Hooray! NaBloPoMo is Winding Down

I’m very glad I decided to go ahead and commit to National Blog Posting Month (a.k.a. NaBloPoMo). It has renewed my enthusiasm for sharing my stitching successes and failures, along with tips I’ve learned along the way. I really enjoy interacting with all of you, dear readers.

However, over the past four weeks, I’ve also learned that in order to write about stitching, I have to actually stitch something! And it doesn’t work to try to do much of both writing and stitching on any given day, not with the full-time job and motherhood to an almost-three-year-old. (Yes, really. She’s almost three!)

So while I’ve had fun doing this, please be warned that come December, posts will not be as frequent. But I will keep posting. The good news is that I won’t be posting just for the sake of posting something on a given day. I can focus more on providing you with quality information. Fortunately, this month I’ve also learned that a post doesn’t have to be long to share a good tip. Pictures really are worth a thousand words!

And who knows? One of these days I might actually finish cleaning up all of the imported posts on my NEW site and be able to share that with all of you!

A Sampler from the WIP Pile

So you may be wondering just why I’ve suddenly actually started posting again. You’ll find the answer if you look at my posts in November 2007 and November 2009. Yes, I did it again. I signed up for National Blog Posting Month, a.k.a. NaBloPoMo, in which bloggers are challenged to write every day for the month. I’m hoping this will help me get back into the habit of posting more regularly, even after the month is out.

Over the past year, I have had a few prolonged absences from posting. For the most part, though, I did continue to stitch.

In the last few years, I’ve been in a bit of a counted canvas rut. I love it, but every so often I remind myself that I used to be much more balanced in my stitching practices, and I enjoyed other techniques, too. So I made myself pull out a sampler that hasn’t seen the light of day in a while.

The last time I posted about my progress on Hillside Samplings’ Be You to Others sampler, which I refer to as the Ninja Squirrel Sampler (for reasons that will become obvious as I stitch a bit more), was back in February 2010, right after my carpal tunnel surgery. At that point, the sampler looked like this.

After quite a bit of time with this sampler over the past six months, I’m happy to say it’s much further along.

The personalization and verse areas aren’t filled in yet because, frankly, I’m not that thrilled with the verse on this design, and I haven’t yet figured out what I’m going to replace it with, nor what I want to do about personalization.

Does anybody have a favorite verse that might work well on this sampler? Maybe four lines or so? I’m open to suggestions!

Anyway, I’m back to working on canvas projects for a bit, but I hope to not let this piece sit unattended too long again.

NaBloPoMo 2009

In an effort to get myself into blogging more regularly, I've taken the plunge.  I signed up for National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo, which challenges bloggers to post every day for the month of November.  I did this (successfully!) two years ago, and I hope I can do as well this year. 

Of course, two years ago, I was stitching much more, so I had more to blog about.  In lieu of writing about what I'm currently stitching, I've instead decided to blog on a theme this month.  Don't worry; the theme is still very much about my stitching.  Each day, I'll write a post about one of my WIPs.

Yes, I have enough WIPs (Works in Progress), or, perhaps more accurately, WISPs* (Works in Slow Progress) to feature one each day for the month.  Who knows?  I may continue into December, if more turn up in my digging!

In case you're wondering, today's featured WIP will follow this in a separate post.


* Some people might call these UFOs (UnFinished Objects), but I really prefer WISP.  It sounds like I really do intend to finish them.  And I do.  Someday.