Actual crafting...

You know how I said that I didn't have startitis? Well, I don't. I think I'm being remarkably reasonable and prioritising wonderfully. It only looks like the 'attack of the squirrels' (thanks, Dunderknit) because every time I come back around to crafting progress, I'm working on something else. I've got a perfect rationale: the project I'm making is going to a friend for Christmas, so needs to be posted in a couple of weeks; it's a slower project, but one that quite suits being picked up and put down; and everything else on the crafting list needs more time / can be posted later.

Oh yes, and it's a cross-stitch. I used to cross-stitch a lot - in my late teens, when I could knit, but wasn't good enough to be doing a lot, and the notion of an online community did not exist. I subscribed to Cross-Stitch Crazy for a year just as I went to university, when I had a sewing machine which I used for costuming shows and bits of bag or cushion making but wanted something to sit and do in front of Film4 in the common room... 

Now? I occasionally find a pattern that I like - current favourite designers include Plastic Little Covers and Satsuma Cross Stitch - and then I rather enjoy it in brief bursts: I have a supply of threads which if not the precise ones called for, usually covers most of the bases in terms of the designs I pick, I have a small stock of Aida in my big 'generic crafting' box, a surprisingly high number of embroidery hoops, and my eyesight is just about good enough to follow a chart on my phone / laptop screen, so recently projects have come out of stash, and feel to cost me nothing but the time!

I do now also always make myself a thread-keeper for the colours I've picked. Since I'm not using the DMC/Anchor colour codes specified, this helps me identify the colours I need by symbol, and taking the time to prepare a few lengths and line them all up makes it much easier to manage than the constant tangle of skeins I rummaged through as a teen.