Goals for 2008

I've spent the last couple of days having a good sort through my stitching stash, making sure everything was in the correct place and easily found when I'm looking for things. The biggest job was sorting all my DMC threads. I have a full set of DMC which is kept in one place, a four tier toolbox/workbox I found in B&Q a couple of years ago. When I stitch something in DMC the idea is I take it from my central stash and then replace it when I'm finished.

The problem I have is that I don't seem to finish very much LOL. The other problem is I seem to start lots and lots of things, which usually means I can't find all the DMC I need in my central stash and end up buying more. Repeat this a few times and you can imagine that I've got lots of DMC all over the place.

So I went through all my WIP's and was quite ruthless about the ones that I really can't see me stitching on again. I salvaged what I could from the fabric and put the DMC back into central stash, together with the drawer full I found where I had finished small projects and chucked the DMC in there for me to put away "later".

From my WIP's I have made a list of the ones that I would like to finish, or at least make significant progress on, in 2008. I also have a couple of new starts planned as motivation for getting some older WIP's out of the way.

1. Finish Autumn Queen
2. Finish Winter Queen
3. Finish Spring Queen
4. Finish Chatelaine Mystery 8
5. Finish Chatelaine Celtic Quilt
6. Finish Chatelaine Egyptian Garden
6. Start and finish Chatelaine Mystery XI (Celtic Mystery)
7. Finish Celtic Autumn
8. Start Cirque des Triangles

All of these are large projects, the Chatelaines are quite intricate and I need something easier" to stitch alongside them to prevent me from burning out on them, so I will rotate the Chatelaines with the Mirabilias which are easier to stitch with larger blocks of colour.

Celtic Autumn I started on Christmas Eve and have made fantastic progress. I have completed the whole border area, leaving just the lady to stitch in 2008.

I will take photos of all these WIP's before I start stitching on them again, I'm just waiting for the camera battery to charge.

Mystery XI starts tomorrow, 1st January 2008. I ordered the kit from European Cross Stitch a few weeks ago but because the material list wasn't issued until early December they will not be getting the kits out until 10th January so by the time the kit gets to me in the UK most of the month will be gone.

I am very frustrated at this, it's quite hard to keep up with the Mysteries at the best of times, but I feel like I am behind already and it hasn't even started yet. I really do think that Martina should have released the materials list to her distributors in plenty of time for them to get the kits to the people starting the mystery by starting date.

The good news is that while I was sorting through my stash I did come across some of the threads that are used in the Mystery so fingers crossed the ones I have will be used in Part 1. If not, I think I may place an order with Sew and So, just for the Part 1 threads so at least I can make a good start in January.