I’ve been thinking of my dear best friends, Wendy and Elizabeth while I’ve cross stitched for the last two days. They are both cross stitchers who tend to finish many more projects than I do. It doesn’t seem to matter what hobby I take up, I don’t finish things. I seem to be content to just work on stuff.


I didn’t take a picture before I started stitching so I used Paint (dang, I miss my Paint Shop Pro, that’s probably one of the things I lost when my back hard drive died) to show what the piece looked like before. I’m a slow stitcher, but I’m pleased with my progress.
Last night, I thought about all the fabulous patterns that I’m probably never going to do and I was sad. I have a boat load of specialty fibers and hand dyed fabrics. Neither of my daughters are interested in knitting or cross stitch, so I’ll have to hope for grandchildren to pass the crafts on to. I thought about how I should get rid of, donate, or sell (I have $$$$ tied up in all the stash I’ve collected) most of my cross stitch stuff and that made me even more sad. I love to cross stitch. In fact, two-ish years ago just before I hit my “I must knit” stage I was in an “I must cross stitch” stage. It did the same thing for me that knitting has done. It was calming, soothing and did quite a lot to keep the yappy dog in my brain at bay when playing video games no longer did the trick. It is a hobby I love and I have so many wonderful projects to work on. My favorites are the Halloween projects which I rarely seem to finish by Halloween but adored working on during the month of October.
I think I’m going to set aside a day that I do certain things, Tuesdays are for spinning, Wednesdays are for cross stitching, etc. I should probably leave one day that I do whatever the heck I want. Then again, will adding a measure of discipline to my hobbies make them more satisfactory or add an equal measure of tedium? Do I simply need more variety? Heaven knows, I need more discipline. Ick.
There are so many things I want to do, spin, knit, crochet, cross stitch, dye, read (oh so many book are languishing in my stash), write in my journal (holy cow, do I need to set a day for that too?) that I often end up doing nothing, or spending hours playing on my computer (Ravelry, I’m looking at you) because I can’t settle on which one to settle down with.
Speaking of never finishing things, never say never! I did finish the peachy crochet blanket that will go into my Future Grandchildren stash. I made it *almost* all the way around the edge with single crochet border with the yarn ending a couple of inches from the finish line. I shrugged, tied it off and told myself not to worry about it. Amazingly enough, I haven’t 🙂

P.S. I know Comic Sans gets a lot of flak from The U. S. Dept. of They, but I think it’s cute and I’m excited that I figured out how to change the font on my blog 🙂