Slow Sunday Stitching - October 25, 2026 AND 2026 Rotation #8 Slot #2 (Historic) Changeover

My rotation is all messed up after being sick for a couple of weeks and not being very energetic.  I'm feeling marginally better, though the cough is still lingering (darn asthma that lets every virus that floats around land right in my lungs).  So, I'm afraid I might have to break the streak of pumping through the entire set of projects in a month.   That's OK; the annual plan is to get through the rotation every 6 weeks at a max (which when you drop out 'Full Coverage February' gives 8 full rotations a year).   I'm currently on Rotation #8 for 2026 so I don't mind slowing down the pace a bit. 

Andrew over at The Runner Stitcher (link to his YouTube channel) is hosting the second #WIPintoShape as he prepares to run the London marathon in late April next year.  Last time when he was setting up for the New York marathon, I worked on my pictorial, which was "Mead Dragon" at the time.   The marathon stitching got me through the boring background on that piece, but I decided that I didn't want to do another pictorial since "Santa of the Forest" is so close to a finish that it wouldn't get me very far into the challenge.  My next pictorial project is still in the 'charting into Pattern Keeper' stage (more on that in a few weeks when the Santa is closer to a finish) so it's not really challenge appropriate either.

I settled on using "A Quaker Christmas" for the challenge piece.  Andrew reports his training miles every day and we are stitching 10 stitches for every mile he runs.  He's even set up a Google doc to track everything.  I'll also be reporting on my progress here the last Sunday of the month.

Since the start of the challenge, I have stitched 888 stitches.  The project is at 15.66% as of today's stitches. Like all conditioning plans, this one starts out with small, achievable goals.  Therefore, I have less progress this rotation than some, but as we get further in, the distance (and the number of stitches) will increase steadily.  This first bit is all under 100 stitches a day, most days are 3.5 to 5 miles (35 to 50 stitches).  Tomorrow's goal is 100 stitches for his first 10-mile run.  I feel like we have reached a milestone!

Here's where I am at the first month's check in.  All the stitches were in the 'cluster of stars' half medallion and the word beside it.  

And what the whole thing looks like now.  I'm still heading down the left border of half medallions.  This next motif is one I've named 'butterflies and branches' and it will get me all the way to the bottom left corner.

And here's where I was at the start of the challenge.

I'm going to hop over to see what the rest of the SSS crew is up to this week.  (Link to the roundup here.)