piece of fabric that isevenweave instead of aida. i would rather stitch it on evenweave anyway. so i am going to restart that sometime inthe future. i don't know when but i am going to startit sometime in the future. so that is a long time talking about the projectsthat i worked on in 2016. here is a graph showing the number of stitchesthat i worked on. you'll find it interesting--i worked on autumnmagic the most number of days. you might have noticed that in my previousgraph, but when you look at the number of
stitches that i put in on autumn magic itis actually one of the lower numbers. so autumn magic is just--that's the piecethat slows me down the most, i guess. those are my graphs. now i am going to go over all of my projectsthat i worked on in 2016. the ones that i worked on in december i amgoing to show you what i was able to accomplish in december as well. so first of all i want to show you what ifinished in 2016. the first piece that i finished, i finishedon like the fourth of january. i have shown you this before.
i almost consider it like a 2015 piece. this is the twelve days. this was a freebie that was a freebie stitch-a-longthat was released by plum street samplers last year in 2015. i had a week off from work where i could juststitch and so i stitched this entire thing. basically from the 23rd of december to the3rd of january. i really like how it turned out. but now that i look at it and after seeingvonna, the twisted stitcher's video about all of her christmas ornaments.
i look at this now and i wish that i had stitchedthese as ornaments. she has really made me think that i need todo some ornaments. i have never really wanted to do them because,like i say, i am a size snob. if it is not big it doesn't seem like it isworth stitching. she has kind of changed my mind a little bit. so i don't know. i may pull this out again and stitch eachsquare as an ornament. i don't like doing things twice. i am kind of considering what i can do tomake some ornaments.
the next piece that i finished was my mallardduck. i finished this in october. of course i have shown you this before. i really like this duck and how it looks. it was a nice quick finish. it only took me eight days to stitch whenyou count the number of days that i stitched on it. the final piece that i finished--i am notgoing to show it to you--it is the our family tree that i showed you in my last video.
it just seems a pain to pull out and showit to you when i am not going to be able to show you the entire piece. so those are my three finishes for 2016. i am pretty happy with that. i don't know that i really expected to finishmuch more. i found that when i did finish those lasttwo pieces i found that it was really kind of nice. when i talk about 2017 i am going to talkabout what i am going to do to try to get more finishes.
now let's go through my rotation and we'lltalk about what i was able to accomplish. the first piece in my rotation is autumn magic. first of all i have a picture of what thislooked like at the beginning of the year. i am going to show that to you now. so you'll see that i only had a couple ofcolumns done. actually i think that it's three columns andi had started a fourth. now i am going to show you what it looks likenow. i didn't really work on this since you lastsaw it. i did stitch on it last night because it hascome up in my rotation again.
it is a little bit different from what youlast saw but i am not going to show you what it looked like at the beginning of decemberbecause you have seen it and there is not enough progress to show. so this is what it looks like now. you'll see i've started stitching diagonally. i have done this whole corner down here andthen i have started working up here on one page at a time. i am going to continue to stitch one pageat a time diagonally. if you look really close--it's kind of hardto see.
i don't know if you'll be able to see it. down here you can see the railing for theporch is starting to show up. all i have been doing is a lot of trees. when i get over here i am going to actuallysee some of the house which i am kind of excited about. last night i finished this diagonal and startedthis one. i am excited because my diagonals are goingto start to shrink. you can see this is the top of the page andthis is the side of the page. so you can see what the size of the page is.
i think that it is looking very good. i am actually pretty excited to be workingon this. i kind of have a goal. i would be very glad for 2017 if i finishedall of the pages that i have started. that is what i am hoping to be able to accomplish. i think that is possible because i have likethree partial pages that i need to stitch and i think that is very doable in 2017 basedon the way i am planning on doing things. the next piece i worked on in december. i am going to show you first of all.
this is my verandas of south battery. this is what it looks like. of course it is a street scene in charleston,south carolina. sorry for the glare. this is one of my older wips. i pulled out a picture that i took of it yearsago before i really started working on it again. i am going to show you that now. so this is what it looked like at the beginningof the year.
now i am going to show you a picture of whatit looked like at the beginning of december before i worked on it in december. that's there. this is what it looks like now. so you'll see that i have been able to--i'llzoom in over here--i have been able to stitch a lot more of the blue house. the blue house is almost finished. i am actually beginning to see part of thenext house. it's not really obvious there but it is there.
so i am getting close to doing this. i think that this piece is going to be thenext piece that i am going to be able to finish. my goal for 2017 is to finish this piece. the next piece that i worked on is my wintersampler. that looks like this. it is a design by kooler design studio. it is kind of a victorian-themed sampler ofwinter motifs. i started this in 2016 so i can't show youa picture of what it looked like at the beginning of the year.
but i am going to show you a picture of whatit looked like the last time you saw it. so that is what it looked like the last timethat you saw it. i finished another diagonal. the diagonals are getting pretty long so iam not really able to do a whole lot. but i finished another diagonal. this winter ski scene is finished. there is more of santa showing up. this is a post card that will have a snowmanin it. now i have a headless gingerbread man.
you'll see that i have hit the edge now. so now my diagonals are going to be the samelength. i think that i have three or four diagonalsbefore i hit this corner up here. what else. up here there's a mouse. this is a mouse hanging on the pendulum ofthe clock. this is really fun to stitch. i am really enjoying it. i am going to start seeing a popcorn and cranberryborder up here.
anyway i am really happy with how things aregoing with this one. the next piece that i worked on was red bymirabilia. i just realized that i am forgetting to tellyou what i am stitching these on. i'll put that all in the notes. so if you want to look in the notes you cansee that. this is another piece that i started in 2016. so i can't show you what it looked like beforei started stitching on it. i will show you what it looked like the lasttime you saw it. this is what i have been able to accomplish.
i am getting even more done. i talked to you about how i had a line thatwas showing up because of a dark thread running behind the stitches. i ended up undoing all of that section andwhen got it all undone i found that it wasn't just one thread, there were actually two threadsthat were kind of bunched together. i fixed that. i feel much better about that now. i was putting off fixing it and i was justhating this piece because of it. once i fixed it it was like oh this feelsmuch better.
so now i really love her. i don't hate her anymore. you'll see i've got more of her arm. i think that i have got almost all of herarm stitched. she is getting so close to being finishedi can feel it. at least the cross stitch part. you might notice that i am not stitching theskin one-over-one. part of the reason for that is that i don'twant to deal with the blended threads one-over-one. second of all, i understand that it givesa different texture to the skin.
i understand why people like that. i don't particularly like that. i actually like the uniform texture better. i don't really see much of a point of stitchingone-over-one just to do it. the cinderella piece that i did had one-over-onestitching but part of the reason why it did is it put more detail in her face and moredetail in the trim of her dress. i like that because there was more detailthere. but just stitching one-over-one just to stitchit, i don't particularly like that idea. that's just my opinion.
i guess i am justifying myself for why i don'twant to do one-over-one. the next piece that i worked on was corazonsampler. this my french alphabet sampler by cloramidesigns. that is a designer in belgium. this is another piece that i started lastyear. so i am not going to show you what it lookedlike at the beginning of the year. but i am going to show you what it lookedlike the last time you saw it. there is what it looked like. this is one of the pieces that i stitchedwhile i was on vacation.
so i had a lot of time to stitch. i only worked on it five days instead of afull week. even though i only worked on it five daysi was able to put the flowers in the vase, i finished this alphabet, there is a birdand a heart. then i came over here and did the mnop andi stitched this alphabet and started another alphabet. the corazon--the heart--in the middle goesright here. i haven't started working on that yet becausei am trying to decide how to even go about stitching that.
i think that what i am going to do is i amgoing to stitch down both sides a little bit and then i am going to figure out how to startthat. i am really happy with my progress with this. the more i stitch the more i love this piece. i just love the way it looks. then i decided that i wanted to close outthe year with and a forest grew. so i worked on and a forest grew for a coupleof days. so just for reference this is what and a forestgrew looks like. it is a design by rosewood manor.
of course it is a bunch of tree motifs withthe verse in the middle. even though i stitched on this--first of alli'll show you what it looked like the last time you saw it. i stitched basically all of these trees here. even though i only worked on this for twodays--basically there's three pages here. everything is finished in this third pageexcept for this is where the big tree is going to be. i am going to wait to stitch that. i think that i am going to come up here andi am going to stitch these pages up here until
i get to the tree and then i'll stitch thebig tree. as always, my new favorite tree is this one. i just love this. this is the 500 series of greens, which ithink those are my favorite greens. i just love the gradient there. i love the gradient on that tree. i think it looks awesome. this is just really fun. i think this tree must have been taken froman adam and eve sampler because there's a
snake coming up an biting an apple right there. i've seen a bunch of you starting this atthe beginning of the year. so i want to say--i am afraid to name namesbecause i might forget somebody. but i just want to welcome you all to theclub. i am going to be working on this more thisyear. it will be interesting to see how yours turnsout. then the next piece that is in my rotationkind of is the beautiful sea stitch-a-long. i have actually worked on this since the beginningof the new year. this is by erik shipley.
i'll show you a picture of what it lookedlike the last time you saw it. the last time i worked on this i only hadtwo parts stitched. i have been able to stitch enough to feellike i am caught up. this fabric makes it really hard to photograph. the darker fabrics give me problems. basically i stitched all of this and thisdown here. this motif here i think that i could finishjust because of the symmetry of it. but i don't dare because i am worried he mighthave something down here that makes it so that it is not symmetrical.
this motif i kind of guessed. i actually finished this motif. i really like--i don't know if that's a seahorseor a sea monster. i really like that. the ship and the lighthouse are really cool. this is coming along. as i have been working on this i realizedthat this blue color here--i need another skein. i ordered another skein from erik.
i have also caved and signed up for the mysterytown sampler that he is doing. when i ordered that skein he actually refundedme the shipping cost and said, "i'm sending out the mystery town sampler stitch-a-longfabric and floss at the end of the week so i'll just add that in. that was really cool. that's really cool customer service that hewould realize that i had ordered that and to just stick it in and not charge me postage. if you have been paying attention you haveprobably noticed there are two pieces that i have kind of skipped in my rotation.
the first one is the seasons sampler. i am just showing you this just for the sakeof completeness. this is one of the pieces that i worked onthis year. i have to confess that i didn't really likefall and because of that i have kind of fallen out of love with this piece. she's released two more parts there is onemore part left. i am kind of waiting to see what the lastpart looks like. when that part is released i'll decide whetheror not i want to stitch it. i don't know.
one of the reasons why i did this is i wantedto figure out if i liked doing specialty stitches. part of the reason why i wanted to do thatis i have had the victoria sampler heirloom christmas sampler for a long time. i have all the materials for it. but every time i think about starting it,it really scares me. part of the reason why it scares me is thefirst thing you stitch is this christmas tree that is all backstitch. it looks like a real pain to stitch. and then it is all specialty stitches allthe way through there.
i have always worried about that. so i decided to do this just to get a feelfor that. one of the things that i have found with thatpiece is it is just really fiddly. i don't like stitching fiddly stuff. i don't like starting a new thread and stitchingtwo or three stitches and then ending it off. it just drives me nuts for some reason. this is really fiddly. i have been worried that the heirloom christmassampler is really fiddly too. i don't know if i'll ever start that or not.
i have to decide. there's also another set of designs from herthat i really like. i really like her farm series. i'd like to stitch that one time but i havethe same fears about that that they'd be really fiddly. i may or may not finish that, is what i amsaying. the other piece that i didn't work on is theenglish garden sampler by teresa wentzler. i kind of skipped this. there is a reason for that.
i am not giving up on this, it's just i amputting it aside for a while. so those are all of the things that i haveworked with in 2016. i mentioned a little bit earlier that i didn'tthink that counting the number of finishes that i have was a good metric for measuringthe progress that i have had. that is because you'd say that i only hadthree finishes. but when you look at my wips and all thati have stitched on those wips i have really stitched quite a bit. i am actually pretty surprised at how muchi have stitched. i mentioned that i had three finishes.
i also looked at the number of stitches andin 2016 i stitched 207,410 stitches. that is a pretty big number. so i think that is a better metric of howmuch i did in 2016 than just the number of finishes. however, having said that i am going to starttalking about what i plan on doing in 2017. one of the things that i learned about myselftowards the end of 2016 is that i can't have as many wips going as i do. right now i have nine wips and if you countthe duck season, the rest of the series, i actually have ten wips.
that is just too much. it is too much for a couple of reasons. one is that it makes my rotation longer. i find that i want to stitch on pieces morefrequently than every two or two-and-a-half months, which is kind of where i am rightnow with that huge rotation. i also have found that i like having finishesevery once in a while. the more pieces that i have in my rotationthe less often i am going to have a finish. if i look at my spreadsheets and at the predictionsfor when i am going to finish stuff, right now i am thinking that if i kept to my currentrotation that i would have hardly any finishes
in 2017. i feel like i need finishes. that helps me feel like i have accomplisheda little bit more. so i am changing the way i am stitching. i am changing my rotation. my plan is that i am going to have four orfive pieces in my rotation. i am going to set a few of my wips aside fora little bit and i am going to work on just four pieces. hopefully that will get me to a point wherei get some finishes and then as i finish things
i am going to add things from my wips backin to my rotation. so i have thought a lot and have tried todecide what pieces i want to stitch in my rotation. and it has been really hard because i actuallyhave six pieces that i really love stitching. but i still want to keep myself down to beingable to go through my rotation once a month. so i have debated and debated and i have comeup with this. this is what my rotation is going to looklike. the first part of my rotation is beautifulsea stitch-a-long. i started that at the beginning of this year.
i stitched on it for a few days and then myplan is that i don't think that it will take me an entire week to keep caught up with that. also, i am signed up for the ship's manormystery town stitch-a-long as well, so when that comes i may try to figure out how tofit that in. i haven't decided quite yet. that will take up part of a week. then the rest of the week i am going to workon autumn magic, which is this. i am going to work on autumn magic for therest of that week and then for another week--for an additional week after that.
the reason why is because it's so huge i wantto give myself as much time stitching as possible. the next piece after i do autumn magic isgoing to be and a forest grew. another thing that i am going is i am kindof giving myself a little bit of variation. so i have a full coverage piece then thispiece that is motifs. that is a piece that i think because it isall motifs, i think that it will stitch up pretty quickly and i think that i will beable to finish this by the end of the year. the next piece that i work on after and aforest grew is going to be verandas of south battery. the reason why i chose this one is becausei think i am closest to finishing verandas
of south battery. i am hoping to get a quick finish so thati can put something else in from my wips. the final piece that i am working on is corazonsampler from clorami designs. the reason why i have this is it's anotherchange a little bit. i really love this piece. this is stitching up so fast. i am really sure that i will be able to finishthat in a pretty quick amount of time. once i get those done i am going to add inwinter sampler and red. my goal is that by the end of 2017 that iwill have four wips.
one of the things that taught me this, thati had too many wips, is when i hit october i really had a desire to stitch somethingmore fall. fall is my favorite time of year and i reallygot an itch to start something. i went through everything that i have to tryto decide what i wanted to start. when i started thinking about what to addthat meant adding another piece to my rotation and i just couldn't do that. the same thing happened when december rolledaround. i wanted to start something christmas andjust do christmas, but once again i looked at my rotation and i just couldn't start anything.
i couldn't bear the though of adding anotherpiece to my rotation and increasing the amount of time that i would stitch the same projecttwice. i am hoping that by the end of the year i'llhave cut my wips down enough that maybe i can in the fall start something. i would like to also be able to think thatwhen december rolls around that i'll feel good about setting my rotation aside and startingsomething christmas and stitching on it the entire month of december. we'll see what happens. right now i really don't have any desire tostart anything because i have so much going
right now. if i do get a desire to start something andi feel like i can do it, it will be something really small that won't take up a lot of timeto stitch so that i don't throw everything out of whack. so those are my plans for 2017. they are very general and very flexible. my big goal is to get rid of some of my wips. also i'm on facebook. you may have seen me there a couple of times.
i am not very good at posting on facebook. instagram has become my social media choice. but i am a member of stitch from stash 2017agroup. i plan on stitching from stash. i've got so much stuff and i've got so muchstuff going that i really don't have any need to buy anything else. i am a member of that group. so i will be reporting my progress as i go. that's all of my plans for 2017.
just a couple of other things. first of all i want to give another shoutout. you probably know but we have had anothermale stitcher decide to make videos. that is pip stitch. i'll put a link to his channel below, if youhaven't seen him. i have really enjoyed the couple of videosthat he has made. i was following him on instagram for a whileso it was really exciting to see him start making videos. he's really working on some great stuff andi encourage you to go check him out.
he blames me for pushing him over the edgeto start making videos and so i am going to say it again. guys, if there are any of you out there thatare sitting on the fence thinking about making videos and posting them on floss tube, i encourageyou to do it. it's great fun. there are lots of rewards and it is reallykind of a neat feeling to be able to share what you are working on with other people. so that is all that i have for this video. once again i want to thank you for spendingtime with me.
thank you for watching. thank you for liking my videos. thank you for commenting. i enjoy all of your comments. if you have any questions about what i amworking on, any questions about how i stitch, anything at all, feel free to ask me thosequestions in the comments. i'll respond in the comments and i also mayrespond in my next video. feel free to like and subscribe if you haven'tsubscribed already. thank you so much for watching.
i hope to see you again next month. thanks. we'll talk to you later. good bye.
0 Komentar untuk "winter queen"