Jolly Old Fellow update

Progress has been very slow - not much stitching happening at all lately. I'm about 2/3 of the way through page 8 now, and I doubt that I'll get much more stitching finished on JOF this month. I did want to get page 8 finished this year, but right now it doesn't look as if that will happen.

Right now I'm stitching a last-minute Christmas ornament for my niece's new baby. It will be a Baby's Prenatal Christmas ornie, as baby isn't expected to arrive until July 2010. And I have started kitting up my 2010 Christmas SAL project - L&L's Angel of Grace. I have the chart and most of the floss, and I have ordered the rest of the floss, which will be here well before Christmas. I still have to decide on the fabric.

Jolly Old Fellow - Progress pic

It's nice to be working on Jolly old Fellow again. It is a big change from the large loose fabric of Angel of Hope, but it didn't take me many stitches on JOF to adjust back to the smaller stitches. I've now stitched the sky section of page 8, and I'm looking forward to stitching with the more pleasant (for me) floss shades of the hat. I'm about a quarter of the way through page 8 right now.

WIP Progress Pic

Page 4 is still not quite finished. I'm a bit behind schedule as I had no opportunity to stitch for the past 3 days, while Ellie was needing extra TLC. I've put in a bit of stitching time today, and I am keen to actually finish this page. I'll have a JOF-free week as soon as page 4 is finished. I think I'll make up some beaded angels, by way of a change. I also want to stitch a design - probably another bird - for the Victorian Bushfire fundraising quilt being organised by Terry Louise at Stitching under the Southern Cross board.

Thinking of Christmas ...

This is my progress at the end of tonight's stitching session. I'm fairly confident that I will finish this page by the end of this week. I'm enjoying stitching the holly leaves and berries - I have always liked stitching with green and red floss.

I have almost decided on my next Christmas project. I've got plenty of time to get organised - we're talking a January 2011 start at the earliest. But it doesn't hurt to plan ahead. I was half-thinking of HAED Merry Christmas To All (I do have the chart, and I really do love it), but I think back-to-back HAED projects would be a bit much for me. So, when I finish Jolly Old Fellow I plan to stitch L&L's Angel of Hope or maybe L&L's Christmas Angel - the jury's still out on that decision. Either will be a good companion piece for Angel of Love which I stitched in 2005. At this stage I'm favouring Angel of Hope. Though ... the new Angel will hang on a white wall for Christmas 2011, and the brighter colours of Christmas Angel would look very pretty on the wall. Obviously, more thought is required before a final decision. Luckily, time's not an issue here ...

April already ...

This is the current state of Jolly Old Fellow. I've almost finished the sky on page 4, and I'm over a third of the way through page 4. I hope to be finished page 4 and well into page 5 by the end of April. I've decided to stitch on JOF all this month, no JOF-free week for me in April.

It's been well over a week since I posted here. The time has just slipped away. We've been renovating the kitchen (new walloven and all the doors taken off, sanded, re-stained and sealed), and that has been amazingly disruptive to the normal order of things. In the process I've cleaned out and reorganised every cupboard, and discovered many 'treasures' that I had forgotten. In the past couple of weeks I have also found eBay and I've been having great fun buying and selling. I'm sure I'm making Australia Post very happy. The postman is bringing me parcels every day, and I've been visiting the local Post office frequently to mail things out. This could be my new hobby!

A little progress

Not much to show for almost a week of stitching on Jolly Old Fellow ... but at least there is some progress. I'm hoping to get in some stitching over the next few days. I would really like to have the page 4 sky finished by the end of this week, but it's not looking likely right now.

Maddie, my (10 yr old Maltese) 'baby' had some teeth removed yesterday, and the combination of the procedure and the medications has really slowed her down. She is always my constant companion when I'm stitching, but normally she sits on the end of my recliner, or on the arm of my chair. Today she has begged to be nursed all day, and in case you were wondering, it's not very easy to stitch with one hand while cuddling a groggy 4kg fluff-bucket with the other arm. It's not slowing me down at the computer, though, as she always does get a cuddle when I'm at the keyboard - we have an understanding about that! I'm hopeful she'll be back to her usual independent self tomorrow.

I'm parking my needle

and loosening the frame. Here's a pic of HAED Jolly Old Fellow, as at the end of tonight's stitching session. It's taken me 240 stitching hours to get this far, over a 6 week period. I'm about two-thirds of the way through page 3. JOF will be 'resting' for the next 10 days or so, so I'll be working on him next around mid-March.

We're heading off tomorrow on a camping (campervan) adventure. Just a tiny one this time, about a 3 hr drive north to a lovely coastal town. We're taking our two dogs (Bichon and Maltese) and meeting friends who'll be travelling with their two dogs (standard poodle and chihuaha). It should be a fun time for all of us. The holiday park has a lovely name - Christmas Cove. We've not stayed there before, but we like the area. I don't take a computer with me in the van, so I probably won't get a chance to post while we're away.

I'm taking some small projects with me. I'm hoping to stitch two quilt squares. One is for a fundraiser quilt for the Victorian bushfire relief effort, the other is for a quilt to be given to the parents of an Aussie cross-stitcher. They lost their farm in the bushfires on Feb 7. I'm going to stitch a bird on each quilt square, one red-back wren and one blue-faced finch. The charts are from Graham Ross's garden Birds leaflet. I'd also like to make a couple of Christmas ornaments, if I can find the time.

Three weeks of stitching

and this is what I've stitched. I'm about three-quarters of the way through page 2 on HAED Jolly Old Fellow. It's taken me 148 hrs of stitching - 60 of them in the last week.

The exciting news is that there'll be red DMC in my needle before I finish page 2. The unstitched area under the curve on the bottom right is part of Santa's cap.

I'm having a break from this project in the coming week, to stitch an ornament or two, but I'm very confident that I'll be well into page 3 by the end of this month.

Week 2 progress pic, HAED JOF

My progress at the end of my second week of stitching - does it look like 84 hours work? I think not. But I can assure you that it took me 84 hrs to achieve this much. I'll be very happy to move on to whites and reds once I get to the bottom half of page 2 - I'm a bit 'over' blues right now.

My first milestone reached ...

I have just placed the final stitches in page 1 of Jolly Old Fellow. Major HD for me! I'll be back later to put in a progress pic.

I have to admit to being a trifle disappointed with the floss coverage. I prefer a fuller coverage of the fabric. I guess that's because when I started stitching I used 18 count Aida and 2 strands of floss, and that covered the fabric well. I obviously got used to a full coverage. I've used 1 strand before when stitching on 22 count and didn't notice any problem, but those items were smaller, background not stitched, and most probably dark blue (not my favourite colour!) didn't feature heavily in the designs. I'm going to persevere with the 1 strand of floss for the sky, but I think for the Santa I'll switch to 3 or 4 strands of floss and tent(continental?) stitch. I'm going to trial a few variations before I start stitching, and see what pleases me most.

Week 1 survived!

I can hardly believe that it is just one week since I started my HAED Jolly Old Fellow. It has been an interesting week, and I have learned SO much about myself. Until now I had no idea that I was such a results-oriented person. To have stitched for 46 hours this week, and only just half-finished page 1 of 36 ... takes some adjustment for me! And no Santa in sight yet - just sky. I had never realised that the part I like most about stitching is actually finishing the stitching! I guess the fact that I finished 200+ (mostly small) items last year may have given me a clue, but no. So, this project is going to be a major challenge for me. I have calculated that if I continue to stitch at my current rate (about 45 hrs per week) it will take 60 weeks to finish. That's assuming that I stitch only on Jolly Old Santa. It's unlikely that I'll do that. So, my current plan is to stitch Jolly Old Fellow over 3 years. I'm aiming at finishing at least one page every month between now and August, and then I'll reassess the situation. I've never taken longer than 3 months to stitch a project before, so I'm on a steep learning curve here.

My 2009 Christmas Project

My heart won the battle for supremacy - so, here's the Santa I'll be stitching all this year (and probably next year as well!). It will be the biggest project I have stitched - by far. It's completely stitched (no unstitched fabric in the background). There are 36 A4 pages in the chart, and I think I'll have to enlarge the pages in order to decipher the chart (my eyes not being as good as they once were). It is 400 stitches wide x 509 high, and the stitched piece will measure 18 inches wide and 23 inches long if I stitch it over 1 on 22 count Hardanger, which is my tentative plan. It is meant to be stitched over 1 on 25 count linen, but I think that's just asking for trouble for my eyes! I'm thinking I'll use 1 strand of DMC for stitching.
I'm getting out my floor frame from its storage bag today, and I'll think about organising floss (125 skeins DMC to start with)and fabric this weekend, and I should be ready to put in the first stitches on Monday 19th January. Wish me luck!