In the days leading up to Christmas, I didn’t have a chance to make much progress on any needlework! To those of you who gave hand embroidered gifts for Christmas and finished them all up on time, you have my enduring admiration. As for me, I’m afraid I was a bit of a slug in that regard.
Still, I did manage a wee bit o’ stitching on the Hungarian Redwork Runner. Not a whole lot, but at least some.
In fact, I’ve added tentacles to it.
You can see that my 15-Minute Stitching Philosophy took me only so far. But – that’s part of the 15 Minute Philosophy: when you’re life is busy, if you can only grab 15 minutes here or 15 minutes there to add just a few stitches to a project, you will make progress. And some progress is better than no progress at all.
The other part of the 15 Minute Philosophy is to use stitching as a carrot: If I get all this finished, if I accomplish this little goal (whatever it is – grading that stack of papers, writing those thank you notes, outlining next week’s blog posts, cleaning the attic, cooking dinner, washing the car, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow…), then I will spend 15 minutes on my embroidery.
This approach works really well for me, and I find that I get a lot of other stuff done, and done on time, if I use needlework as my carrot.
To get this 15 minute embroidery fix each day (or perhaps several times throughout the day) it helps to have either a grab-and-go type project on hand – a project that’s easy to pick up and easy to pack up – or a project that’s already set up in a dedicated space. This way, you don’t have to mess with dragging everything out, setting everything up, and cleaning everything up, which can easily eat up all 15 of your hard-earned minutes. This is why I like this Hungarian Redwork Runner project. It’s simple to get out and even simpler to stuff back into its bag!
One thing that I’ve discovered about this project is that, while it is not really a huge test of skill, it will definitely be a test of perseverance. This isn’t to say that I’ve grown weary of it. On the contrary, it’s rather addicting and I’d like to spend more time on it. But it is a lot of the same stitch in the same color. And it’s a lot of starting and ending threads!
If I’m a Really Good Girl this week and I get all my work done, I plan to spend some intense time on this project over the coming weekend. Next time you see it, you should be able to see a recognizable advance in progress!
Tomorrow, I’m going to share with you what I think is an amazing and fun embroidery project by a reader. If you haven’t settled on any stitching plans for 2013 and you need a little facelift to your house decor, you’ll enjoy this! Then, I’d like to introduce you to a treasure of a rare book that I found. And there are some interesting things going on around the traps that you might want to hear about, so I’ll be sharing some Needlework Happenings and Things of Interest with you down the road, too.
If you haven’t signed up for yesterday’s coton a broder thread give-away yet, don’t forget! This is probably the most difficult give-away I’ve ever done. Parting with a whole set of threads is definitely sweet sorrow – sweet, because I’m sure it will make someone else out there quite happy, but nonetheless sorrow, for obvious reasons!
Hope you get to enjoy some time with your needle and thread today!
