Rotation

I have decided that I will start (again) a sort of rotation routine for my cross stitch (and knittineg) projects in January. I have done this before, then somehow got out of it again. But it certainly did help to get me forward in my bigger*ish* projects. I can look forward to start new projects, and have a sense that I did achieve something when I stitch on each project at least for a week.

Initially I tried to rotate my projects daily, with on 'focus' project 3x a week. However, I found the 'daily' change of frame/chart setup / colours etc too irretating, some days I only managed a couple of stiches, and already it was time to put the new project in for the next day. So I went on a weekly rotation with 4 projects which seemed to work fine. Danger with this is that when I had a week with a project which I really didn't like I often ended up doing almost nothing for that week, effectively skipping that week... I read on a forum that many stitchers have a rotation of 10 hours per piece, and then move onto the next one. I find this too tedious to list my hours (e.g. with a stopwatch), and also with a busy house like mine, often i end up doing only 20stitches, get up again to do something else, back to stitching, off again etc ... you get the picture, too much trouble to record the time for me.

My new rotation, starting on 1. Jan 08, is going to look like this:

Week 1: Candamar Design ' Japanese Bridge' - about 70% done
(yes, that's the project I often skipped when 'Week 1' was due, I just don't enjoy
stitching on the printed fabric. it's almost done anyway.~)

Week 2: Mirabilia 'Spring Queen' - about 65% done

Week 3: Glasgow Rose 'Cat with vase' (30% done)

Week 4: Stoney Creek 'Nature's Home Afghan'
(only just started on page 1 - this one is obviously going to take me ages, but it doesn't
matter, at least i will stitch on it once a month.

Week 5: small stuff
I leave this week open for small projects like cards, exchanges (biscornus etc), I can
as many new one's to this week as I want, with them all being small I should finish at
least one every week, if not more. Only condition is that everything for week 5 should
not be bigger than 80x80 - 100x100 stitches (absolute maximum)

Come December, my rotation will come to a halt, and I will do Christmas projects. My Christmas Tree goes up every year on the 1st of December, and I love to sit under the tree, stitching well, Christmas related stuff really. I can't get myself into the mood to stitch in August!

New projects will be added for week 1-4 when I finished one project, and it should be really replaced with a project of similar size, eg. the cat is a medium sized project, and once Spring Queen is finished, I will replace it with another Mirabilia or similar.

Now this might all look very strict and serious, but I don't take it that seriously, cross stitch is supposed to be fun. I can change this as much as I like, adding more projects, or putting a knitting week, even another week 6 project maybe, so really, it will just serve as a little guideline for me.