January YOTA

I joined one more stitch-a-long. :0) I'd tell you that it's the last one I was going to join, but I just don't know if that's true or not. HA!! Actually this one confused me at first. It is called YOTA - which stands for Year Of The Acronym, and I couldn't figure out what was meant by that. When I finally took the time to read more into it, I realized the author of Pull the Other Thread was being funny and instead of calling this one a 'UFO SAL' she shortened it to YOTA. :) Cleaver!! The idea is to grab a project from your pile - a UFO project- and work on it for at least the first Saturday of the month (she had us do the second Saturday this month to make sure everyone had time to be ready), and then post your progress.

 

Okay, so how is this one different from WIPocalypse? Well for WIPocalypse I've been just working on whatever I have in my hands at the time and posting progress pics on the full moon. This one is to be UFOs which I've always seen as one and the same as my WIPs (WIPs - works in progress, UFOs unfinished object). I just saw all of my projects as works in progress, but in reality, most of them haven't been touched in quite a long time (some more than a year). So I guess that qualifies them as UFOs!!!

 

I decided, then, for this SAL (stitch-a-long, if you haven't caught on yet:), to grab a true UFO, one that has been sitting in my basket for a really long time, but that I still love and want to see finished at some point. I also wanted this to be a larger project, one that I wouldn't just pick up unless I felt I had a lot of time, which I may never have!! I will probably only be able to stitch on this for the one day a month, as I have other projects that need to get done on a time-line. My inspiration for the project I choose actually came from a Christmas gift I received from my in-laws. My mother-in-law always gives calendars as gifts and she is always trying to find just the right one for everyone. My daughter always receives a cat calendar, my hubby, a tractor one, and mine is usually garden themed. This year I was admiring a pocket calendar that my mother-in-law had that had Marjolein Bastin art work as it's theme. I love her nature art and so this is the calendar that I received this year. I made those 3 'bookmarks' by cutting out the preview pics from the back of this cover. 

 

 

The calendar had me thinking about a project I had started a couple years ago, also from Marjolein Bastin, called The Four Seasons. I'm doing this project using 28ct white evenweave, stitching over one with one strand of thread. That needle is a size 26 petite, to give you an idea of the size. So this is where I ended a year or two ago, the last time I held this in my hands.

 



 

 

And this was after a quiet afternoon alone at home with nothing to do but to watch a couple girly movies and stitch - okay, maybe the house should have been cleaned, and the laundry didn't get done, but I did get all the dishes done. :)

 



 

 

This pic actually shows the colors right, the other pic was taken in the evening, and my lamp light makes everything darker.

 

I'm really looking forward to stitching on this again next month and seeing how far I can get with it by the end of the year.