WIPocalypse - 2020 Intro

Today is the first checkin of the year on one of my favourite SALs ever, the WIPocalypse - 2020 Edition. I think it's my sixth year taking part - wohoo! Checkins are usually on the last Sunday of each month, but for January there's an extra 'introduction' post to talk about us and out goals for the year.

So, here we go - slightly updated from last year (and probably the year before that too, I tend to recycle stuff...):

Hi, I'm Leonore, I'm 30 years old and from Southern Germany. I life together with my husband, and my extended family includes my grandmas, who lifes nearby and with whom I still spend a lot of time. In real life I'm a computer scientist working towards my PhD, which makes me travel around the world from time to time. I love cross stitch, knitting and crochet, and I'm also trying to learn how to sew. I also like to try out new crafts and have a few things lined up, we'll see if I can get to them this year! My other hobbies include reading and videogames, and I like to watch movies and shows while I craft.

Now, how about my crafting goals...in 2018, I tried doing '18 in '18', choosing 18 specific projects to work on...which didn't work all that well. In 2019, I did '-19 in '19', trying to get my WIP count down by 19, which didn't work at all! So this year, I'll try and do '10 + 10 = '20' - which has too parts. The first one is simple - I still want to cull my WIP list, so my goal this year is to get it down by at least 10 (which would mean 39 from the 49 I started the year with). The second part is that I'll try to focus my stitching around 10 hour 'chunks' - something I copied off both our hostess Measi and her ten hour rotation, and Rachel the TenHourStitcher, and briefly played with last year. I hope they won't mind me playing around with it :)
I think ten hour is a pretty good time for me to focus on a project - long enough to get some serious stitching done, but short enough to circle through a couple projects each month and keep me from getting bored. I'm not going to impose any strict rules on myself - the next project might be something that needs finishing, something chosen by a random generator, or something I just want to work on. Right now I really want/need to finish Lady Justice and The Mermaid (both are birthday presents - LJ is due April 30th and The Mermaid is already way past her deadline), so I'll try to make at least every second slot one of those. Once they are done, I might pick a new focus project, or maybe not, we'll see.

To keep things exciting, I also want to throw a couple of monthly SALs in the mixture...although at this point, I'm not quite sure which ones. My friend Magical has a TON of exciting SALs going on again this year, and I'd love to stitch all of them, but know I won't find the time. I'm pretty sure I want to do her Temperature and Blackwork SAL, and I'm really excited about the Bookmark of the Month, but I'm not sure whether I'll stitch all of those.

As for linkup-SALs, apart from WIPocalypse I'll continue to do Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness as well as Rachel's Fully Finished Gallery (assuming she continues to host it). I'll also try to take part in Jo's 'The People's Choice SAL' as often as I can.

The SAL I'm maybe most excited about is one Rachel and I have been hatching in private for the past couple of month. During the Autumn Colours month on the People's Choice SAL, she showed her pattern of The Loneliness of Autumn (and for those of you who don't know it, I'll put the image in my sidebar in a moment) and I commented that I had a different version of the chart in my stash (her's is by crosstitch.com, and mine by Love Thy Thread. She jokingly replied that we should SAL on it, and I jokingly agreed, and before we both new it, we weren't joking anymore but seriously planning, and then we were seriously ordering supplies, and now here we are. We both new a start of this size (and confetti!) was not the sensible thing to do, but it was so, so fun to plan, and when I woke up on new years day, it was the first thing I did! One length of thread a day is our goal. We thought that would work out to about 20 minutes a day, but so far it's more like 30 minuts for me (probably because I'm stitching on 28ct and that one length amounts to almost a hundred stitches each day).

We both chose the same course of stitching - extreme cross country, one colour at a time, starting with the colour that has the most stitches, which is 310 for her and 939 for me (a whopping 16 670 stitches of it!). Then we'll do the second most common colour, and so on. We might switch to just filling in pages once all the 'big' colours are done, but that's still some months (or rather years) off. It'll be fun to see the two versions of the chart grow side by side! Here is mine after five days of stitching:

By the way, I'm using the Pattern Keeper App on this for the first time, and I'm loving it! It doesn't support everything yet, but I think I'll try using it for as many of my digital patterns as possible from now on.

Before I end this post, I have two more things to share: The last start of 2019, and the first finish of 2020! On December 23rd, I started the prestitch of this years NYE Mystery SAL. The official start was on December 27th, and we were at Felix' parents then. I stayed caught up until about part 10, but there are over 30 parts this time, so I still have quite a bit left to stitch. Such a pretty pattern, though!

And for a finish, I spent a few days catching up on the 2019 Temperature SAL! During the last two months, I had to change colours almost every day (no wonder I was so tired all the time, that weather would drive everyone crazy!), so it took a while, and then the last four days are a complete new 'row' all around the pattern, so that took some time as well. But I do love the end result!

So here I am at 49 WIPs again. Let's see how I can change that for next month...hopefully in the right direction!

By the way, I think this post is way longer than anything I posted in the last couple month. I'm off work until the 7th, and I took that time mostly to recharge (and stitch a ton) instead of frantically trying to catch up on everything (like blog reading, and updating my finishes page...), and I think that was the right decision, since I really feel much better now. I'll try my best to get everything else back on track in the coming weeks, and also to not let myself get overwhelmed with stuff as much as I did last year. Please take care of yourselves!