Originally I was going to call this post “The woes of a serial starter”, but then I realised that if only my starts were serial, there wouldn’t be a problem. It’s because they are concurrent that I get into trouble, and that trouble is summed up in the question “which one do I work on this evening?”
From fairly early on in my embroidery life I found that one project at a time didn’t do it for me. All right, I get bored easily. I am not the work-on-the-same-enormous-project-for-three-years-running type. Quite a steady and patient sort of person in everyday life, I somehow seem to crave variation and instant gratification in my needlework. Oh well, one has to get one’s excitement somewhere 
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And on the whole, it works just fine. If I have two or three things on the go, and they are not too similar, I can pick up whichever I feel like at any given moment. I may work on the same project for several days (even weeks) on end, or I may change from one stitching session to the next. But don’t you find sometimes that too much choice can be paralysing? As with flavours of ice cream (so much easier to decide when vanilla, chocolate or strawberry were the only options), so with too wide a selection of available embroidery projects – if there are so many things I could do, I sometimes end up doing none of them and watching Countryfile or a murder mystery instead!
At the moment I find myself with two projects actually being stitched (a Kelly Fletcher design re-imagined in silk and gold and a silk sunflower), two hooped up with the materials chosen (a goldwork workshop model and another sunflower), two transferred with the details still to be decided on (a tiny sheep to be done in silverwork and a project pouch – really a tablet pouch – to be worked in plain DMC), one charted but not yet transferred (a six-petalled flower to be done in silk and gold), and one tantalising me with its possibilities but with no definite stitching plan as yet (a really useful canvas moon bag).
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So will I get any stitching done tonight? As Tommy Cooper said, “I used to think I was indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.” Is there a Midsomer Murders on anywhere?
There’s always a Midsomer Murders on. Failing which, Lewis.
I have just made a list of stitching I’ve vaguely committed myself to doing. Do you find that if you think to yourself that it might be nice to make, say, a card for so-and-so’s birthday, you then immediately feel that you have said that you would? Also another peg loomed baby blanket… But I usually have an enormous project or two on the go, as well as little things. And sometimes, I actually have a finish, too.
Or Murder She Wrote.
Yes, it can feel like a commitment even to vaguely think of a project 🙂 – while in Wales last weekend I found a Celtic cross on the church’s newsletter which I thought would make a splendid little goldwork design, so I bagged it. I mentioned this to someone that afternoon, and he said wouldn’t it be nice to stitch it for that church (which we regularly visit once a year – and they recognise us, bless them!). So now of course I feel I really ought to…