As the new year has come and go, I am going to talk about challenges and why some of them work and some of them just don’t work. I am a crafter and there are a lot of different challenges that you can participate in and some of them are really good, and others may not work for you, and you have to make the decision.

In the past I did try and do a lot of the different challenges however I would start them at the beginning of the year because they sounded good, and I thought they would help my stitching only for me to discover that having such a routine didn’t work so well for me. It is nice that some of these challenges work for some people, and we have to understand that everyone is not exactly the same.

Now here are some of the challenges that I have found, and I will let you know my thoughts about them, and please remember this is just my own opinion.

Stitch to the Moon – let’s strive to stitch our way to the moon. The distance is 238,900 miles and 1 mile = 1 full cross stitch.

•    In this challenge you pick your full coverage projects, and you try and stitch 238,900 stitches/miles by the end of the year. For some people, it might be doable, but that would mean at least 654 stitches every day to achieve that goal. Sure, I probably have that many stitches to do on my full coverage projects, but I know that I couldn’t stitch that many stitches in a year given other obligations.

Focus on a finish – the overall goal of this challenge is to pick a project that you want to finish and focus on it over the next 12 months.

•    Here is a challenge that does start to look doable if I could stay focused and just work on one of my full coverages at a time. My smallest full coverage piece that I have on the go still has just over 28,000 stitches left to do, so that is 2,400 stitches a month to get it done.

25 in 25 – the goal for this challenge is to pick a project and stitch 25,000 stitches on it by the end of the year.

•    Again, this is a challenge that I look at and say if I could just work on one full coverage at a time, I might be able to stitch that much, but again it is just over 2,000 stitches a month on that piece. I might be able to do this if I said

Stitch from stash – the goal of this challenge is to set a budget for your spending (no more than $25 a month) through one half of the year, and that is all you can spend. You can earn money to spend by finishing things, as there is credit for getting things finished.

•    I did participate in this challenge for a couple of years, and I did find that it helped me from just buying patterns, fabric etc. even through I had lots of stuff already in my stash. It was nice to give myself a budget, and it helped me to think about did I really want or need something before I just quickly bought it.

•    What I didn’t like about how some people did the challenge was they would work on a project really hard to almost a finish and would then do a large finish just at the beginning of the half year so that they always had a large amount they could spend. Sure, it was they own money that they were spending, but I know people started to complain but of how people started the time, and it didn’t help motivate others. You are also only going to get a small credit for something that you finished, and it is based on the size of the finish.

WIPGO – the idea behind this challenge is you select either 24 or 25 projects that you want to work on during the year and place them on what looks like a bingo card. You can also set the goal that you want to achieve on each of these projects, so it is up to you how you really work on it. Just before the beginning of each month, two numbers are randomly chosen, and the idea is for you to work on the projects and goals that were chosen. Now for a lot of people they will choose 24 projects so that the number 13 is considered a free space. If you happen to have 25 projects, the month that number 13 is called, you are going to have three projects to work on. The basic idea behind this is to work on moving projects that you selected forward.

•    I wasn’t sure if I was going to do WIPGO in 2025 as I have never done it, but I decided to try and see how I do on it. I selected 4 projects that I want to focus on and each time the project is called I am going to stitch 500 stitches in the piece. I think this is something that is doable given I have 4 large projects that I want to work on in 2025. So, the first two numbers were chosen and now in January I have to add 1,000-stitches to one project because that is how the numbers happen to fall. Now to see how it goes for the rest of the year.

As you can see, I have just shown a few of the cross stitch challenges that are out there for people to try and use to move specially large projects forward. I didn’t even look at all the different stitch alongs that are happening because that is something else that you can do.

Something that is important to remember when it comes to your cross stitch, or any craft, is that it is supposed to be something you enjoy doing. Some challenges because more of a job, and that is when the craft isn’t a craft anymore. So, when you think about participating in any type of challenge that involves something that is supposed to be enjoyable, make sure that the joy remains. We will now see how I do in 2025 trying a different challenge because it just might help me move four projects forward some.