Welcome to Lowkey Observations!

I have rebranded (again). I tend to do this. I’m never satisfied with my online personas (or real life personas). I’m trying to figure out why I have this constant need to refresh my image and personality.

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I can’t remember when I found #The100DayProject, but I always knew I wanted to try it. Basically, it’s doing something artistic for 100 days straight. They send newsletters to keep you on track, and you can share your progress on Instagram with the hashtag.

This latest round started on February 22nd, and I had the perfect plan. A few years ago, I bought this massive cross stitch project: a sword surrounded by flowers. It was so big that my mom had to find an extremely large piece of fabric in black for the pattern. I figured I could get this project near completion in 100 days!

Except that didn’t happen. I made it about a week. You see, the pattern (which hilariously is no longer being sold by the shop I purchased it from) had a lot of black thread. And I was using black fabric, so that was a problem. Also, black fabric? Not easy to see the holes! I noticed a mistake and tried to take it apart, but instead I managed to rip the fabric? Cue the crash out.

So, I pivoted. I went back to an unfinished project for a few days while I regrouped. I purchased a bunch of other patterns, got more fabric and the proper thread colors, printed the patterns at the library, and got to work.

I wound up completing FOUR cross stitch projects during the challenge! Pretty impressive! I’d say my biggest struggle was carving out time for it every day. Sometimes I would only stitch like one row (Disney days), but the rest of the time it became a nighttime activity after eating dinner, doing dishes, getting things ready for the next work day, and reading books/Webtoons.

Another struggle I had with the challenge was boredom. I tend to have a hard time focusing on one thing for too long (which sounds ridiculous given the amount of books I read!). Making a hobby into a habit isn’t a smart idea because you start to chafe against always doing it. I think it helped that I actually couldn’t complete the giant project I envisioned at the start. Being able to shift focus into different patterns was fun. And I loved all the different colors!

I like to cross stitch because it gives me something to do with my hands. It’s sometimes calming (obviously, I’ve listed above some reasons it is not). I kept calling it my dissociation time because I would be so focused on the pattern that I could forget about the world for a bit.

But 100 days is a lot of time to spend on one thing. And I started to wish I chose a different way to be artistic. I missed writing even though I have too many ideas, so if I did decide to write something, I likely would have failed.

I’m proud of myself for completing the challenge. Usually, my challenges involve movies, so this was a change of pace. I’m not sure if I’ll do it again, but I’m happy to have completed it once. Now what to do with all these finished cross stitch projects…