MMMonet Update (Page 18.5?)

I finished page 18 on October 6, 2022. Shortly thereafter, I found out we had company coming, so I took a short break from stitching in order to give the house a thorough cleaning. Then our youngest turned 17, and we threw him a party. 😀

I didn’t get back to stitching until the 22nd of October. I stitched some, but not every day. World of Warcraft released a new expansion in November, and by then I was experiencing pain in *both* thumbs and wrists. I dropped the stitching and played as much WoW as my hands would allow so I would be ready to raid come December.

I was able to raid by the start date, but my hands were in rough shape. I had to wear braces on both hands. By Christmas, I was barely able to hold my cell phone! I broke down and went to the doctor’s office. The nurse practitioner gave me something to reduce the swelling and relieve the pain, and I went back in just after New Years for shots in my wrists.

I’m doing much better now! I only play WoW 3 or 4 days a week (maybe 2-4 hours on each of those days) and in the past couple weeks I’ve actually been able to stitch. I can stitch for 1-2 hours each day, instead of the 6-10 hours I used to do, and I’m not stitching every day. But hey! At least I’m stitching!!

In early December, my stitching app had a huge update. Now we are not limited to seeing only one page at a time…we can see the whole chart at a glance! There were several other changes at the same time, but this is the one that had the most impact on me.

This is what we were restricted to previously: one full page of symbols (with the option to zoom in). It was a bit frustrating because the colors don’t simply stop because the page does…and if you stitch each row to the very edge, you run the risk of have a seam in your stitching. In order to keep this from happening, I would stitch all the way to the edge on some rows, and stop a bit short on others. When I stitched the adjoining page, I would fill in the spots I skipped. Kind of like a zipper, if you will. If you look at the above picture, you can see there are three grayed out columns on the left and three grayed out rows at the top. The grayed out symbols are an overlap from the bordering pages so you can align your new stitches properly (and fill in the blanks if necessary).

In this new picture, you actually see bits of four pages! This is part of Markup R-XP’s big update. In full chart mode, you can zoom in to see the symbols more clearly. The heavy dotted lines mark the page edges. You can see where I’ve left some stitches blank on the otherwise filled in areas. Now that I have the update, when I get near the right edge or bottom of the page, I can easily see which stitches are in both of the adjacent pages so I can stitch them together in order to create a seamless transition from page to page.

This picture is Full Chart Mode, zoomed out. Amazing, right? I love seeing how far I have come on this project. This was my progress as of December 8, 2022. Compare the above photo to the one below, which shows where I am as of February 6, 2023:

Not exactly an impressive change, but considering two months ago I could not hold a needle tight enough to stab fabric…

Stitching Station

Cross stitch corner? No…it’s not in a corner. Nook? No…that’s not quite right. Hobby haven? Meh. Not for all my hobbies, just cross stitch. Stitching station it is, I guess!

We moved into a new (to us) house just about a year ago. It has a family room in addition to a living room! Happiness is me! It’s very open and has good light, so I commandeered a space to dedicate to cross stitching. It’s nothing fancy, but I am able to leave my kit set up so I don’t have to dig it out of a cabinet every time I want to stitch.

As you can see, I have a small shelf unit to store cross stitch supplies and a table to hold my current thread box and OttLite. My husband gifted me with a Lowery cross stitch stand which is a tremendous asset. Various ailments make it difficult for me to hold my QSnap frame like I used to, and that makes the stand essential. It sucks getting old!! The Lowery stand has a light bar and I have not only a daylight lamp attached to it, but a holder for my iPad.

It may look a bit chaotic, but everything is within reach, and I can sit comfortably. If I feel like “watching” a movie or listening to music while I stitch, I simply prop my phone up and let it play.

Something cool I’ve discovered since I’ve come back to stitching: grime guards! I used to wrap my QSnap frame with flannel to keep things clean, but grime guards are definitely the way to go. They cover the frames as well as all the fabric not currently in the frame.

They would be easy enough to make, I suppose, but I purchased mine from a shop on Etsy. My quilting room is not yet set up – it’s all boxes! Nowhere to set up my sewing machine. That’s a project I will tackle once MMMonet is complete. As the above picture shows, the end is in sight!! I hope I can keep my momentum going.

MMMonet, Page 18

Another page of all water – it’s a good thing I don’t get sea sick!!!

This page was started on September 25, 2022 and finished on October 6, 2022.

Eighteenth page: 60.33 hours (10 stitching days)
Total stitching hours to date: 1506.73
Number of stitches on this page: roughly 4680
Total stitches completed thus far: roughly 128,133

MMMonet, Page 17

Sky, rock and sea – all in one page! No chance to get bored on this page. So many color changes to keep me on my toes 😃

Page 17 was started on September 11, 2022 and finished on September 24, 2022.

Fifteenth page: 90.15 hours (13 stitching days)
Total stitching hours to date: 1446.40
Number of stitches on this page: roughly 7222
Total stitches completed thus far: roughly 123,453

MMMonet, Page 16

“Water, water every where, nor any drop to drink!” I love The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Time to dig out the Coleridge! I haven’t read it in years. This page is all water, save the “3” from Claude Monet’s signature and year. So many colors, and a short page to boot!

I started this page on August 30, 2022 and finished on September 10, 2022.

Sixteenth page: 55.68 hours (10 stitching days)
Total stitching hours to date: 1356.25
Number of stitches on this page: roughly 4680
Total stitches completed thus far: roughly 115,731

MMMonet, Page 15

I very much enjoyed stitching this page. The water crashing upon the rocks really adds movement!

Page 15 was started on August 12, 2022 and finished on August 29, 2022.

Fifteenth page: 78.17 hours (15 stitching days)
Total stitching hours to date: 1300.57
Number of stitches on this page: roughly 7222
Total stitches completed thus far: roughly 111,051

Apologies for the odd color of the picture. Still working on finding the right lighting for taking progress photos!

Markup R-XP

Late last summer I discovered a cross stitch software that totally changed my cross stitching forever. Markup R-XP is AMAZING!!! And it works with iOS as well as Android.

I was preparing to begin a new cross stitch project because I was still frustrated with MMMonet (gah!). This one is even bigger than MMMonet: 250,000 stitches versus 162,000. Printing out 80 pages of a chart seemed a bit daunting, and my eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be. Hunting down confetti stitches on a printed out page and marking them off with a highlighter sounded more like a chore than a delightful pastime.

Markup R-XP changed all that. With this software, you can upload a PDF file of your chart to your device (iPad, in my case) and assign each symbol a color to match your color key. Then, while you are stitching, say…symbol @  … you click on the @ on your chart and Markup R-XP highlights every @ on the current page!!  This way you can make sure you don’t miss any of your currently selected symbol.  Such a time saver. 

The box at the very top of the page shows you the color that matches the symbol, how many times this symbol appears on this particular page, the number of this color left to stitch, and the name assigned to the color. The fuchsia boxes highlight the chosen symbol on the page. (You can change the highlighting to any color you wish, and/or make it a solid box rather than an outline.)

This first column of this page is a listing of each floss used in the chart, followed by how many stitches completed for that floss, how many left to do, the color of the floss and its symbol.

In markup mode, once you’ve completed a single stitch, or several stitches, you simply touch the highlighted square(s) and Markup R-XP fills in the square(s) with the associated color. You can choose to have the symbol still visible or not. I usually choose to not have the completed symbols visible because I find them distracting. Plus, if they are not visible, the chart resembles the finished product more closely, in my opinion.

You can also zoom in to make it easier to read or click your finished squares!

Markup R-XP; zoomed in on page 4

Paper copy of page 4

I’ve found I can stitch much faster using this software, since I don’t have to hunt for each matching symbol.

This info page is showing MMMonet progress. It’s not accurate in terms of total time stitched, simply because I had already completed half the project before I found Markup R-XP. This, in turn, makes the average stitch time inaccurate, as well as the estimate days to completion, and estimated completion date. I’m not too worried about that information, though. I’m more interested in the marked stitches and stitches left to do. I love to see that % complete number rise!!

I bought this software last year. I already had the PDF files for the charts I wanted to upload. I believe you can take photos of charts and upload those to the program as well. And, in one of the latest updates, they’ve made it so certain cross stitch company (Artecy, Heaven and Earth Designs, Unconventional XStitch, etc.) charts will be all set up once you upload (no need to assign colors and such). Don’t quote me on that, though, as I’ve not tried it. I have my hands full already! lol

Oh geez. In looking back at this post, I realize it sounds like I’m selling something. This is not an advertisement. I just really love this software and was so happy to have found it. I didn’t even know it was a thing. I stumbled upon it accidentally. I wanted to share in hopes someone else might find it helpful.

MMMonet, Page 14

Moving right along!!! This page includes the majority of Claude Monet’s signature. The chart software didn’t pick up the colors well enough to suit me, so I stitched the entire page (barring the signature) then chose the colors I wanted for his name. I think I ended up trying 4 different color combinations before I was satisfied with how it looked. So yeah…more frogging and re-stitching here, but I think the extra time was worthwhile.

(Closeup of Claude Monet’s signature on the original painting of “The Manneporte (Étretat) 1883”)

I spent quite a bit of time trying to adjust the colors so they would show up on the stitched version. Snickers’ Mom was gracious enough to help me work through it all. lol She has a lot more patience than my family when it comes to me asking for opinions on colors!

I was pretty pleased with how it eventually turned out. Thanks, Snickers’ Mom, for all your help and encouragement!! ❤❤❤

Not bad, eh?

This page was started on July 28, 2022 and finished on August 10, 2022. The bottom row pages have 60 rows of stitching rather than the 99 of the upper rows so each page goes much quicker.

Fourteenth page: 48.53 hours (8 stitching days)
Total stitching hours to date: 1222.4
Number of stitches on this page: roughly 4,860
Total stitches completed thus far: roughly 103,329

It’s time for your closeup, MMMonet!

I don’t think I’ve ever shown a closeup photo to illustrate just how tiny these stitches are for MMMonet. No time like the present!

The fabric I am using is a 25 count, which means there are 25 stitches to 1 inch of fabric. Pretty darned small, especially for these old eyes! The stitches didn’t seem quite so little when I started this project. Procrastination has its price, I guess.

The 20 x 20 stitch section just to the left of the quarter has 14 different colors of confetti stitching already done. Confetti stitching is like throwing a handful of tiny bits of various colored paper up in the air and noting where they each fall. It may seem chaotic to look at (and a pain to locate the matching confetti) while stitching , but once you step back and take it look, it all makes sense. Adds ever so much detail!

The markings on the fabric mark off every 10 stitches. I did the majority of the project without a grid like this, but after working with pre-gridded fabric on “Van Gogh Never Saw Alaska,” I decided I really needed to mark up MMMonet. I just hope the marks come out in the wash. 🤞 fingers crossed 🤞

Another closeup, just for kicks

In the meantime…

So, yeah. I took a looonnnnnggg break with the MMMonet project. Four years!!! I was not exactly idle, craft-wise. I did a bit of quilting, crocheting, and cross stitching (and reading, playing World of Warcraft, etc).

One of the things I quilted was a laser cut appliqué wall hanging. I grew up in Sitka, Alaska and I have always been fascinated with Tlingit artwork. I have 5 or 6 more wall hangings to do that are similar to this one in style.

Orcas Over the Moon 18″ x 28″

I managed to get a few crocheted items done as well. My sister also crochets, and we spent many hours on speaker phone while working on our various projects. These are only a few of the things I created while chatting on the phone:

I love sunflowers, so I thought I would make an afghan to place on the back of the sofa in our new living room. I bought a pattern, but really struggled with the instructions, so I pretty much re-wrote the whole thing. It’s working much better for me now. I have half the blocks done so far. This project is my “keep in the car to work on while waiting for kids to get “shopping/working/or-whatever-they’re-doing now” done.

Another crochet WIP is the temperature afghan for my husband. Temperature afghans are a fun thing to do! I keep track of the high temperature of the day for each day of the year then each day gets one row in a certain color. I’ve got 20 colors to cover from 0° to 100°. Each color represents 5 degrees. For example: Turquois is 25°-29°; Lapis is 30°-34°; etc. The higher temps are colors like Magenta, Boysenberry and Plum. I cannot wait to see how it turns out!

Hmmm…what else…oh yeah! When we FINALLY found a house (what a nightmare that search was!!), I stitched some roses for our realtor. It took me maybe 9 days to stitch. I had it framed and we gave it to her on closing day.

I do have another cross stitch project kitted up and started. “Van Gogh Never Saw Alaska” is a painting by Aja Trier. The cross stitch pattern is done by Unconventional X Stitch.

This chart is a whopper! It is 500 by 500 stitches. (For comparison, MMMonet is 450 x 360). This one is also being done on 25 count fabric and the design will be 20″ x 20″ when complete. There are 90 colors. It will be fun to work with such bright colors!!

I had started working on VGNSA before we found the house, and after 34 stitching days I had roughly 5% of the pattern completed. lol This one will take quite a bit of time. I won’t get to it for a while. MMMonet takes precedence.

This fabric is gridded, and I wish I had known about this stuff when I started MMMonet. When the stitching is done and the fabric is washed, the grid will disappear! The grid is every 10 stitches. It makes counting your stitches ever so much easier. Another massive time saver. 😀 Anyhow, this picture shows 5% completion. Almost 4 pages stitched. The needle-minder is also from the same painting. For me, it’s a little reminder of stitching yet to come. 🙂